Austrian Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache | Michael Gruber/Getty Images Austrian vice chancellor says party will fight ‘population exchange’ Far-right leader Heinz-Christian Strache defends party ahead of European election.

Austrian Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache said his far-right party is fighting against what he called a "population exchange" due to immigration — a term often used by the extreme right.

"We continue to pursue the path for our homeland Austria, the fight against a population exchange, as people expect from us," Strache said in an interview with the Austrian newspaper Krone published Sunday.

The theory often spread by the extreme right that Europe's white population is being supplanted by Muslim immigrants has been dismissed by academic scholars, who say it is based on distorted facts.

When the interviewer pointed out to Strache that the term "population exchange" is used by the extreme right, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader said it's a "term of reality."

At the height of the refugee crisis in 2015, Austria took in approximately 88,000 asylum seekers, or roughly 1 percent of its population, most of them fleeing war in Syria or conflicts and poverty in Africa. Some 10 percent of them were unaccompanied minors, according to official Austrian statistics.

Since then, the numbers of new asylum seekers have plummeted as countries have shut down the main routes used by refugees and migrants.

But Strache wants to revive the debate ahead of the European election.

"We do not want to become a minority in our own homeland. That is legitimate and honest and deeply democratic," Strache said. "Whoever is not left-wing today is automatically vilified as extreme right. Only when someone tries to implement their political goals through violence is that right-wing extremism, which of course has no place in a democracy."

Strache's party faced a backlash recently after a local branch published a poem comparing humans to rats, which Chancellor Sebastian Kurz slammed as "deeply racist" and many criticized as anti-migrant.

Despite the recent criticism of the party's stance on immigration, Strache urged people to vote for the FPÖ in the upcoming European Parliament election in order to "vote out the irresponsible open-arms culture of [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel, [French President] Emmanuel Macron and [Commission President] Jean-Claude Juncker."