‘Deal with the Devil’: Austrian Serbs Embrace Anti-Migrant Right

Even in Austria, Serbs felt like outcasts, Markovic said. "No politician would publicly support the Serbs."

That is, until Heinz-Christian Strache's far-right Freedom Party made an unlikely play for the votes of the second largest national minority in Austria.

For a good word, "Serbs will offer their hand in return," Markovic told BIRN. "We love hard and hate hard. That's the way we are."

In 2006, Markovic joined Strache's FPO and became a member of the Vienna city assembly.

It was the start of an alliance that has grown - an anti-migration party seeking votes among white, Christian migrants and refugees, while railing against the mainly Muslim migrants and refugees reaching Europe's shores from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

"Austria is a small country and has to protect its people and their workers - us, foreigners who have lived and worked in Austria for 30, 40 years," said Austrian Serb retiree Zivorad Brankovic.

"What would it look like if they wanted to let in all the migrants who want to come here? I think they're right to stop receiving migrants and saying, 'we can't take any more of them'."

New elections

An election poster of Norbert Hofer, leader of the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPOe). Photo: EPA-EFE/CHRISTIAN BRUNA

Austria holds a parliamentary election on September 29, triggered by the collapse of the coalition government between Strache's FPO and the larger centre-right Austrian People's Party.

The alliance took power in 2017 but crumbled in May this year after a video surfaced appearing to show Strache, in an Ibiza hotel, offering public contracts to a fake Russian donor in return for campaign help for the FPO. Strache resigned as vice-chancellor and FPO...