Heinz-Christian Strache is an Austrian politician and dental technician who served as Vice-Chancellor of Austria from 2017 to 2019 before resigning for treasonous behavior. He was also Minister of Civil Service and Sports from January 2018 to May 2019 and chairman of the Freedom Party from April 2005 to May 2019. He previously served as a member of the National Council from October 2006 until December 2017 and as a member of the municipal council and state legislature of Vienna. In May 2019, footage from 2017 was released showing Strache suggesting he could offer business contracts in exchange for political support from a woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch. The video also shows his ideas about turning the country's largest-circulation tabloid, the Kronen Zeitung, into a mouthpiece of the FPÖ. On 18 May 2019, in the wake of the Ibiza affair, Strache announced his resignation as vice-chancellor of Austria, minister, and chairman of the Freedom Party. On 1 October 2019, Strache announced that he was retiring from politics and suspending his membership in the Freedom Party. Before the Freedom Party revoked his rights to supervise his page, Strache had almost 800,000 Facebook followers, equivalent to about 10% of Austria’s population.
Rise to national party leader
Strache, who is by profession a dental technician, has been active in the politics of Vienna since 1991. He was elected to the Vienna Parliament in 2001. In 2004, he replaced Hilmar Kabas as the leader of the FPÖ in Vienna. He had been considered a disciple of long-time national party leader Jörg Haider, but began to oppose him as the result of increased strife within the party in January 2005. After a series of losses in state elections, rumours spread that Strache would run for the office of national party leader against Haider's sister, Ursula Haubner. The high risk of Haubner's defeat was probably one of the events that induced Haider to set up a new party, the Alliance for the Future of Austria. After the split, Strache was elected national party leader of the FPÖ on 23 April 2005.
State elections and campaign in Vienna
Since the split, Strache has led the party further to the right. The FPÖ's results in state elections in the last decade have been mixed. While it dropped out of the StyriaLandtag and was reduced to 5.7% in Burgenland, it surpassed expectations in the Vienna elections of October 2005. Strache himself was the leading candidate in Vienna, and the party received 14.9% of votes. Strache's campaign, included slogans such as:
Wien darf nicht Istanbul werden. A variation on an FPÖ slogan from the Haider era: Wien darf nicht Chicago werden. Vienna has a significant Turkish minority, the FPÖ is opposed to Turkish EU membership and it refers to the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Vienna in 1683, a symbolic historic victory of the West over Islamic and Ottoman onslaught.
In January 2007, stills taken from a video shot in the late 1980s were published showing a uniformed Strache allegedly participating in paramilitary training activities. Other people on the pictures were claimed to be known neo-Nazis. Strache has denied the allegations, stating the pictures are of him playing paintball as an 18-year old. In his initial reaction, Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer referred to the incident as a "folly of youth". At the end of January, further pictures were published, allegedly showing Strache performing a Nazi salute. Strache denied the allegations prior to publication of the pictures. After publication, Strache argued that the picture showed him ordering three beers and was not a Nazi salute. Austrian Jewish community leaders criticized the government for its lack of response.
2010 Vienna elections
In the 2010 Vienna elections for Mayor of Vienna, Vienna City Council, and district councils, Strache's party received 26% of the vote and increased their number of seats in the city council to 27. His support was strongest among young people under 30. The campaign included slogans such as:
Zu viel Fremdes tut niemandem gut.
Wir bewahren unsere Heimatstadt. Die SPÖ macht sie uns fremd.
Wir glauben an unsere Jugend. Die SPÖ an Zuwanderung.
Wir schützen freie Frauen. Die SPÖ den Kopftuchzwang
Strache was once again accused of xenophobia during his campaign and responded formally in the press to the allegations. In August 2012, Strache caused condemnation and outrage when posting a picture on Facebook that was a caricature depicting a banker with a hooked nose and Star of David cufflinks.
Strache campaigned for the FPÖ in the lead up to 2019 European Parliament election in Austria. In what The Guardian described as "doubling down" on rhetoric ahead of the election, Strache endorsed the far-right conspiracy of the great replacement. He claimed that "population replacement" was real, adding: "We don’t want to become a minority in our own country".
On 17 May 2019 a video was released from a July 2017 meeting in Ibiza, Spain, appearing to show Strache and Johann Gudenus discussing underhanded political practices. In the video, both politicians appeared receptive to proposals by a mysterious woman posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch Igor Makarov, discussing providing the FPÖ positive news coveragein return for business contracts. Strache and Gudenus also hinted at corrupt political practices involving other wealthy donors to the FPÖ in Europe and elsewhere. The scandal caused the collapse of the Austrian governing coalition and the announcement of a snap election. Strache is currently under investigation for misuse of party funds. Strache was expelled from the FPÖ in December 2019 for his role in the scandal.
Relationship with Trump administration
Strache flew to New York shortly after the election of Donald Trump in December 2016 to meet with Michael Flynn at the Trump Tower. Flynn had just helped lead the effort to elect Trump and served as his National Security Advisor for 24 days in January through February 2017. Also in November, Austrian far-right politicians Norbert Hofer and Strache went to Russia in order to become go-betweens to facilitate cooperation between Putin and Trump. While in Moscow, the Freedom Party concluded a "working agreement" with Putin's United Russia Party. Flynn later resigned after information surfaced that he had misled the FBI and Vice President Mike Pence about the nature and content of his communications with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.
