Populist attraction: the symbolic uses of masculinities in the Austrian general election campaign 2017

ABSTRACT

The year 2017 brought about a political change in Austria. The hitherto governing coalition of the Social Democrats (SPÖ) with the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) was replaced with a coalition between the rebranded so-called New People’s Party (ÖVP) and the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) which lasted only 17 months. This paper aims to theorize political masculinity and populism by taking Austria as an example. It combines the theory of Pierre Bourdieu and his conceptions of the political field, masculine domination, and symbolic violence with Raewyn Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinities and discusses how political masculinities relate to a populist political style. Examining the electoral strategies of the two right-wing parties ÖVP and FPÖ in Austria, the paper illuminates two moments of change in political masculinities when confronted with populism: the transformation from oppositional to governmental populist political masculinity on the one hand, and the populist challenge to hegemonic political masculinity on the other.

KEYWORDS:

• Pierre Bourdieu
• political field
• political masculinities
• right-wing populism
• Austria

Introduction

After the general election in Austria on 15 October 2017, the Viennese city magazine Falter published a photo of Sebastian Kurz, the successful leader of the winning Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), on its cover and titled ‘Der Neofeschist’ (Thurnher, 2017).¹ Fesch means smart and handsome thus characterizing the 31-year-old shooting star of the conservatives. On the other hand, this play on words sounds like ‘neo-fascist’ and suggests a political turn towards far-right fascist ideologies. Although this harsh criticism is contested, many scholars agree that the rebranded New People’s Party (ÖVP) experienced a national-conservative turn rightward in a populist style by adopting the topic of migration from the radical right populist Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) in a similar anti-Muslim racist manner (Bodlos & Plescia, 2018; Löffler, 2018; Scheibelhofer, 2017; Wodak, 2018). This article asks whether the convergence of the two parties’ positions are reflected in their performance of political masculinities. ‘Populist attraction’, in the paper’s title, refers to both populism’s attraction for Kurz, who imitated the anti-immigration discourse of the FPÖ to gain votes, and Kurz’ attraction for the voters, who can feel relieved to have a mainstream alternative to the radical FPÖ which legitimizes their resentments against immigrants.

The electoral strategy was successful in so far as ÖVP won 31.5% of the votes, i.e. an additional 7.5% compared to the general election in 2013. The populist FPÖ won 26% of the votes thus gained 5.5%. Together ÖVP and FPÖ reached a comfortable majority and formed a coalition government with Kurz as federal chancellor and the party leader of the FPÖ, Heinz-Christian Strache, as vice-chancellor. The government lasted only 17 months, due to the so-called ‘Ibiza-Gate’ – a video published in May 2019 exposing Strache’s willingness to be corrupted and use media manipulation. Although Strache resigned from office and Norbert Hofer, the FPÖ candidate in the presidential elections 2016, became the new party leader, the FPÖ left the government because Kurz also requested the FPÖ Minister of Internal Affairs, Herbert Kickl, to resign. The parliament refused to approve the subsequent new government through a vote of no confidence and brought about early elections on 29 September 2019. Kurz initially reacted in a populist style by delegitimizing the parliament’s decision.² In the elections of 2019, he was successful again: ÖVP gained 37.5% (plus 6%) compared to 2017. However, FPÖ lost 9.8% and won only 16.2% of the votes. They are no longer part of the new government, a coalition of ÖVP and the Green Party.

This paper aims to theorize political masculinity and populism by taking Austria as an example. The first section of this paper presents the theoretical framework which is based on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘symbolic violence’. The phrase ‘symbolic uses of masculinities’ in the title echoes Murry Edelman’s book Symbolic Uses of Politics (Edelman, 1967) and points to the ritual character of elections and the emotional appeal of campaigns. This is also relevant when analyzing politics as a field according to Bourdieu. A Bourdieusian perspective considers politics as a specific game with its own rules, stakes, and aims, played by political professionals in order to win the support of lay politicians – the electorate (Bourdieu, 1997, p. 181). I suggest conceptualizing political masculinities as gender strategies in playing the political game, and analyzing different gender practices in the political field with ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell, 1995, p. 77) as a common point of reference. The analysis of political masculinities focuses on those instances when political actors strategically use masculinity as a symbolic resource (Löffler, 2017b, p. 159) and in so doing try to change the rules of the game to their advantage. Accordingly, this paper assumes that populist political masculinity combines a specific way of doing masculinity with a populist political style ‘that is performed, embodied and enacted’ (Moffitt, 2016, p. 3) in the game of politics.

The second section turns to the example of Austria and explores in what respects Sebastian Kurz and his new ÖVP were attracted by the populism of the FPÖ and tempted by the realistic chance of electoral success to apply populist rhetoric and strategies in their electoral campaign 2017 and further on in their governing style. Based on the analysis of TV debates, poster campaigns, and online campaign videos of FPÖ and ÖVP in 2017, this paper identifies populist electoral strategies that serve to illustrate the masculine character of their political style. Considering Bourdieu, this paper assumes that political masculinity is not a static configuration of gender practices, but contested and part of a game in which (hegemonic) masculinity is negotiated in the political field. Accordingly, this paper aims to explore two moments of change in political masculinities when confronted with populism: the transformation from oppositional to governmental populist political masculinity on the one hand, and the populist challenge to hegemonic political masculinity on the other. Finally, the paper shows that populism in government cannot rely on a single way of doing political masculinity, but rather seems to depend on complementary gender strategies.

The games of (populist) political masculinities

Political masculinity

According to Raewyn Connell, masculinity is a configuration of practices which take the shape of different masculinities that relate to hegemonic masculinity as a central idealized reference point. Hegemonic masculinity is the historically and culturally specific configuration of gender practice which claims authority (Connell, 1995, p. 77). It embodies the currently accepted strategy to legitimate the subordination of women, i.e. patriarchy, and all other masculinities. ‘Doing masculinity’, hence, is the way in which men or boys relate to hegemonic masculinity in their own gender practices (Budde, 2012, p. 70). In this way, hegemonic masculinity is broadly accepted and reproduces (patriarchal) power relations. However, hegemony is historical in the sense that the conditions for the defense of patriarchy change over time and new groups of men and their masculinity may challenge the dominance of a particular masculinity and construct a new hegemony (Connell, 1995, p. 77), a struggle which can take place in the political field.

Michael Meuser and Sylka Scholz (Meuser, 1998, p. 118; Meuser & Scholz, 2012) suggest combining Connell’s concepts of masculinities with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus and masculine domination. Habitus, according to Bourdieu, is made up of incorporated social relations, the so-called dispositions. It is a kind of ‘social sense’, a practical and embodied memory, which facilitates the correct or expected behavior beyond consciousness. Most importantly, it is a social sense of difference and thus not a neutral guide through the social world, but a mechanism to reproduce social inequality (Meuser, 1998, p. 108). Hegemonic masculinity is an ‘institutional practice’ (Meuser & Scholz, 2012, p. 25). It is one possible expression (beside other masculinities) of the male habitus and serves as a normative ideal which plays a crucial role in the constitution and reproduction of male supremacy.

Bourdieu argues that men acquire a male habitus in relation to other men (homosocial sphere) in games of competition, which induce a libido dominandi, the intrinsic desire to dominate women and other men, on the one hand, provide them with a sense of comradeship and solidarity between men, on the other (Meuser, 1998, p. 26). Meuser and Scholz emphasize that men and boys draw upon hegemonic masculinity when playing these games of competition, which makes hegemonic masculinity a ‘generative principle’ of the male habitus (Meuser & Scholz, 2012, p. 25). However, only a few men can practice the hegemonic ideal, because masculinities intersect with further configurations of inequality and domination. Hegemonic masculinity is defined and practiced in those historically variable social spheres where struggles for power and influence take place. I argue that the political field is a core arena of power struggles and thus agree with Starck and Luyt (2019, p. 436) who claim that ‘the concept of political masculinities can usefully be applied in instances in which power is explicitly either being (re)produced or challenged’.

Bourdieu’s theory of masculine domination explains the reproduction of a patriarchal and heteronormative society along two distinct and hierarchized versions of the habitus – female and male. As the gender habitus is the most fundamental one (Bourdieu, Dölling, & Steinrücke, 1997, p. 222) it facilitates a strong believe (doxa) in the unchangeable nature of a hierarchical (symbolic) gender order. This masculine domination is Bourdieu’s prime example of symbolic domination. It operates on the basis of symbolic violence,³ which is invisible and ‘can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it’ (Bourdieu, 1997, p. 164). Symbolic violence is a mechanism that triggers social dispositions of the habitus to dominate or subordinate by investing symbolic capital, i.e. prestige and honor. Bourdieu identifies a gender gap in the ability to accumulate symbolic capital. He observes a ‘negative symbolic coefficient’ which separates women from men and negatively affects everything they say and do (Bourdieu, 2001, p. 93). Doing (hegemonic) masculinity, in contrast, is the accumulation of symbolic capital. The symbolic imbalance between the sexes underlies the functioning of the social fields in modern societies including politics.

Bourdieu introduces his notion of the social field as a metaphor referring to a playing field. He suggests investigating social fields as games with their own rules, stakes, aims and profits to be won. Accordingly, the political field is a game of competing political agents who produce political products such as issues, programs, analyses, commentaries and events that serve as instruments for perceiving and expressing the social world (the principles of di-vision) (Bourdieu, 1997, p. 172). Agents ‘can enter into the distinctive political game with some chance of success only on condition that they possess a specific competence’ (ibid., p. 176) that has to be habitualized. The habitus of the politician depends on a special training in order to acquire the corpus of specific kinds of knowledge and general skills such as the mastery of a certain kind of political rhetoric.

But it is also and above all that sort of initiation […] which tends to inculcate the practical mastery of the immanent logic of the political field and to impose a de facto submission to the values, hierarchies and censorship mechanisms inherent in this field. (Bourdieu, 1997, p. 176, original emphases)

Combining Bourdieu’s conceptions of the political field and of masculine domination illuminates the gendered basis of politics. Politics is a social game in which politicians invest and gain symbolic capital (prestige and honor). Its competitive nature assimilates politics with games of masculinities, hence, politics privilege a habitus equipped with the original illusio, i.e. the commitment to the social game. Bourdieu emphasizes that the illusio is a typical disposition of the male habitus (Bourdieu, 2001, p. 48) and explains the exclusion of women from the games considered to be the most serious ones of human existence such as war or politics. This does not mean that women cannot participate in politics, but they might be disadvantaged whenever games of masculinities override the political game. Women’s exclusion from politics has therefore been described as paradoxical (Starck & Sauer, 2014, p. 4), being in and out at the same time.

Although political agents cannot avoid doing gender, I argue that there are different modalities of doing masculinity in politics that range from practices taking advantage of masculine domination to emancipatory gender practices. Given the variety of political masculinities, the question is whether there is a populist political style of playing the game of masculinity in politics, and if so, what this looks like.

Populist political masculinity

Moffitt and Tormey (2014, p. 387) define a political style as ‘the repertoires of performance that are used to create political relations’ and suggest focusing on the relationship between the populist leader and ‘the people’ when discussing a populist political style as distinguished from other political styles such as authoritarian or technocratic. This perspective ignores the gender dimensions of political styles. Taking masculinity into consideration, a political style relates to hegemonic masculinity and the habitus in the political field.

Generally speaking, the political habitus is a ‘feel for the political game’ (Bourdieu, 1997, p. 179) which enables the politician to choose suitable and agreed stances, and to avoid compromising ones. It makes him or her predictable and at the same time reliable, i.e. competent, serious, and trustworthy. A competent political player knows the current state of the political game and its tacit rules, including the boundaries between what is politically sayable or unsayable, thinkable or unthinkable. Moreover, his or her gender practices will be in line with hegemonic masculinity. This conception of the politician opens a perspective on populist political players as ‘game changers’ who deliberately infringe the rules of the game by pushing the boundaries of the politically sayable and thinkable. This strategy includes a clear and visible disruption compared to the typical (hegemonic) political habitus in the field in terms of doing gender and performing a political style.

A recurrent feature in defining populism is its construction of an opposition between ‘us and them’ which has two dimensions, a horizontal one constructing a hostile ‘other’ (e.g. refugees, Islam), and a vertical one polarizing the people and an alleged corrupt and morally inferior elite (Küpper, 2018, p. 63; Müller, 2016, p. 10). Populists typically accuse professional politicians and players in the political field of being ‘the elite’, ‘the establishment’ or agents of ‘the system’ working against ‘the people’, while presenting themselves as extraordinary or charismatic politicians who give voice to the peoples’ genuine concerns.

Put into the Bourdieusian theory, I argue that populist politicians understand and play the political game, however, they present themselves as outsiders by breaking some of the political rules. Such rule violations are symbolic acts, symbolizing heroic deeds, aimed at gaining symbolic capital by being admired, supported and eventually elected by the citizens. In contrast to their self-representations, populists cannot break all the rules of the political game. They must ‘accept the tacit contract, implied by the fact of participating in the game, of recognizing thereby that it is indeed worth playing’ (Bourdieu, 1997, p. 180, original emphasis). As shown above, this investment in the game (illusio) is supported by the male habitus. However, presenting oneself as outsider rather than rule-abiding player must be performed by practicing an atypical or new political style including a distinctive political (gender) habitus and a media-effective claim to understand and represent the true interests of ‘the people’. This performance is intended to disrupt the (normal) game of politics in order to change the game to the advantage of oneself and one’s party.

Benjamin Arditi (2005, p. 90) describes populism in a similar way. He claims that populism functions as a paradoxical feature of liberal democracy. Populists share some standard traits of democracy such as participation, mobilization, and informal expression of the popular will. On the other hand, populism interrupts the closure of democracy as a professional political field, which Arditi calls a ‘gentrified or domesticated political order’ (ibid.). Populists, he claims, do so ‘by overlooking standing procedures, institutional relations, comforting rituals’ (ibid.), in other words, by breaking the rules of the political game. Interestingly, he employs a gendered allegory to explain this mechanism.

We can illustrate this through an analogy with the discomfort caused by the arrival of a drunken guest at a dinner party. He is bound to disrupt table manners and the tacit rules of sociability by speaking loudly, interrupting the conversations of others, and perhaps flirting with the wives of other guests. (Arditi, 2005, p. 90)

The behavior of the drunken guest displays an archaic image of an alleged masculine nature opposed to a feminized (democratic) culture. In this way, Arditi feminizes democracy and mainstream democratic politicians, while he depicts populist actors in terms of a kind of protest masculinity (Connell, 1995, p. 109).⁴ This is also in line with Moffitt and Tormey, who emphasize that “[m]uch of populists’ appeal comes from their disregard of ‘appropriate’ ways of acting in the political realm” (Moffitt & Tormey, 2014, p. 392), a practice they label ‘bad manners’.

Arditi does not narrate his allegory from the perspective of critical gender research. On the contrary, it seems to originate in the author’s androcentric view of politics, which renders masculinity in politics invisible (see Starck & Sauer, 2014, p. 3). Indeed, it reproduces politics as a game of masculinities. Feminizing democracy and mainstream politicians is a strategy of populist actors in this game, aiming to present themselves as heroic saviors and protectors of ‘real democracy’. The feminized democracy is in need of protection, but equally feminized mainstream politicians are not able to protect her. In this game, populist political masculinity claims authority and thus hegemony by challenging ‘normal’ political masculinity. The target of populist infringements are the supposed superficial and feminine rules of the democratic code of conduct in order to present one’s own practice as normal (natural) and masculine.

The populist game of masculinity has facilitated a ‘masculinist political revival’ (Mellström, 2016), most prominently enacted by Donald Trump with his sexist and provocative rhetoric. Many populist actors perform an aggressive and masculinist style claiming to fight the corrupt establishment, but actually they break taboos and blur the boundaries of the politically sayable and thinkable (Kallis, 2014). These strategies are often successful in current media democracies, because their ‘tabloid style’ (Margret Canovan cited by Moffitt & Tormey, 2014, p. 392) guarantees (media) attention and thus maximizes their chances to accumulate symbolic capital. The populist political style hardly ensures a competent, serious, and trustworthy political habitus, however, populist political masculinism activates the symbolic violence of the gender order by claiming the (moral) superiority of the ‘natural’ gender doxa of ‘the people’ over the artificial ‘political correctness’ of mainstream politicians, hence, the inferiority of their feminized and feminizing (democratic) practices.

Right-wing populism and political masculinities in Austria

Political masculinities of the Austrian freedom party

The Austrian political landscape was one of the first in Europe shaped by right-wing populism, namely through the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ). According to Cas Mudde (2004) populism is a ‘thin-centered ideology’ and thus likely to be merged with other more substantive ideologies from the left and the right political spectrum. The FPÖ is an example of a populist party that leans to the extreme right (Pelinka, 2013). Founded in 1956, the FPÖ claimed to continue the liberal-national tradition of the pan-German political ‘camp’ in Austria’s history which had become part of the rising Nazi movement in the early twentieth century. However, with the exception of a few years, when the FPÖ governed in a coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) (1983–1986) and thus foregrounded more liberal views, the FPÖ was never a liberal party (Liebhart, 2019, p. 86). In 1986, Jörg Haider became party chairman and initiated a ‘populist turn’, claiming to fight a corrupt political establishment on behalf of the true Austrian people on the one hand, introducing ‘populist xenophobia’ (Pelinka, 2013, p. 13) on the other.

Haider’s new political style, his aggressive rhetoric, visual performance, and media competence, as well as his topical positioning, is a prototype populist political masculinity as described above. Political scientists have explained the FPÖ’s success from 1986 to 1999 as resulting from their populist strategy to maximize votes, which changed in the years from 2000 to 2005, when the FPÖ was in government and the primary political goal was ‘office’ in contrast to ‘votes’ (Ennser-Jedenastik, 2019, p. 29). From 2005 onwards, however, the FPÖ returned to the populist strategy to maximize votes, after they had failed in government (Fallend & Heinisch, 2016; Heinisch, 2003), and Heinz-Christian Strache became party chairman.

After Strache’s takeover, German nationalist student fraternities gained influence and became the FPÖ’s most important recruitment pool.⁵ They turned the FPÖ into a rather ‘masculinist’ party by adopting an anti-gender ideology that claimed to fight for the rights of men who were discriminated by gender equality policies (Löffler, 2017a; Mayer & Sauer, 2017). Strache reinforced the party’s anti-EU, anti-migration and anti-Muslim rhetoric. Moreover, he started to use social media for his direct appeal to his voters and soon became the politician with the highest number of ‘friends’ on Facebook in Austria (Dolezal, 2015, p. 115). His permanent online presence supported an increasing personality cult which tends to camouflage the (fraternal) networks of the party. Strache merchandized himself using his first name’s initials HC as a trademark, with fan articles and cartoon books illustrating the heroic deeds of ‘HC Man’ in his fight against corruption and illegal migrants (Wodak, 2015, p. 136 ff.). All these media and merchandizing strategies served to promote Strache as a (charismatic) leader and strongman, an image that dominated his populist political masculinity until 2017.

From oppositional to governmental populism

Before the FPÖ entered government in 2017, their populist performance in terms of masculinity had changed to a more governmental style. A first change was enacted by Norbert Hofer when he was the FPÖ candidate in the presidential elections in 2016. The ‘long summer of migration’ in 2015 and the poor migration management of the government made the FPÖ the most popular party in Austria with an estimated vote share of above 30% (Bodlos & Plescia, 2018, p. 1355). A clear sign of the traditional parties’ decline was the fact that their presidential candidates did not reach the second round of the elections in April 2016 (Gavenda & Umit, 2016). Instead, the non-partisan candidate and former party leader of the Green Party, Alexander Van der Bellen, and the FPÖ candidate, Hofer, competed for presidency.

Hofer’s relative success made him and his political style an alternative to Strache’s performance. In order to attract new voters, especially women, who were deterred by FPÖ’s radical rhetoric, Hofer presented himself as a reasonable, eloquent, and calm conversation partner. Although still a passionate hobby pilot and, hence, daring and courageous, he has overcome his adolescence (when he had a severe sport accident) and now embodies a responsible family man. His image of the nice guy next door was supported by his social media campaign. Hofer’s facebook account was kept ‘clean’ of negative campaigning and racist comments of ‘friends’ (Scharsach, 2017, p. 101). This part of the electoral campaign was transferred to Strache’s account who linked to tabloid and social media articles conspiring against Van der Bellen. Hofer’s political message was characterized by a traditional-authoritarian-nationalist outlook on the questions of immigration, globalization and European integration, and by a populist dimension when Hofer portrayed his opponent, Van der Bellen, as the candidate of the pro-European, culturally liberal elites, while he claimed to stand for ‘the people’ (Gavenda & Umit, 2016, p. 423f.). During the campaign, Hofer repeatedly promised to bring about a change. The office of the federal president had in practice been a ceremonial one since 1945, although the constitution endows the president with enormous powers. Hofer stated his intent to use these powers by activating and reshaping the presidency. These promises were also directed against the much older Van der Bellen and served to reflect Hofer’s potency in breaking the informal rules of the political game, threatening the governing parties and standing as a force for change.

I argue that Hofer’s gender practices introduced a governmental style of populist political masculinity that fulfills the requirements of the political habitus as indicated by Bourdieu. In other words, Hofer recognized that the political game requires a reliable and serious habitus when running for office. In the General election campaign of 2017, Strache also modified his performance. He changed his look by wearing glasses and practiced a less aggressive rhetoric. The political analyst Thomas Hofer observed ‘signs of mellowing with age of the former bully’ (fast alltersmilde gewordene[r] Ex-Rabauke) (Hofer, 2017, p. 41), when he commented on Strache’s appearance in some of the campaign spots. Although the FPÖ’s campaign relied on negative campaigning directed against the governing coalition and Sebastian Kurz, which is in line with their previous strategy, the FPÖ also launched a series of satirical videos online. The humor expressed in these videos was a new element in FPÖ campaigning (Brantner, Pfurtscheller, & Lobinger, 2019) and signaled that the FPÖ was willing to abandon its extreme and aggressive oppositional style.

After Strache and Hofer had entered government, in December 2017 their ‘mild’ performance became part of the official communication strategy. However, the FPÖ’s populist political masculinities did not abandon their aggressive (oppositional) style completely, but diversified when in government. Herbert Kickl, the former party secretary and campaign manager, became Minister of the Interior in the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition (2017–2019) and continued to practice the typical aggressive populist style. When Kickl upset the opposition and the public, Strache commented that Kickl was his ‘bad cop’ (Fritzl, 2018), a metaphor that illuminates the collaboration between different political masculinities. In 2019, after Strache had to resign and Hofer became party leader, Kickl ascended to second in the hierarchy and is apparently Hofer’s ‘bad cop’ now. It seems that a milder governmental style of populist political masculinity needs the aggressive, masculinist and provocative supplement in order to effectively push the boundaries of the politically sayable and attract the core electorate.

The populist attractions of Sebastian Kurz

Sebastian Kurz became a member of government in 2011 at the age of 25 as State Secretary of Integration and in 2013 he became Minister of External Affairs. In May 2017 he first brought down his party chair, Reinhold Mitterlehner, and then the SPÖ-ÖVP government to become chancellor by the end of the year. Although being a member of the government, Kurz adopted an oppositional stance during the election campaign 2017 by claiming to bring about change and to end the alleged political gridlock. As shown above, the FPÖ used to practice an oppositional political style in order to maximize votes, which was strategically changed to a governmental political style when running for office.

I argue that Kurz and the new ÖVP were attracted by FPÖ’s populism as a strategy to maximize votes, thus incorporating some populist features in their electoral campaign. Kurz combined an oppositional with a governmental political style and introduced a new political habitus by presenting himself as exemplar of hegemonic masculinity. In so doing, he changed the informal rules of the political game, however, he did not challenge the symbolic gender order, but relied on symbolic violence working in his favor. The following discussion of Kurz’ political style and masculinity is based on the findings of existing research on the electoral campaign of 2017 (Bodlos & Plescia, 2018; Brantner et al., 2019; Hofer, 2017; Hultsch-Killius, 2018; Liebhart, 2019; Plasser & Sommer, 2018). As Kurz’ populism is contested, I will first demonstrate some populist features applied in the ÖVP campaign. I will then turn to Kurz’ symbolic uses of masculinity with reference to the campaign posters, slogans and some statements given in TV debates on the Austrian public broadcasting company ORF.

A first populist feature can be identified in the initial series of campaign posters of the ÖVP which propagated the slogans: ‘Austria back to the top again. For all of us.’ (Österreich zurück an die Spitze. Für uns alle.) and ‘Doing what is right. For Austria.’ (Tun was richtig ist. Für Österreich.). Both evoke Donald Trump’s 2016 slogan ‘Make America great again’ and appeal to nationalist sentiments. They insinuate that Austria had deteriorated due to bad administration and that Kurz alone knew the right way back to the top. These vacuous phrases prepared the ground for further populist strategies that present the governing parties as the political establishment compromising the (economic) welfare of ‘the Austrian people’ who will be saved by Kurz, who thus appears as charismatic savior.

Moreover, Kurz promised to change the ‘political culture’ in Austria, supported by the second wave of poster slogans stating: ‘It is time’ (Es ist Zeit) and ‘Time for something new’ (Zeit für Neues). The change message is taken from Obama’s 2008 campaign and includes an online mobilization strategy motivating young people to participate in campaigning for Kurz (Hultsch-Killius, 2018; Maderthaner, 2018).⁶ Kurz’ notion of ‘change’ is an outspoken claim to change the political game. It refers to a changing style of political communication on the one hand, to institutional change on the other.

Stating that Austrian citizens were tired of political squabbling, Kurz promised that the future government under his rule would not display conflict in public. As proof, he presented his election campaign without the least sign of negative campaigning and made this ‘clean style’ a personal character trait. His repeated sentence, ‘I do not soil anyone’ (Ich patze niemanden an) was meant to show his clean hands and to blame his adversaries, especially chancellor Christian Kern and the SPÖ, to apply negative campaigning which soon was renamed ‘dirty campaigning’.⁷

The institutional component of Kurz’ change-message remained vague and thus left room for interpretation. As a first impression, he presented his takeover of the ÖVP in May 2017 as a media event. Although he had planned it well in advance, he claimed to hesitate to accept his nomination as party chair and prescribed some conditions demanding changes in the party’s statute which granted him unprecedented power within the party’s structure. When the party executive agreed, Kurz had demonstrated that he was willing and able to change political structures. These changes of the party’s organization symbolize the changes of the political system, which Kurz promised to pursue when he became chancellor.

The message of institutional change follows a further populist claim: ‘Save money in the system and not at the people’s cost’ (Sparen im System und nicht bei den Menschen) insinuating that the political and administrative structures in Austria and the EU were expensive, inefficient, and ultimately working against the people’s interests. The money saved in ‘the system’ should then be used for the benefit of ‘the people’, thus again alluding that the state administration and social security system were currently working for an elite of officials and functionaries who enrich themselves. This strategy was introduced in the 1990s by Haider (FPÖ) and directed against the governing parties, SPÖ and ÖVP. Consequently, Kurz had to attack his own party which was deeply involved in the functioning of ‘the system’ in Austria. In order to distance himself from the ÖVP, Kurz rebranded it the New Peoples Party. The party’s color changed from black to turquoise, the traditional party logo disappeared and Kurz’ portrait became ubiquitous. This centrality of the party leader can be identified as a further populist feature. Finally, the main topic of Kurz’ electoral campaign was a clear opposition to immigration which had previously been the FPÖ’s domain.

These populist features in the new ÖVP’s campaign are systematically linked to political masculinities. Kurz emphasized his potency to act on behalf of the people with the phrase ‘I closed the Balkan route’ (Ich habe die Balkanroute geschlossen.) which he frequently repeated during the campaign. The closure of the Balkan route referred to the open border policy in the summer of 2015 and was a statement directed against unregulated migration and the governing SPÖ. Furthermore, it was a message to FPÖ voters claiming real competence in migration issues (Bodlos & Plescia, 2018, p. 1357).⁸ While the FPÖ in its campaign was attacking Kurz for his failure in migration policies, Kurz presented himself as the one who acts in contrast to the FPÖ and Strache who simply talk. This message entails an appeal to sovereign masculinity which separates Kurz from governing politicians who do not keep their word on the one hand and from oppositional populists who do not have the power to fulfill their promises on the other.

In the TV debate Strache vs. Kurz (broadcast by ORF on 10.10.2017), Kurz acknowledged that Strache and the FPÖ were good in identifying problems with migration, but when it came to solving them, they did not act accordingly. In this way, Kurz legitimated and actually normalized FPÖ’s anti-immigration and anti-Islam agitation and invited the FPÖ to participate in the future government (Wodak, 2018). At the same time, he presented himself not only as a competent political player, but also as a potent political man. His conception of politics as the deed of an active and courageous man illuminates a game of masculinities that Kurz played by claiming to be that man of action in contrast to his opponents, especially Strache (FPÖ) and Kern (SPÖ). Kurz’ promise of change seems to serve exclusively the purpose of proving his potency to change the game in terms of politics and masculinity. In the debate with Chancellor Kern (broadcast by ORF on 11.10.2017), Kurz answered the question concerning a chancellor’s abilities as follows:

A chancellor must have the courage and the will for change. This is the all deciding. In politics there are many concepts, many ideas, many papers. They have never been lacking. However, in the past there was partly too little of the willingness, the strength and the decidedness to get these things on the ground and to push them through. (own translation)⁹

Kurz presents political concepts, ideas, papers as part of the normal political game which is in line with Bourdieu’s conception of the political field. However, Kurz implies that there is no need to discuss policies. They simply have to be pushed through. Consequently, his message of change is a promise to be a man of strength, courage, power, and willingness to decide and act. This way of doing politics evokes Schmitt’s (1922) decisionism of a strong leader who is modeled along the phantasm of the autonomous (male) subject, who is able to act and to control the effects of his actions.

Kurz presented himself as a potentially strong leader able to change the game of politics by breaking its tacit rules. However, his (political) habitus represented a young and modern version of hegemonic masculinity. His ‘clean hands strategy’ seemed to outperform the calm version of populist masculinity which had been introduced by Hofer and copied by Strache, by claiming to be the one who listens and thus being able to settle conflicts in advance. After ÖVP and FPÖ had signed their coalition agreement, the government’s self-imposed doctrine to ban any public dispute between the coalition partners, made it difficult for Kurz to distance himself from radical and anti-Semitic utterances and scandals emerging from FPÖ politicians and members of German nationalist student fraternities. On the other hand, the aggressive attacks of some of the FPÖ ministers and parliamentarians against left-wing political opponents facilitated the strategy that Strache ironically termed ‘bad cop’ with reference to Kickl. Kurz could also capitalize on the fact that others did the ‘dirty’ and aggressive jobs for him. They made it possible for him to retain the image of the honest political man who will not be corrupted by power.

The symbolic uses of masculinity in case of Kurz and his new ÖVP operates in at least three dimensions.

First, via the representation of hegemonic masculinity. This becomes visible in the above mentioned claim to agency and control, which activates the phantasm of the autonomous subject. Moreover, the fact that other politicians of the new ÖVP and even Strache tried to imitate Kurz’ political style illuminates the hegemonic status of Kurz’ habitus. Linking the political habitus with hegemonic masculinity has the advantage of being generally recognized, hence, activating the symbolic violence of the gender order. In contrast, the populist strategy of protest masculinity lacks legitimacy.

Second, via the symbolic exaggeration of youth: Kurz’ new team was composed of his friends who were roughly of the same age. In this way, he used his own relatively young age as a symbol of change. Whenever a party colleague criticized Kurz and his government, this was downplayed as the opinion of the old party and taken as a proof of change. This effect was crucial for his populist criticism of the political establishment as it enabled Kurz to criticize the former government although he and his party were part of it.

Third, via women quota: One of the concessions Kurz demanded from the party executive was to introduce a zipper system, alternating men and women on the electoral lists. This strategy gives the conservative party a modernized image in terms of gender because it promotes women in politics. At the same time it obscures the deep structures of male bonds in the political field, as all the members of Kurz’ team were male with a single exception. Moreover, the strategy facilitates symbolic violence because it does not question the doxa of the symbolic gender order and thus supports hegemonic masculinity. Accordingly, the coalition agreement of ÖVP and FPÖ included a phrase claiming to recognize the differences between men and women, which was directed against gender equality policies (Löffler, 2018, p. 125).

Conclusions

The aim of this paper was to present and test a theoretical framework based on the theory of Pierre Bourdieu, which is designed to identify political masculinities in the game of politics on the one hand, characteristics of populist political masculinities on the other. Electoral campaigns are extraordinary periods that highlight the competitive character of politics. Political actors are tempted to deploy their male habitus strategically to trigger symbolic violence that will work in their favor. From this theoretical perspective, populist political masculinity tries to change the political game by breaking some of the tacit rules. Populists claim to be outsiders to the political establishment and enact this claim with use of an atypical political habitus and style. Moreover, the populist claim to know and defend the true interest of ‘the people’ facilitated a masculinist revival in politics by appealing to the popular doxa of natural differences between the sexes. Consequently, to support or at least not to question the heterosexual doxa stabilizes the symbolic violence of the gender order that will automatically work in favor of those who claim virility.

Taking the FPÖ as an example, I showed that populist masculinity was first of all an oppositional political style performing a kind of protest masculinity. Populist political masculinity thus is characterized by aggressive rhetoric, breaking taboos and pushing the boundaries of the politically sayable and thinkable. The FPÖ pursued this strategy especially under the leadership of Strache. This paper also demonstrates that the populist political masculinities of the FPÖ diversified, starting with the presidential campaign of Norbert Hofer. The milder governmental style of populism, however, seems to need an aggressive and provocative complement of gender practices. This makes clear that political masculinities should not only be analyzed with focus on the strategies of distinction that aim at delegitimizing political adversaries, but also with focus on collaboration and interplay between different masculinities.

Finally, this paper could clarify that Sebastian Kurz and his new ÖVP introduced a new style of populism in Austria. The bad manners-style of populism conflicts with both the necessary reputation for holding government office and the popular appeal with the masses to gain votes. Therefore, Kurz adopted a calm, reasonable and clean hands style of populism, and triggered symbolic violence by activating the ideal of the masculine subject who is able to act autonomously and to control the effects of his action. ‘I closed the Balkan route’, was a symbolic means to claim that even in times of globalization and political loss of control, he was able to act and effect change. Kurz’ performance provides the model of a new political habitus, which links hegemonic masculinity with populism and thus rearranges the gender practices of populist political masculinities. Future research will show if this becomes a role model of populists in government or if populism’s success depends on the aggressive and provocative style of rule-breaking political masculinity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Marion Löffler, Dr. Mag., is lecturer in Political Science and Gender Studies at the University of Vienna. Her research focus is on contemporary political theories of state, democracy, and parliamentarism, gender in politics, and political theory in (fictional) literature. Recent publications include: Neutral masculinity: an analysis of parliamentary debates on Austria’s neutrality law, in: Men and Masculinities, 22(3), 2019, pp. 444–464; In Defence of Democracy? Masculinist Reasoning, Homophobia, and the Impossibility of Gender Democracy in Thomas Mann's Mario and the Magician, in: Masculinities a journal of identity and culture 9–10, 2018, pp. 6–29; Jacques Rancière in parliament: practising democracy in plenary debates, in: Parliaments, Estates and Representation 38, 1/2018, pp. 34–48.

ORCID

Marion Löffler http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8876-2584

Notes

1 Armin Thurnher, journalist and former editor of Falter, first coined the term Neofeschist in the 1990s, to point to the phenomenon that the late party leader of the Freedom Party, Jörg Haider, used to recruit smart and young men. Sebastian Kurz resembles this image of a politician.

2 In several speeches and on Kurz’ Facebook site, he and further ÖVP politicians claimed: The parliament dictated. The people will decide! (Das Parlament hat bestimmt. Das Volk wird entscheiden!) Commentators warned against the danger of de-legitimizing the elected parliament (http://falschzitate.blogspot.com/2019/05/das-parlament-hat-bestimmt-das-volk_28.html).

3 Bourdieu alternatively applies the terms symbolic power and symbolic force and often uses these terms synonymously.

4 Connell’s concept of ‘protest masculinity’ describes a collective gender practice which is typical for (working class) boys who experience powerlessness and thus put ‘together a tense, freaky façade, making a claim to power where there are no real resources for power.’ (Dolezal, 1995, p. 111)

5 German nationalist fraternities exclude women and Jews and were traditionally strong in the FPÖ but lost influence during Haider’s leadership, although Haider was a member. Heinz-Christian Strache is also member of a fraternity as well as Norbert Hofer, the new party leader. Moreover, the majority of FPÖ members of parliament and several staff members of FPÖ-headed ministries are members of these fraternities. A research group on student fraternities publishes their political careers online: https://forschungsgruppefipu.wordpress.com/2017/12/20/korporierten-karrieren-tracker/ (22.09.2019)

6 The ÖVP campaign was organized by Philipp Maderthaner’s company which collaborates with Blue State Digital, the campaigning company of Obama.

7 Tal Silberstein, a political advisor who was campaigning for the SPÖ, was arrested in Israel because of money laundering in August 2017. Later, it turned out that Silberstein ran a facebook account directed against Sebastian Kurz which published anti-Semitic posts. Since then, Kurz and his campaign team have been blaming the SPÖ for ‘dirty campaigning’, insinuating that negative campaigning is illegal.

8 The narration of having closed the Balkan route is based on the so-called ‘Western Balkans Conference’, which Kurz and his minister colleagues from the Balkan countries held in Vienna, on 24 February 2016. They agreed on closing the borders to Greece, against the protest of Greece, Germany and the European Commission. Already in January, Kurz stated in an interview that closing the borders will be a dirty job and commented: ‘It won’t work without ugly pictures.’ (Mülherr, 2016). These pictures occurred with subsequent reports about desperate people trying to hand their babies over the barbed wire fence. In March 2016, the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan fixed the so-called EU-Turkey deal which eventually reduced the number of newly arriving refugees. This effect rendered Kurz’ story of his closure of the Balkan route plausible for many voters.

9 Ein Kanzler muss den Mut und den Willen zur Veränderung haben. Das ist das alles Entscheidende. Es gibt in der Politik viele Konzepte, viele Ideen, viele Papiere. Daran hat es nie gemangelt. Aber, was in der Vergangenheit teilweise zu wenig vorhanden war, ist der Wille, die Kraft und die Entschlossenheit diese Dinge am Boden zu bringen und durchzusetzen.