The far-right deputy mayor of the Austrian town in which Adolf Hitler was born has caused a political storm in his home country after writing a poem that compared migrants to rats.
Christian Schilcher, who represents Braunau am Inn, is to resign from his party after the work attracted the criticism from the country’s chancellor and opposition politicians.
Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache said Mr Schilcher would leave the anti-migration FPOe "to prevent damage to the party” and that the poem was not in line with the party’s principles.
The work, “The Town Rat” appeared in a magazine published by the local branch of the party. The poem emphasised against mixing cultures. Mr Schilcher says he meant to be provocative but did not intend to hurt anyone with the poem.
The Freedom Party is the junior governing partner in the Austrian government; it is in coalition with the conservative OeVP group.
Sebastian Kurz, the chancellor and leader of the OeVPR, had demanded on Monday that the FPOe distance itself from the poem. He said that “the choice of words is abhorrent, inhuman and deeply racist”.
Erwin Schreiner, a top official in the Freedom Party’s local branch said: "The allegory of rat and human is historically loaded, and so tasteless and to be rejected".
Mr Schreiner said the fact that the author himself wrote from the perspective of a rat “doesn't make things significantly better”.
But he added that the poem was “ultimately a failed attempt to address a serious issue in verse form”.
The poem said that “just as we live down here, other rats who [came] as guests or migrants, including the ones we didn't know, must share our way of life! Or get out of here fast!”
Austria’s FPOe was founded by former SS officers and is no stranger to controversy because of its anti-immigrant politics. It won 26 per cent of the vote in the 2017 Austrian legislative elections, and came close to winning the presidency in 2016.
