The ex-FPÖ leader is again on the political stage for the “Allianz für Österreich”. In a black turtleneck. And he enjoys it.
Jean-Paul Sartre wrote “Being and Nothing”. Put flat on the appearance of Heinz-Christian Strache at the New Year’s meeting of the “Alliance for Austria” founded for him, one could say: Heinz-Christian Strache can only be a politician. Otherwise he is measured by his return speech in the Viennese sofa halls in front of a cheering audience, nothing. “The HC is alive again!” Someone shouts during the speech. Strache lives when he is a politician.
The former FPÖ leader might not have been clearly believed to be close to existentialism. On Thursday evening he appealed to it clearly, at least visually: black turtleneck sweater under a black jacket, the uniform of every existentialist who is self-respecting; in terms of content, he conjured up being human. His talks that evening in the finca in Ibiza – a mistake that people, as they are, made. And people would also forgive, Strache immediately forwarded. Who doesn’t? There was applause for that.
Somewhere Strache must have misunderstood Sartre. Where Sartre argues that people have to take responsibility for their actions, Strache continues to speak of “private” statements, of video traps, of a large-scale plot against him. Does this look like responsibility, first for yourself, ultimately for others? Does this look like someone who wants to become Vienna’s mayor?
Strache clearly sees himself as a fallen hero of Ibiza, who, with the help of his “three musketeers” – the “Alliance for Austria” with politicians Karl Baron, Dietrich Kops and Klaus Handler – must return to where he was before he left talked himself out in Ibiza. He conjures up his time as a turquoise-blue Vice Chancellor, summons the “old” FPÖ: “I was the FPÖ for 14 years,” he says in Vienna. The FPÖ without him? Nothing. What comes now needs people “from the people”, not functionaries, he forwards – maybe musketeers instead, one would like to add.
Being and nothing. Fred Sinowatz once said: “Without the party, I am nothing.” Strache would reverse that: without him, the party is nothing. Neither the FPÖ nor the “Alliance for Austria”.
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