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.
