Lecture at CEU on “The Third Camp” and Its Relevance to the FPÖ

On November 14, 2024, the Central European University organised a workshop on Illiberalism and Populism (from a historical perspective). The workshop in Budapest was part of the EU-funded research program “AUTHLIB – Neo-Authoritarianism in Europe and the Liberal Democratic Response”. This program is a joint project of the Central European University (Vienna/Budapest), Charles University (Prague), the German Marshall Fund (Berlin), Sciences Po (Paris), the Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence), SWPS University (Warsaw), the University of Oxford, and the University of Vienna.

Péter Techet, from the UWK-project “European Dis/Orders”, was also invited as speaker. In his lecture, Techet discussed the “German-national” tradition, i.e., the so-called “third camp” in Austrian politics, as an intersection of liberal ideas and illiberal practices.

He analysed the origins and ideology of the “third camp” during the Habsburg Monarchy and the First Republic, as well as its transformations in the Second Republic. In doing so, he examined how the FPÖ (Freedom Party of Austria) adhered to German-nationalist positions until the 1990s and whether, or how, this ideology persists in the contemporary FPÖ.

The workshop program is available here: https://events.ceu.edu/2024-11-14/comparing-illiberal-legacies-and-ideological-morphologies-authlib-workshop-and-book