Politicizing Islam in Austria. On Far-Right Success in the Twenty-First Century
About the Event
This talk discusses how the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) adapted anti-Muslim discourse to their political purposes and how that discourse was then appropriated by the conservative center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) to explain the anti-Muslim swerve in Austrian politics, preparing the way for a right-wing coalition government between conservatives and far-right actors that would subsequently institutionalize anti-Muslim political demands and change the shape of the civic conditions and public perceptions of Islam and the Muslim community in a country that had has stood out for its longstanding state recognition of the Muslim community as early as 1912.
About the Speaker
Since 2021, Farid Hafez has been the Class of 1955 Distinguished Visiting Professor of International Studies at Williams College. He is a political scientist, who studied in Vienna and worked at the University of Salzburg from 2014 to 2021. Hafez has more than 150 academic publications.