European nations are seeing their cultural if not their actual borders weakened by multiculturalism and the process known as “McDonaldization.” But Austrians, in contrast to their neighbors in Germany where status quo politics are the order of the day, are avidly protesting the corruption, incompetence, and slack enforcement of immigration restrictions characteristic of the “Grand Coalition”—a two-party consociation of socialists and conservatives that has held a virtual monopoly over Austria’s politics since the end of World War II.

Thus, the national election of this past October represented vet another chapter in an ongoing political revolution. Readers of these pages have periodically been apprised of a remarkable rising star in populist politics—Austria’s dashing opposition leader, Jörg Haider. The charismatic figure who has vexed the political establishment of this proud middle European nation of seven million once again defied the odds and pulled off a major electoral triumph. Last autumn’s parliamentary vote brought Haider’s Freedom Party (FPO) to within five percentage points of becoming the second most popular party, nearly edging out the ever-weakening Social Democrats and lackluster traditional conservatives. The FPO gained nearly a quarter of the seats in Austria’s governing representative body, taking yet another step in what Haider’s enemies have called his “Kampf,” or in what his sympathizers have termed his “Long March.” In the eight years since Haider’s ascendancy to the leadership of what was a languishing and marginalized “old nationalist” and 19th century-style Liberal party, the FPO has trebled its electoral support.

Almost from the beginning of his rise to national prominence, Haider has been the target of both the traditional right and the socialist left, which have branded him a dangerous neo-Nazi and extreme nationalist whose political ascendancy would spell the doom of democracy in Austria. He is accused of being an opportunist who appeals to xenophobia and racism in an effort to awaken the “silent majority of the Austrian electorate. This characterization notwithstanding, Haider has time and again proved the academic experts and political pundits incapable of gauging either his strategic skills or the depth of his appeal.

Haider has indeed taken a number of risks in his electoral rise, making his share of blunders. In 1986, his ill-advised, if inadvertent, praise of the Third Reich’s employment policies forced his resignation as governor of Carinthia, his home province. By way of a political comeback, Haider assumed the party chairmanship to promote Heide Schmidt, a rising young parliamentary leader and once-dedicated loyalist nurtured at his side, into the national political arena. She ran as the FPO presidential candidate in 1992. Despite losing some support from traditionalists in rural and small village areas, Schmidt attained a respectable 18 percent of the vote, drawing many middle-class Austrians to her banner.

Flushed by her relative success and media attention, Schmidt proceeded to spearhead a revolt against her mentor by forming the Liberal Forum in early 1993, and in the aftermath of this much-ballyhooed divorce, experts announced the imminent demise of Haider. It was then that Haider committed what many consider his worst blunder to date: he opposed Austria’s entrance into the European Community. Haider told me last May that although the FPO was not opposed in principle to the E.G., its flawed structure could put Austria at a disadvantaged position regarding protection of its scenic ecology and the financial arrangements established by other German- speaking nations.

Haider also dismissed the label “German nationalist,” pointing out that in earlier decades the FPO had championed the cause of European union. “At that time,” he told me, “we were accused of promoting a new type of Anschluss.” He described the push toward the E.G. by the two coalition parties as the height of hypocrisy. His own opposition was conditional: he felt the ruling parties had failed to negotiate a deal good enough for Austria.

In June, when the voters startled even professional pollsters by their resounding 70 percent endorsement of the referendum joining Austria to the E.G., the curtain was once again said to have fallen on the political future of the Freedom Party and its leader. Yet the October election revealed Haider’s determination to target the disgruntled blue-collar families of Vienna’s traditional “Red” neighborhoods, which has absorbed the brunt of multicultural education policies. When the fall vote was tallied, the socialists had lost nearly 8 percent of their base, or 14 parliamentary seats—shrinking to just over a third of the electorate. The Austrian People’s Party (OVP), with its core of Catholic middle- and working-class families, surrendered eight seats, dropping their total to 52. The Freedom Party, following close behind, gained nine seats, boosting its total to 42. (The Green Party also showed gains against the ruling coalition parties, adding three seats to its former total of ten.)

What accounts for Haider’s success? Certainly he does not follow the traditional right-wing politics of fiscal conservatism and religious zealotry. Nor is he in the camp of those who pander to the newly militant ethnic and victim-based constituencies. Rather, Haider and his party stress a politics of cultural cohesion and national pride that aim less for a purely economic European union than for one incorporating both regional and federal systems, a possibility yet to be seriously addressed by the Brussels and Maastricht accords.

Haider possesses leadership qualities not seen in many of the populist leaders in Europe or the United States. Eschewing the paternalistic guidance of a national political lobby of the Perot variety or the crude racial politics of a David Duke (figures to whom he is often compared), Haider is a politician who has yet to be marginalized by either a single issue obsession (his stress on immigration control is merely one of several concerns) or a demand for ideological purity. In Austria, as in other advanced industrial nations, many young adults distrust all politicians and want very little to do with any form of establishment patronage, left or right. This still-evolving leader possesses a quick sense of what the people want and an ability to articulate their sentiment effectively in their own language, not in that of the distant elites.

Most annoying to Vienna’s “Rinstrasse Elite” is that Jörg Haider is his own man. He relentlessly attacks the ruling coalition while seeming always to be one step ahead of it. What is so disconcerting to opponents—and even to some members of his own party—is that while he proclaims his goal to win the chancellorship of Austria in the next round of elections in 1998, he can, in the interim, very nearly run this nation’s politics without any coalition partners.

As Haider quipped when I asked him how long he could play the opposition role: “What do you Americans say? Don’t change horses in midstream?” Or, to translate, if you are the most powerful force in a nation, the fact of holding office may be no more than a mere formality, and far less interesting than being the powerful outsider who pulls the strings.