Every last Saturday of the month, a special event is held in Graz, organised by the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ). Its supporters gather in their Volkshaus, or people’s house, to bake Neapolitan pizza. It also has a telling name – pizza comunista. They hand it out for free.
The project also has a deeper dimension. It is just one of the activities through which the communists show that they are close to ordinary people.
The KPÖ’s win in Graz in the 2021 local elections was a surprise, and a repeat happened in June.
“They present themselves as something new and different from the established parties. I know it sounds strange, but yes, it is possible,” Katrin Praprotnik, a political scientist at the Institute of Public Law and Political Science at the University of Graz, told Denník N.
In Austria and the federal province of Styria where Graz is located, the KPÖ has created a red island in a sea of far-right populists. Analysts say that the KPÖ has pushed its own left-wing populism.
Communism with a human face?
The city, home to 303,000 inhabitants and Austria’s second-largest, has two nicknames in the local press – Leningraz and Stalingraz.
When an event organised by the communist party takes place in the city, it is not unusual to see plastic cups decorated with the hammer and sickle.
KPÖ owes much of its success in Graz to its local leader, Elke Kahr. The daily Presse, which targets a more right-leaning urban readership, called her “perhaps the friendliest face of communism”.
Kahr often sits in the common room of the people’s house at a small table where she holds her “consultation hours”. In front of her are a cup of coffee, ashtrays and a pack of Parisienne cigarettes, which she repeatedly reaches for.
Her success has also attracted foreign media. Ahead of the elections, the German weekly Spiegel and the daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung both ran feature…