This paper explores the convergences between 'popular' and 'populist' engagements with the past by critically investigating representations of World War II in Austria. Drawing on oral history interviews with members of the Austrian majority population, it asks how 'traditional' and 'popular' memory frames have in recent years come to be mobilised by the Austrian populist right and what the implications of this process are for broader memory culture.
Since the 1980s, dominant memory frames across Europe have shifted towards a greater representation of the experiences of historical victims, influenced by developments in transnational, national and local arenas. In Austria, these shifts have particularly informed how the Second World War is remembered, with a focus on Holocaust commemoration over the previously hegemonic remembrance of 'all Austrians' as war victims. Yet, such 'traditional' memory frames continue to hold an important function in some local, family and personal memories. In this context, in the first part of the paper, I draw upon oral history interviews with members of the Austrian majority population who were socialised in such 'traditional' memory cultures. I consider in particular how many of them composed their own and/or their family's life stories in a passive tone, devoid of agency and disconnected from the National Socialist system, whose crimes were deflected to abstract figures of 'the Nazis'.
In the second part of the paper, I explore these personal memory narratives in conversation with the discourses circulated by the contemporary populist right. In their 'populist' memory politics, the far-right Freedom Party mobilises a similar disconnect and adapts these representations as memories of 'the people'. Thus, the party has been perpetuating notions of universal Austrian 'victimhood' typical to 'traditional' and/or 'popular' representations of the past, whilst also beginning to accept mainstream Holocaust memory culture, at least publicly, due to the shifts in dominant memory frames. These contradictory positions became particularly evident in their commitment to build a contested Trümmerfrauen ("rubble women") memorial and a Shoah memorial, both – as in 'popular' representations of the past – portrayed as disconnected from one another as personal involvement (and hence responsibility) remains abstract and intangible.
This political mobilisation of such disconnect perpetuates the erasure of minority communities and their historical experiences as part of society as they are excluded from the dominant 'mnemonic community' and any connection between them is erased. Furthermore, this exclusion through silence/disconnect/abstraction bolsters right-wing populist politics that purport exclusive and essentialist notions of 'the people', which include only the majority population but no (historical) minorities into this 'Austrian' collective. Linkages of such 'populist' memory politics to 'popular' memories ease their resonance as they appear as less abstract and more immediate 'common sense' imaginaries of 'the people', although this does not mean that everyone who shares such 'passive' stories in private supports them.
While this paper specifically considers the convergences between 'popular' and 'populist' engagements with the past in Austria, it ultimately offers broader insights into the ways in which right-wing populisms are entangled with and mobilise 'popular memories' through their memory politics.
