RUTHFULLY YOURS

Suntinger, a member of the FPÖ, proudly claims to have once stood atop the Grossglockner, Austria’s highest peak, together with the late FPÖ leader Jörg Haider, who died in late night car crash in 2008. He tells the story as though it were a religious experience.

Suntinger is a farmer, a mountaineer and the father of two. In the last municipal elections in 2015, he was elected with around 80 percent of the vote. There was no other candidate.

His lecture on the state of the world begins. “Essential to the Koran is that the woman is a subject — and that in the 21st century,” he says, before reading out suras pertaining to sexuality and identifying women as a “place of sowing of seed.””The Koran sees only dead Christians as good Christians,” he says. Europe only makes sense, he goes on, “if it focuses on preventing the Islamization.”

He then presses his index finger onto the identification photo of one of the Syrian women. He says: “That is supposed to be the mother.” Impossible, he says, the children are much too old.

“The West is colliding with the East!” Suntinger calls out. “The people have to wake up!”

By that point, his presentation was only 10 minutes old.

The economy of the Möll Valley was long dependent on mining and agriculture, but is now trying to attract tourists — foreigners with money — as well. As part of that effort, Suntinger has overseen the several-million-euro construction of a new recreation park, complete with a hall where you can shoot at virtual deer. “It’s a big hit,” says Suntinger. “Because of the overpopulation of foreigners, many more people have weapons here.”

When Suntinger says foreigner overpopulation, he means migrants — and he would like to keep them away. Because as the FPÖ says: “Protect the homeland from Islam.”

Mountains and Cows

One year ago, someone from the Netherlands, who owns an empty pension in the municipality, wanted to provide shelter to 29 refugees, but the town was able to prevent it. The vote in the municipal council was 14 to one against the foreigners. Not only that, but someone threw a firework onto the pension’s terrace and the Dutchman’s hearing was damaged in the explosion. He then sold the place and moved away.

Now, a seven-member Syrian family lives in a former rectory on the hill above town and they generally stay out of sight: Fatima, Madiha, Mohamed, Amina, Anes, Boshra and Bashar, from Damascus. They have learned a bit of German, with their first words being “excuse me,” “mountains,” and “cows.” “It is beautiful here,” says Fatima up in the rectory. “But so quiet.”

Down below, in the parish hall, Suntinger says: “Islamization is the great danger.”

That things will improve and remain the way they always were, that was the promise made by Jörg Haider back when he was governor of Carinthia, the state in which Grosskirchheim is located. “Jörg dares to do things” was once Haider’s campaign slogan, a perfect slogan for a populist. He came from Carinthia and used it as the base for his climb to the chairmanship of the FPÖ, transforming it into the state’s most powerful political party by 1999. It was also here, in 1991, that he praised the “Third Reich” for its “decent job creation policies.”

Haider drove the state of Carinthia to ruins and led his party into several scandals, but nevertheless brought the FPÖ a measure of acceptance. After Haider died in the 2008 traffic accident, almost 30,000 people showed up to his funeral in Klagenfurt. His charisma still holds sway in the Möll Valley.

He was a master at winning people over, many in Grosskirchheim still say today. Others note he was a great friend and keen observer of human nature. He wasn’t shy about becoming one with the people, they say.

It has now been 30 years ago since Haider ended up at the top of the FPÖ, the party that was founded 60 years ago, initially providing a political home mostly to members of the country’s far-right fraternities, known as Burschenschaften, and to ex-Nazis — though many of them also joined the SPÖ and ÖVP.