Austria’s right-wing presidential hope says disputed book OK

VIENNA – The right-wing candidate for Austrian president is standing by a book he published that endorsed arcane gender roles and warns that foreigners will destroy the country.

But in a television interview to be broadcast Monday, Norbert Hofer acknowledges that “some passages” in the book — “For a Free Austria” — are “a mistake.”

Written by a fellow Freedom Party member, the book warns that immigration will result in a “violent process of displacement in which we invite those after our scalps to accomplish this from the inside like a wasp larvae that slowly devours the grub.”

It also says men yearn for women whose “brood-care instinct exceeds imposed ambitions of self-realization.”

Hofer said he’s not a right-wing extremist and that he hates National Socialism.