The wiry, bespectacled man in the down vest, looking like an amiable ski instructor, beams on stage as the crowd chants “Herbert! Herbert! Herbert!”, waving hundreds of Austrian flags. Just after sunset behind the soaring spire of Vienna’s St Stephen’s Cathedral, Austria’s far-right leader Herbert Kickl tells voters they have the chance with Sunday’s potentially watershed national election to “take our country back”.
“Five good years,” Kickl promised the audience, with polls showing that his pro-Kremlin, anti-migration Freedom party (FPÖ) could for the first time win the most votes. “Volkskanzler!” supporters shout, using the “people’s chancellor” moniker once used to describe the Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, which Kickl has also come to embrace.
