The number of right-wing extremist crimes in Austria rose by 44 percent in the first half of 2024 – and Upper Austria has traditionally led the way compared to the federal states. A national action plan against right-wing extremism, which has been planned since 2016, is still a long time coming.
The Austrian Mauthausen Committee (MKÖ) and Antifa recently issued an urgent appeal to the responsible chief negotiators of the proposed federal government, Christian Stocker (ÖVP), Philip Kucher (SPÖ) and Stephanie Krisper (Neos): the “long-awaited” National Action Plan against right-wing extremism must be anchored in the government program and then developed quickly with the involvement of civil society.
Decided more than three years ago
“Such a plan was already promised in 2016 by then Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka,” recalls MKÖ chairman Willi Mernyi. In June 2021, the National Council – with the exception of the FPÖ votes – decided on the corresponding action plan. “But the Ministry of the Interior ignored this decision until the end of the last legislature,” Mernyi said.
556 right-wing extremist acts in six months
The demand has a justified background: according to the Ministry of the Interior, right-wing extremist crimes have increased by 30 percent between 2022 and 2023. In the first six months of this year, the number shot up 44 percent to 556 compared to the first half of 2023. 403 people were reported for crimes including Nazi reactivation, Holocaust denial and incitement, including 350 men and 53 women .
Concentration camp memorial vandalized dozens of times
In this statistic, Upper Austria ranks second in a federal state comparison with 125 crimes, after Vienna (136). “The neo-Nazis have mainly targeted the Mauthausen concentration camp monument, which was desecrated a total of 38 times between 2013 and the end of 2023. None of these crimes could be solved,” Antifa spokesman Robert Eiter criticized.
The requirement is that a new federal government must respond to this and implement the action plan – coordinated with the existing national strategy against anti-Semitism and deradicalization.
Source: Krone
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