History haunts Austria

Europe Business Review, March, 2000

In the square in Vienna where their grandparents welcomed Hitler, Austrians have been protesting against a politician named Haider who reminds Europe of the depths of the last century.

Jorg Haider is the star of the populist Freedom Party, the first far-right group to help form a coalition government in Europe since the Hitler era.

Austrians, who regained their political independence in 1955 after occupation as a Nazi ally, have the democratic right to vote for their choices but their 27 percent vote for Haider alarmed the rest of Europe which thinks it sees a ghost from the past.

The 15-member European Union, which Austria joined in 1997, has economic powers over its members but not over their political sovereignty.

Article 6 of the EU's 1997 Amsterdam Treaty restated the requirement that members observe democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

Austria, an EU member, did not break that rule by forming a new coalition government with radical rightwing support.

However, European memories of another Austrian who started small with big ideas are so strong that Haider's ultra-nationalist views were quickly compared to those of Hitler.

Haider is seen by many, but not all, in Europe as a neo-Nazi. His parents were members of the Nazi party and he certainly sometimes sounds like one.

Haider has praised some of Hitler's economic policies which lifted Germany out of depression in the 1930s. At that time many Europeans, including prominent Britons, also approved.

Austria should shut its doors to new immigrants, especially job-seekers from East Europe and Middle East, according to Haider. He also opposes the proposed eastward expansion of EU membership which, he warns, would flood Austria with the poor of the former Soviet bloc. Many other Austrians, and other Europeans, also fear this but do not say it as loudly.

He has been in right-wing politics for 20 years, twice as governor of Carinthia in southern Austria where he won votes and made enemies with positive or ambiguous remarks about the Nazi period.

Haider adjusts his opinions so regularly that it is difficult to put a firm label on him.

Georg Hoffman-Ostenhof, an editor for the magazine Profil, explains anxieties about Haider: "I'd never say he's a Nazi, but he has the Nazi views of his father in his background. He makes pro-Nazi remarks. It's not by chance. It's inside him."

In a biography, Christa Zochling says Haider is "hard to pin down because at some time every popular opinion finds a home with him."

Ambition as much as ideology is probably the answer. Austria has been ruled by Social Democrats for almost 30 years and Haider contrived opportunities to challenge their complacent policies.

Haider's bloc of parliamentary seats grew enough to make possible a coalition with the conservative People's Party. The coalition began in February with 104 seats in the 183-member parliament.

That means that only a dozen defections to the opposition would be enough to change government and perhaps force another election. Thus Haider has every reason not to upset the apfeltorte cart by provocative remarks.

Diplomatic sanctions - and protests by the 73 percent of the Austrian electorate who did not vote for Haider - forced Haider to step aside.

But he takes a long-term view, saying he is convinced he will eventually become Chancellor - i.e. Prime Minister - of Austria, perhaps as early as the next scheduled election in 2003 when he will be 53.

For the Austrians of today the Haider crisis is part of the price they pay for their past political sins. The 1930s generation voted overwhelmingly to join their country to Nazi Germany in 1938 a month after German troops marched in.

After the war Austria was occupied for ten years by British, American, Russian and French troops. The 1949 film "The Third Man", written by Graham Greene, is the classic portrait of Vienna in the depths of that period.

Austria was finally and formally accepted back into the European family as a member of the EU in 1997.

The EU and the US, and other governments, need to be careful not to provoke Austrian pride into rallying around Haider as a victim of foreign pressure.

The case of Kurt Waldheim is a recent precedent for possible Austrian behaviour in the Haider case. Waldheim was the first Austrian to appear on the world stage after the 1939-1955 trauma of war and occupation.

Austrians were enormously proud of his appointment as UN Secretary-General (1972-81) and he returned home to serve as President (1986-92) despite detailed charges that he was involved, as an army officer, in wartime atrocities in Yugoslavia.

The case against Waldheim was strong - and the US banned him from American territory - but the majority of Austrians shrugged it off, The West, which had voted for Waldheim at the UN, was more embarrassed than Austria.

The case against Haider is not strong compared to the Waldheim affair.