A Russia Scandal Even Populists Couldn’t Stomach
In a sting video, the head of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party is seen soliciting illegal donations from a Russian billionaire.
For the past 18 months, Sebastian Kurz, the 32-year-old chancellor of Austria, has led a coalition between his center-right People’s Party and Heinz-Christian Strache’s far-right Freedom Party. From its inception, his government was rocked by scandal: The police carried out an astonishing raid on an intelligence bureau that was in charge of spying on far-right extremists, and had in the past uncovered links between neo-Nazis and some of Strache’s colleagues. A state senator for the Freedom Party, reporters revealed, once belonged to a fraternity that openly glorified the Third Reich. (“At that point, the Jew Ben Gurion came into their midst,” go the lyrics for one of the fraternity’s songs, “and said: ‘Step on the gas, ye
