Millenarianism in Josef Haslinger's novel Opernball

Josef Haslinger's novel Opernball, first published in 1995, represents a fictitious toxic gas attack on the guests attending the Viennese Opera Ball. The novel engages millennial thinking and reaches a climax in the idea of an Armageddon, which corresponds loosely to the Book of Revelations. A terrorist group, guided by a charismatic leader who aligns himself with the traitor Judas Ischariot, claims to derive its legitimacy from the study of historical millenarianism as well as White Supremacist thinking. The aim of the group's action is the realization of an anti-migrant, xenophobic extreme right-wing political regime in Austria.