Opinion | In Austria, a Tawdry Tale of the Far-Right’s Dalliance With Russia

Proponents of liberal democracy may be forgiven a measure of glee in the fall of Austria’s far-right vice chancellor, which has thrown the government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz into chaos and forced early elections. Heinz-Christian Strache, the vice chancellor and head of the far-right Freedom Party, had long projected himself as the scourge of dirty politics, and here he was on a secretly filmed video making all sorts of shady offers to a woman posing as the relative of a Russian oligarch.

Der Spiegel, one of two German publications that obtained the video and reported its content, said it was a setup. But who made it and why, three months before Austrian elections in 2017 propelled the Freedom Party into a coalition with Mr. Kurz’s conservative Austrian People’s Party and Mr. Strache into the vice chancellor’s office, has not been disclosed. Nor is it clear why it was made public at this time, unless it was because the Freedom Party is one of Europe’s far-right parties expected to make strong gains in this week’s elections to the European Parliament.

Whatever the back story, the video is a devastating insight into the far right, its tactics and its curious enchantment with Russia. Over seven boozy hours in a pricey villa in Ibiza, Mr. Strache and another Freedom Party politician are seen offering the purportedly Russian woman, who says she is looking to invest 250 million euros, lucrative government contracts in exchange for donations or politically motivated investments.

Mr. Strache tries to persuade the woman to buy discreetly into Austria’s largest tabloid, Kronen Zeitung, and use it to advance the Freedom Party. “We want to build a media landscape like Orban did,” Mr. Strache says, referring to the way allies of Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, have bought up Hungarian news outlets.