Herbert Kickl

Herbert Kickl (born 19 October 1968) is an Austrian politician who has been leader of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) since June 2021.

He did his military service with the mountain troops as a one-year volunteer from 1987 to 1988.

He then began studying journalism and political science at the University of Vienna, and from 1989, philosophy and history.

He did not complete either degree.

Between 1995 and 2001, Kickl worked for the FPÖ's party academy in the area of campaign strategy and content, rising to deputy executive director in 2001.

Kickl rose to prominence as a campaign director for the FPÖ and speechwriter for Jörg Haider during the 2000s.

After the Knittelfeld Putsch in 2002, he became executive director, a position he held until 2006.

In this capacity, he was a speechwriter for long-time FPÖ leader Jörg Haider.

After the party split in 2005, he became general-secretary and one of its key leaders.

After Haider left the party in 2005 and launched the Alliance for the Future of Austria, Kickl remained with FPÖ and became one of his harshest critics.

He was elected to the National Council in 2006 and served as deputy chair of the FPÖ parliamentary faction.

Among other things, he wrote inflammatory statements about French president Jacques Chirac and Jewish Community of Vienna president Ariel Muzicant, and was responsible for controversial campaign slogans such as the 2010 Viennese state election slogan "Viennese blood - too much foreign is not good for anyone."

From 2016 to 2021, he was president of the FPÖ Education Institute.

He previously served as Minister of the Interior from 2017 to 2019 and general-secretary of the FPÖ from 2005 to 2018.

In 2017, he was appointed federal Minister of the Interior in the first Kurz government.

After the 2017 Austrian legislative election, the FPÖ joined the federal government as a junior partner to the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP).

Kickl was sworn in as Federal Minister of the Interior on 17 December.

In this capacity, he suffered from a number of scandals.

He was accused of failing to take serious responsibility as a minister, instead acting as if he were still in the opposition, as well as misusing his office and fostering a development away from liberal democracy and the rule of law.

In the aftermath, Kickl was elected general-secretary of the FPÖ and director of the party newspaper Neue Freie Zeitung, positions which he held until 2018 and 2017 respectively.

As general-secretary he was responsible for public relations and internal communication, and was considered the chief strategist of the FPÖ and the "right-hand man" of leader Heinz-Christian Strache.

In a press conference on 11 January 2018, Kickl said he wanted "services centres and infrastructure that would allow the authorities to concentrate asylum seekers in one place", which was widely interpreted as an allusion to concentration camps, though he denied that the phrasing was intentional or that he sought to be provocative.

In March 2018, Kickl suspended Peter Gridling, head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (BVT), and ordered raids against its offices and the homes of a number of staff, seizing nineteen gigabytes of data.

Kickl claimed that his actions were necessitated by Gridling and the agency's failure to delete sensitive data.

His actions were criticised by opposition politicians, who accused him of seeking to undermine the independence of the BVT to protect right-wing extremist groups close to the FPÖ.

President of Austria Alexander Van der Bellen described the events as "extremely unusual and disconcerting".

Government spokesman for security Werner Amon stated that the interior ministry had failed to work through the proper channels, and that unprompted searches of staff members' homes was not normal procedure.

Kickl was criticised in September 2018 after an email addressed to the police by his ministerial spokesman surfaced recommending that they limit contact with critical media outlets to a bare minimum.

This prompted criticism from Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who condemned "any restriction of freedom of the press".

Kickl stated he did not approve of the email's content, and the FPÖ accused the media of conducting a coordinated witch hunt against him.

Kickl has also been accused of wielding the police for political purposes, lodging legal complaints against individuals and journalists who write negatively about him.

He was dismissed from office in May 2019 in the wake of the Ibiza affair, though he was not personally implicated.

He returned to the National Council, where he has been leader of the FPÖ faction since 2019.

In 2021, Der Standard characterised Kickl as a far-right politician.

Kickl grew up in a working-class family and attended primary school in Radenthein.

He graduated high school in Spittal an der Drau alongside future Greens leader Eva Glawischnig.

In January 2019, Kickl voiced his demand for faster deportation of refugees who had committed crimes, stating that deportation should be possible immediately after conviction, before full legal process has been completed.

He later corrected his position, stating that the full legal process should be carried out before deportation, but further said: "I believe that it is up to the law to follow politics, and not for politics to follow the law."

He questioned the necessity of human rights agreements, including the European Convention on Human Rights, claiming that they "prevent us from doing what is necessary".

He received widespread criticism for his statements which were perceived as an attack against the rule of law, including from ÖVP members of the government, President Van der Bellen, various judges' and lawyers' associations, and president of the Jewish Community of Vienna Oskar Deutsch.