Stakeholders of (De-) Radicalisation in Austria

Violent extremism and terrorist attacks have been rare in Austria particularly compared to other countries. Nonetheless, certain tendencies towards radicalisation andalienation have been increasing and observable in recent years. The first Jihadist terror attack in Vienna in November 2020 was exceptional and a caesura in acountry with a very low number of casualties related to extremism. Still, hate speech and anti-Muslim as well as anti-immigrant sentiments are rather pronouncedand, in recent years, new kinds and unseen levels of hatred in the far-right spectrum were directed primarily at Austria’s Muslims and at refugees. This can be relatedto anti-Muslim discourses across the globe that gained strength in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the political repercussions of the summer ofmigration in 2015. Populist rhetoric by the political elite, most notably the Austrian Freedom Party and the Austrian People’s Party, is steering this process. A widerange of de-radicalization programmes aims at tackling the issue of radicalization in bottom-up and top-down approaches with a strong networking component.&nbsp