The leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, founded by ex-Nazis after World War II, made two notable trips after the country’s recent elections. As the New York Times reported , one trip was to Moscow, where the party’s leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, signed a “cooperation agreement” with Vladimir Putin’s political party.The other trip was to Trump Tower in New York, where Strache met with Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s choice to be the next White House National Security Advisor.The Huffington Post highlighted the unsettling nature of these connections.

Although the Times story focused on the Russia pact, the Flynn-Strache meeting is at least as significant. Austrians’ support for far-right parties has increased significantly over the past 15 years. Strache’s Freedom Party received 35 percent of the vote in this year’s parliamentary elections and narrowly lost the race for Austria’s ceremonial presidency earlier this month.



“This is not just any opposition party: It is one with Nazi sympathies,” said Daniel Serwer, a former state department official who’s now a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. “Nor is Flynn any national security adviser. He is a documented conspiracy propagator….”