The leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on Tuesday, laying a wreath under the engraved names of towns in Austria from where Jews were expelled by the Nazis.

He said anti-Semitism had no place in his party and urged a common front against Islamists.

Strache’s party, which last year expelled a member of its parliamentary group for anti-Semitic comments, has sought to redress the worst of its past while retaining popular support with outspoken opposition to Muslim migration.

During his visit, Strache kept a Fedora hat firmly on his head as a sign of respect and declined to answer questions. But afterwards he explained why he was visiting Yad Vashem’s Valley of the Communities, where the names of 5,000 towns and cities where Jews once lived are listed on monumental stone walls.

“For us, it’s important to act against anti-Semitism and also against Islamism and terrorism and to discuss the issues we have in common,” he told Reuters by telephone. “Anti-Semitism often emerges anew from Islamism and from the left.”

The Israeli foreign ministry said it had nothing to do with Strache’s visit and the Austrian embassy in Tel Aviv also said it was not involved. Strache said he was invited by Likud, the right-wing party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We have a lot in common,” Strache said of Likud. “I always say, if one defines the Judeo-Christian West, then Israel represents a kind of border. If Israel fails, Europe fails. And if Europe fails, Israel fails.”

Michael Kleiner, a Likud party member and a former lawmaker, confirmed to Israel’s Army Radio that Strache had been invited by his party and said he was a friend of Israel.

RISING FORCE

Strache, 46, is a rising political force in Austria. His the Freedom Party won 20 percent of the vote in the small Alpine republic’s last elections in 2013. In some recent polls its support has been put at as much as 30 percent.

Strache, who failed in a bid to become mayor of Vienna last year, has himself been accused of anti-Semitism in the past.

In 2012, he was vilified over a cartoon posted on his Facebook page that depicted a fat banker with a hooked nose and six-pointed star buttons on his sleeve. The banker was gorging himself at the expense of a thin man representing “the people”.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer called it “the low point of political culture which deserves to be universally and roundly condemned”. Strache denied being anti-Semitic and has since repeatedly denounced anti-Semitism.

The memorial Strache visited on Tuesday is a poignant reminder of the impact of persecution on a race. Asked what thoughts this prompted about the displacement of Muslims, he said the two could not be compared.

“Every time people are driven away from their homes it’s dramatic,” he said, mentioning the threat from Islamic State insurgents in Syria and Iraq. “All of us in the western-liberal, Judeo-Christian community with common values must stand up against this inhumanity.”

 (Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla in Vienna; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt/Mark Heinrich)

Slovakia’s ruling party lost its parliamentary majority, and neo-Nazis gained 8 per cent of the vote in Saturday’s election.

More than 200,000 Slovakians voted for the neo-Nazi People’s Party Our Slovakia (L’SNS). That figure includes 23 per cent of first-time voters. Some of the fourteen elected L’SNS MPs were once monitored by the state. But they are now free to express their views in the National Council.

Marian Kotleba, who leads the L’SNS, gained a parliamentary seat. He was elected governor of the Banská Bystrica Region (BBSK) in 2013. Kotleba’s brother, Martin, also gained a seat in parliament. Natália Grausová, another L’SNS MP has defended the Slovak regime which acted as a Nazi satellite in World War II. The Nazis murdered 75,000 Slovak Jews (around 83 per cent of the pre-war total). Deportations stopped after a Vatican representative intervened. But after the Slovak National Uprising in 1944, the SS took control of the fascist Hlinka Guard militia.

Before taking office, Marian Kotleba fashioned himself in the image of the Hlinka Guard. Mr Kotleba established his first political party Slovenska Pospolitost (Slovak Brotherhood) in 2003. The interior ministry banned it in 2006 for its incitement to racial, national and religious hatred.

To mainstream his image required ditching overt fascism. He replaced it with the mainstream dislike of Slovakia’s isolated Roma minority. Police have arrested Kotleba for inciting racial hatred, but he’s escaped conviction.

The anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric of the ruling Smer-SD party helped Kotleba’s party. As did their hostility towards the Roma – securing votes in deprived areas with large Roma communities.

An English-language manifesto rejects EU membership and NATO. The L’SNS wants to form domestic militia groups and allow citizens to own guns. Their populist electoral rhetoric spoke of ‘banishing thieves’ from parliament and supporting ‘white’ families. A focus on Christian identity helps the party externalise Muslims as a threat.

At times, the personality cult around Marian Kotleba overrides that of other party members. Kotleba’s own rhetoric makes clear that the L’SNS seeks to ‘protect our homeland from thieves’. Externalising threats allows them to romanticise the fascism of Jozef Tiso’s Nazi satellite state.

The shift towards neo-Nazi, extremist and nationalist parties is a growing trend in parts of Europe. Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) mirrors the creeping illiberal attitudes of Orban’s Hungary. In Denmark, the People’s Party are the second-largest party in parliament. Polling data put the Sweden Democrats at their highest projected share of the electoral vote at 19.9 per cent. A Median poll put the antisemitic and Islamophobic Jobbik as Hungary’s second-strongest political party at 21 per cent.

Austria’s Freedom Party and Italy’s Lega Nord continue to gain support in opinion polls. In spite of its failures in the final rounds of local elections, the Front National made historic gains in the first-round. This surge owes to their ability to exploit societal anxieties and anger directed at the EU, Muslims and refugees.

The fracturing of Slovakia’s political scene presents a challenge for Mr Fico to form a ruling majority. The surge in support for neo-Nazis caught many pundits off-guard. Other politicians condemned Kotleba’s party. But this only serves to foster their sense of self-victimisation and racist populism.

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