What an Austrian news magazine terms the “March on Vienna,” Jörg Haider’s “Freedom Party” took 23 percent of the November 1991 vole. Remarkably, this had followed a dismal showing four years earlier when his party garnered only 8 percent of the total vole and appeared on the verge of deterioration. Handsome and energetic, the 42-year-old Haider and his party are not only transforming the politics of Austria but personifying a new birth of 19th-century liberal nationalism, which had been banished to the dustbin of European history by the traumatic convulsions that many historians argue National Socialism generated in response to the rise of Marxism.
It evoked descriptions of Andrew Jackson’s inaugural festivities. Thousands crowded the sweeping marble entrance ramp, stranger pressing against stranger, enthusiastic and excited in the bright cold of a late October day. It was the 1991 National Day, a celebration of Austrian democracy. The day carried special significance; for the first time in its history, the doors of Vienna’s neoclassical parliament were Aung open for an informal open house, enabling the populace to rub elbows with candidates and inspect party exhibits before a key municipal election. No one-police, politicians, media-anticipated the over whelming success of this exercise in direct democracy. It would portend a sea change in Austrian political life. In a matter of a few short weeks, the will of the Austrian electorate would find expression in its support for the anti-establishment “Freedom Party” (Frei heitliche Partei Osterreichs, or FPO).
As a rule, Austrian politics have barely warranted more than a passing mention in the American press, where figures such as David Duke, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and a few hundred Nazi skinheads in Germany provide reams of print and “shock media” references to the dangers of racism and xenophobia. Only in June 1991, when the FPO’s Jörg Haider, then-governor of the southern Austrian province of Carinthia, was quoted as praising the Third Reich’s employment policies (and subsequently forced to relinquish his post) did the New York Times feel it necessary to inform its readership of the political developments in this once-powerful middle European nation. The world media consistently portrays the FPO as an anti-immigration “protest” party, an evanescent phenomenon rather than a serious challenge to the political philosophies of both the conventional right and left in Europe. Yet the Freedom Party of Austria has emerged as a force for change where traditions of past political allegiances hang as heavily as gilt on the imperial structures lining the Ringstrasse.
On November 10, 1991, the FPO captured nearly 23 percent of the Viennese popular vote in a combined municipal and regional election, effectively displacing the traditional Catholic conservative Austrian People’s Party (OVP) as the second most powerful political party in the country. More significantly, the striking autumn “victory” occurred in the face of a bitter campaign in which FPO leader Jörg Haider was denounced as a Nazi sympathizer. Throughout the capital, campaign posters of Haider were defaced with swastikas and the slogan “Nazis raus!“
Despite the vilification efforts of the mainstream parties, Vienna’s voters went to the poll’s and selected almost a quarter of the Freedom Party candidates. This remarkable achievement under scored the declining popularity of a coalition government long dominated by the Socialists. Just four years earlier, during the last municipal elections, the FPO took merely eight out of 100 representative seats; in 1983, the party could barely sustain any political presence, having successfully placed only two party representatives in the Viennese parliament.
Impressive November 1991 gains, however, were scored by the FPO in all 23 districts (Bezirks) of Vienna. The most significant aspect of the recent FPO ascension in the Austrian capital were the losses incurred by the “Blacks.” Haider’s FPO gained 20,000 votes from the ranks of the traditional conservatives; the OVP found itself surrendering 12 legislative seats, thus dropping them five below the strength of the Freedom Party. As a result, the OVP has been effectively relegated to third position among the various contending parties.
For their part, the Socialists (SPO) lost ten representative seats, but still managed to retain a slim majority. The “Reds” suffered grievous declines in precisely those working-class neighborhoods that had been their stronghold for many decades: 42,000 Socialist voters shifted their allegiance to the FPO. Yet another critical aspect of the electoral out come was the fact that the Freedom Par ty drew an additional 45,000 new voters to its ranks.
The Vienna vote has national significance for Austria, as those elected for the city election also serve in provincial posts. The Vienna “triumph” of the FPO followed two earlier fall victories in the regions of Styria and Upper Austria. The sting of the three successive surges sounded alarms that the old “politics as usual” was at an end. As the mass-circulation magazine Profil consequently announced, “Das ist die Dritte Republik.” Several months later, another issue of the same publication offered a thinly veiled illusion to Italian history, describing the gains of the FPO as Haider’s “March on Vienna.”
As Austrians look ahead to 1994’s national parliamentary elections, the possibility of a Chancellorship for the FPO’s Jörg Haider has become a topic of in tense speculation. ‘Who is this figure whose shadow is now cast so broadly over the Austrian political landscape?
Born in 1950 to a family with Bavarian origins, Jörg Haider became politically active at the age of 14 when he served as national chair of the Ringfrei heitlicher Jugend (Liberal Youth Society). At the age of 20, while a law student at the University of Vienna, he became the youth advisor to the Freedom Party. In 1976 Haider served as Party Secretary for the province of Carinthia, and between 1979 and 1983 was a member of parliament and party speaker in the Nationalrat (national assembly). At a fall party congress in 1986, the 36-year-old enfant terrible of Austrian politics provoked a coup, forcing aside the established party leader ship to be himself selected as national chairman of the FPO. Within the span of three short years, Jörg Haider was then elected Landeshauptmann (governor) of the province of Carinthia.
Tanned, athletic, and photogenic, Jörg Haider exudes the vitality of an Alpine Olympic skier. Looking far younger even than his 42 years, Haider has defied the generation gap that has so handicapped the establishment parties, whose grey heads are seen to symbolize their cozy, old-boy political deal-making. Haider has reached out to young voters by campaigning in their favorite haunts and reflecting their values in his dashing style. As a political historian long resident in Vienna has comment ed, “he’s not stuffy, something which is rather unusual in Austrian politics. . . . ”
Despite Haider’s charisma and meteoric rise to political prominence, a single incident on June 21, 1991, proved nearly to be his undoing. During a parliamentary speech in his native Carinthia, then-governor Haider berated Socialist Chancellor Franz Vranitzky with the admonition, “They had a sound employment policy in the Third Reich, which is more than your government in Vienna has managed.” The unfortunate analogy sent political shockwaves through Austria, which reverberated through the world press. The staid Economist pre maturely observed that, “Until last week Mr. Haider . . . was one of Europe’s most successful populist politicians.” It went further to note that in the wake of the much-publicized comment, Haider had “decided to accept the job of deputy governor of Carinthia; rather than lead his party in the national parliament.”
Yet for all the furor, Haider and his Freedom Party continued their electoral gains. In September 1991, Radio Austria described him as a “sensation” in internal Austrian politics; “Despite a controversial history of shooting with his lip that has got Haider into hot water in the past, Austrian voters arc giving him their support in increasing numbers.” Within a fortnight, the Socialist and People’s parties had witnessed the FPO’s gain of more than 20 percent of the vote in the provincial elections of both Upper Austria and Styria. For its part, the Socialist press organ, Arbeiter Zeitung, concluded that Haider’s party was “no longer a fringe one, but a new middle party.” A few weeks later, the prophesy was confirmed by the Vienna election results.
Vienna’s 1991 election focused on a complex set of political issues and policies that spelled trouble for the ruling coalition of Socialists and Conservatives. Key campaign issues heatedly debated among the contending parties were crime, housing shortages, political corruption, and the quality of schooling under the government’s current multicultural mandate. All new housing in the city is built by municipal authorities, a long-standing vestige dating to the 1920’s “Red Vienna” program that be gan amid the squalor and overcrowded working-class districts, where even running cold water or inside toilets were a luxury virtually unknown to tens of thousands. It was a model of “socialist planning.” Extensive housing developments, both in the old center and at the periphery of Vienna, coupled with an elaborate rent control system, have to this day failed to alleviate the twin evils of the city’s residential population: cost and supply.
Adding to the chronic problem of housing its people, Vienna has recently faced a new dilemma: what to do with the influx of foreign workers and asylum seekers arriving daily in the city to seek jobs and utilize the nation’s generous social benefits. The most recent expression of this conundrum has been a proposal by the Socialist majority to turn over to immigrants housing that is presently reserved for pensioners and established residents.
Perhaps the most grinding source of public discontent with the present ruling coalition is the issue of multicultural education. Here, the FPO has been propounding a policy that questions the dilution of curricula and the prearrangement of classroom settings in which children possessing little or no knowledge of German are blended together in an ethnic “stew,” which many regard as senseless and ineffective. In two of the capital’s districts, for example, local public schools have a large majority of children who are not of German speaking backgrounds. Reflecting majority discontent, a cartoon in the weekly publication Wien Woche depicted the affable Socialist mayor of Vienna, Helmut Zilk, in his campaign of “United Colors” variously as a Native American squaw, an Orthodox Jew complete with side-locks, and as a rouge-draped model posing in a fashion video with a black American.
The plank that may have done more to drive voters away from all of the establishment parties, but that most clearly epitomizes the ruling coalition, has been that of the parteibuch—political patronage with its related corruption. A series of scandals involving leading coalition figures have eroded the tradition of public service within the ruling parties. A recent incident involved the sale of shares in a private club for party members, wherein a whistleblower was threatened with bodily harm for revealing that his superior had profited from this be hind-the-seem:s deal. Austrians have be come visibly frustrated with the situation, particularly in light of the fact that when nest feathering and pork barrel arrangements are exposed, very slight (if any) punishments are meted out.
The notorious proporz (“jobs for the boys”) system dictates that appointments to academic posts be assigned on the basis of membership in either the SPO or OVP. When queried as to whether he would continue to treat university positions as political appointments if the FPO were to attain power in the government, Haider dismissed the perpetuation of such favoritism. In re calling his own approach while governor of Carinthia, Haider described how he borrowed a leaf from the book of the private sector, the use of professional headhunters: “We worked together with these headhunters and we got wonderful results because the influence of the political parties was totally zero.” In this same vein, the Freedom Party has adopt ed a policy that encourages personal initiative and entrepreneurship within Austria, including a mandate to open housing development to the private sector.
Arguably the most volatile election is sue of recent years in Austria (as it has become in many western European countries) is that of the Auslander Problem. While far from an unspoken, widely felt public concern, the FPO’s Haider has proven to be in the eyes of some, more courageous, in the eyes of others, more opportunistic, in addressing the is sue head-on. As one observer of the Vienna political scene contended, incumbent officials seemingly believe that, “in elections you just give beer for free . . . and you get elected. They really under estimated the subconscious anxiety [that] Haider noticed.”
Haider, while provincial governor, had surprised many of his critics by extend ing recognition to the ethnic identity of Croatians and by his refusal to restrict the flow of asylum seekers from nearby war-torn Yugoslavia. He refused, how ever, to distance himself from what his opponents regarded as the “racist” re marks of a Carinthian parliamentary col league quoted in the magazine Der Folkerfreund:
A people that is not in a position to provide for its own descendents, gives itself up and it would then be only a question of time until foreigners make up a majority. America should provide us with a negative example, where according to the most recent census the white population in a number of states already barely retains a majority and by the year 2050 will have become a minority in all states.
The speaker, Kriemhile Trattnig, em phasized that she was not being racist, but reasserting that the concept of lo cal populace Heimatrecht (right to homeland) must be preserved: “With the majority of another population, the legislative process of the nation will also be dominated.”
When asked to comment upon the statement, Haider supported Trattnig by further noting that there should be “active protection” of the minorities al ready settled in Austria. He reiterated his opposition to a “multicultural” society, but noted that if a “pizza baker” from southern Italy came to Vienna, opened a restaurant and socialized with his southern Italian friends, that individual would be welcome. (It was also pointed out that Haider’s own concept of Heimatrecht would not fear the in flux of traditional Islamic women as “a setback to women’s liberation.”)
In the fall 1991 Vienna campaign, a major strategy of the mainstream par ties was to cast Jörg Haider as a latter day Adolph Hitler and the FPO as a vestigial remnant of National Socialism. While the Economist avoided a direct analogy of Haider to Hitler, it called the results of the election a “victory for in tolerance” and implied a linkage to anti Semitism, as “Haider’s nativist appeal is gaining momentum in a country where, according to a recent poll 19 per cent believe the country would be better off if it had no Jews.”
On the eve of the city’s November election an “anti-fascist” march through Vienna was spearheaded by left-wing student groups. This event had been preceded days earlier by a protest over the vandalism of Jewish graves in the capital’s Central Cemetery. The later demonstration was explicitly aimed at blunting the momentum of the FPO. The marchers sought to provoke a confrontation by purposely pausing in front of the FPO’s Kartnerstrasse headquarters to chant “Haider Raus,” “Nie wieder Faschismus,” and “The FPO is an undertaker’s party.” Such “popular front” tactics failed to head off what polling samples clearly predicted and what Haider called “a shuffling of the deck” in Austrian politics. A portion of the FPO membership does have links to those who served in the German military during World War II and reflects some pockets of Nazi sympathy. Yet no serious political observer attributes the rise and continuing success of the FPO mainly to traditional anti-Jewish sentiments.
Still, in the European and world press, Jörg Haider and his party’s recent successes have been defined as a narrow minded protest vote subsumed under the label “xenophobia.” The media, by casting a foreboding “brown” shadow over the FPO leader, has consistently consigned him to the rank of a neo-Nazi and a violent opponent to untrammeled immigration. Thus, in a feature article on “racial hate” in Europe, the Wall Street Journal counted Haider among various political leaders in France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland who preach what it judges to be a volatile “mix of populism and xenophobia.”
Given the stereotypic paradigm into which Jörg Haider and his Freedom Par ty have been placed by the mass media, one might be motivated to seek a more authoritative perspective coming directly from the leader himself. In discussing his political philosophy, Jörg Haider offers a strong dose of individualism, coupled with a greatly diminished role for the state. When queried about ideological links between his party and populist trends in Europe and America, Haider offered the following:
I think all tendencies are home made in Austria. [However] there are several connections. . . . It could be that the same problems are arising in different countries at the same time. . . . In the U. S. there hasn’t been a long history of tension between the ideas of liberalism and nationalism, but in Europe [there is] somewhat of a tension between the two. In Austria it may be a little different than another country . . . in this century we have [had] a bad experience with nationalism . . . the national idea [is always] com pared with the Nazi time . . . in our definition (FPO) . . . the people should have the human right to an ethnic group [identity].
In describing his philosophy of governance and that of his party as “liberal,” Haider is referring to the liberalism of the 1848 Austrian nationalistic revolt and not to its later association with elaborate public intervention in the private spheres of family and community. And in discussing his personal role in Austrian politics, he expresses the optimism of one who secs himself as the advanced guard of a new generation of political leaders who believe they will be able to transform a failed political system; crucial to this process is the need to bring politics “nearer to the people.” In this context, Haider readily embraces the la bel of a “populist.”
What does Jörg Haider’s phenomenal rise and shining future bode for his nation and for a Europe now searching for its identity? What might Austria’s role in the EC be under the leadership of Haider?
The FPO chairman sees a future in which his nation would be forced to re form itself politically and economically, and Haider stressed Austria’s interest in stabilizing the economies to the East, reiterating his basic view that immigration could not solve the problems of these nations. Yet membership in the EC, while inevitable and desirable, is far from a complete blessing for Austrians.
The EC’s looser regulatory standards will mean endless caravans of leaded gasoline and heavy diesel trucks rum bling across the Italian Alps. Citizen protests over truck noise pollution led to requirements for additional sound insulation around engines, and last March, Austria set new limits on the flow of traffic across its borders-action that reportedly infuriated neighboring Germany.
Haider’s high profile as a future head of state makes the Austrians, even those favorable to him, just a bit ungemütlich. When the subject of the FPO leader is raised in conversations with the Viennese in coffeehouses and cafes, one hears an equal chorus of voices declaring Jörg Haider to be, on the one hand, the epitome of the expedient politician offering every interest and ideological segment of Austrian society something to identify with and, on the other hand, a crypto-Nazi. Either image conjures the specter of “irrational” politics.
Out on the street, or more accurately, in the neighborhood, the Viennese defy a politics-as-usual status quo. Yet “protest” voting in Austria, like its counterpart in any nation, is burdened with a label implying the negative politics of “alienation.” If only times would return to normal, these movements and their leaders would disappear. “Extremism” is distinguished from “mainstream” ideas as if moderation in all things includes toleration of status quo coalitions that ignore the needs of non-elites.
In the spring of this year, new developments in Austria’s politics suggested that the final crumbling of the “Red” and “Black” coalition was at hand. The Freedom Party’s female candidate-parliamentary leader Heide Schmidt-for the largely ceremonial post of president, polled over 16 percent of the vote in a three-way election held late in April. With Kurt Waldheim electing not to run again for the office, the hope among Social Democratic Chancellor Franz Vranitsky was that he would have a par ty comrade with a chance to end the diplomatic boycott that had isolated the tiny nation for six years. In the run-off election of May 24, the relatively un known career diplomat Thomas Klestil, representing the weak party in the ruling coalition, garnered a decisive victory, by piling up majorities in all nine of Austria’s Länder. Jörg Haider called on followers who had supported the FPO candidate in the initial election to vote for Klestil in the second round, and every one agrees that Klestil would not have won without the FPO. The evening of the election, in a radio broadcast, Haider explained that “from the very beginning, Klestil’s strategy showed he is open to ideas that come out of the Freedom par ty camp.” When queried about this, the newly elected Bundespräsident denied that his triumph implied a de facto coalition of the weakened “People’s Party” with the increasingly powerful Freedom Party: “Ich schulde keiner Partei Dank.” When a Der Speigel interviewer asked Klestil about FPO leader Haider, he replied that he did not find all of his ideas devoid of merit.
It should he noted that during the presidential campaign, both the Socialist and Conservative candidates dodged the question of whether, as part of their ceremonial duties, they would, if asked, name Jörg Haider to the chancellorship or vice-chancellorship of Austria. Once the results were in and victorious president-elect Klestil was again grilled about a future role for Haider, this time he did not dismiss the option; he merely de scribed it as “premature speculation.”
Within days of the May presidential election, Austria took two bold steps reflecting a new sense of mastery over its destiny. First, it amended its asylum Jaw, making it currently the most restrictive in Europe: persons from the for mer Eastern bloc nations are barred from applying for asylum status because they now reside in “safe countries,” meaning those holding democratic elections. Then, on June 11, Austria formally announced that it would rescind its neutrality status, a condition imposed on the nation since the close of World War II. Without this action, Austria could not become a participant in the trade and security system of the 12-nation European Community.
Given the labels pinned to Jörg Haider—one British publication refers to him as “a yuppie fascist,” while the Economist claims he is “dubbed Hitler’s Grandson by his foes”-what label might now be attached to the new Austrian president, whose election w.is as sured by Haider’s tacit support and who remarked during his campaign that it was “finally time to stop turning the generation that lived through the war into devils”? Are there also parallels in the politics of Austria and those of our own? In response to a New York Times article referring to Herr Klestil’s “devils,” and depicting Austria as “basically an anti Semitic, racist state,” an outraged read er took exception to this analysis and stressed that “Jörg Haider’s popularity has a lot to do with a general disenchantment of voters. . . . The mood of the electorate is similar to the mood that stirs the interest of American voters in Ross Perot.”
In my own work on the “Middle American Radicals” who supported George Wallace two decades ago, I offered a political recipe for a challenge to the status quo by a traditional individualistic and yet rule-abiding segment of American society that could mobilize to reject political choices and become the most volatile political force in the society. The key ingredient is a sense of double squeeze: from above in terms of exploitive economic elites, and from be low in terms of victim constituencies who alter the institutional rules of society.
Are Jörg Haider’s supporters best de scribed as “Middle Austrian Radicals,” who see themselves ground between the millstones of a powerful system of political elites and a set of ethnically organized interest groups shaping educational and cultural institutions, and whose jobs and those of their children seem greatly at risk? And is this not the same deepening discontent with candidates and major parties of many in Austria and throughout Western Europe who carry a growing sense that the heritage of their nation may he slipping away?
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