Songs of tractors and submission: on the assembled politicity of popular music and far-right populism in Austria

Abstract

Our article addresses the connection between popular music and far-right populism, as exemplified by the Freedom Party of Austria (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ). We discuss the specific mainstreaming and normalizing potential of popular music for far-right populist politics, by means of songs that do not qualify as political or politicized music in the sense of carrying a clear political message. We introduce a multi-step methodology that addresses performative aspects of actual situations of reception (fieldwork) and in-depth analyses of the music and its affordances (group analysis). Based on this approach, we argue that these ambivalent, sometimes even contradictory musical performances take on a life of their own within a specific arrangement that we will term an assembled politicity, in the sense of a political potential activated through situational arrangements. In this way, the FPÖ's musical programme affords far-right populist interpretations through music that appears to be unsuspicious.

Evading National Identity: On Translocal Irish Folk Music in Austria

“…In 2016, the AfD’s former leader, Frauke Petry, had heavily criticised German ex-chancellor Angela Merkel’s Willkommenskultur (“welcome culture”) during the so-called refugee crisis for bypassing a long-overdue confrontation of Germany’s own cultural identity crisis and the ongoing tabooing of national pride, as inextricably linked to the crimes of the Nazi past (Schiller 2020:262). In the case of Austria’s FPÖ, the party’s antiestablishment rhetoric is directed against the elites and, in light of increased migration, also against immigrants and ethnic minorities (Doehring and Ginkel 2022:355). Interestingly, although most songs performed at FPÖ campaign events convey no obvious political message, the most frequently occurring embedding of folksy schlager music and nostalgic songs about a Heimat tethered to the Alpine regions does create particular “situational arrangements” out of which political right-wing ideas can potentially emerge (ibid.:366).…”

“…Furthermore, I suggest that these Austrian imaginaries of Irishness attain added currency because artists and audiences frequently encounter them through the affectively immediate expressive channels of music and song, as opposed to top-down intellectual discourse. Finally, in the current Austrian moment of far-right FPÖ campaign events, at which overt political statements are evaded, yet somehow embedded in a sonic scaffold of nostalgic, folksy schlager music (Doehring and Ginkel 2022), it is this crucial intersection between musical practice and discourse that also accomplishes something else. In keeping with Bohlman (2011:5), this recursive relationship between practice and imaginaries among Austrian folk-music practitioners and their audiences renders audible music’s extraordinary capacity to sound the nation from multiple angles, whether in past, present, or sideways guises.…”