The Dramaturgy of the Political Right. Austria's Jörg Haider in Comparison
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Adi Wimmer: The Dramaturgy of the political Right. Austria’s Jörg Haider in comparison with Pauline Hanson. The European Union started the year 2000 inauspiciously. Its common currency “Euro” was relentlessly slipping against the US dollar. The optimism of expanding the Union eastwards, admitting as full members such key countries as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary (along with half a dozen smaller countries) by 2003 had dissipated. But nothing rocked the Union more than the admittance of a right-wing populist party into a new coalition government of one of the member states on Feb 2nd. That state is Austria, the party is the so-called ‘freedom party’ FPÖ, which had pulled 27% of the vote in the October 1999 federal elections, and its leader is a smart yuppie named Jörg Haider. Responding swiftly, the 14 EU prime ministers imposed sanctions against the Austrian government. As long as the populist freedom party was a partner in the Austrian government, there would be no bi-lateral contacts between EU-country governments and members of the Austrian government. Austrian ambassadors would not be invited to any official functions. No Austrian candidates for top-level positions in Brussel’s administration of the European Union would be appointed. However, although these sanctions were meant to affect only the Austrian government, many more snubs occurred on the local and regional level. An Austrian cycle team had its invitation to compete in Belgium withdrawn. The organization of Brussels taxi drivers declared that they would not transport any Austrian visitors. A delegation of 16-year old Austrian students to an open-house event at the European parliament of Strasbourg were vilified by French students as ‘Nazis’ and prevented from speaking. The city of Grenoble cancelled its twinning agreement with Innsbruck. Several scientific organisations cancelled plans for conferences at Austrian universities; where cancellation attempts were unsuccessful, boycott calls were distributed on the internet. The Portugese prime minister cancelled his ticket for the Opera Ball. In several countries, Austrian ambassadors were advised that invitations that had already be sent out for dinners and parties were void. The Belgian foreign minister called for a boycott of Austrian tourism. Throughout the month of February, Haider was the single biggest media presence all across Europe and in the US, dominating TV news right across two continents. And all over the globe Austria was portrayed as a country where “Nazi troglodytes had suddenly reemerged from secret Alpine hiding places to ... threaten the peace of humanity” (Wistrich 18). There were good reasons for the way that the EU responded. Similar to Pauline Hanson (“the most famous Australian politician in the world”, Kingston 214), Jörg Haider is now the most successful right-winger in all of Europe and possibly the best-known European politician world-wide. He rose to fame through a series of inflammatory statements that the media obligingly seized upon, and although Austria and Australia are two vastly different countries, the similarity with Hanson’s ‘policies’ is striking. Haider demands a total stop to immigration. He calls immigrants and political refugees “parasites”. He alleges that immigrants are getting more money through government handouts than “honest, hard-working Austrians” were earning. (The top FPÖ candidate for the federal elections of 1999 Thomas Prinzhorn alleged that Balkan immigrants were receiving free hormone treatment to increase their birth rate, a secret plan by the Labor party to “wash out” the Germanic stock of the nation.) More than once Haider has alleged that asylums seekers and immigrants (“not necessarily the best from their countries”) are ‘stealing’ the jobs of ‘ordinary Austrians’. He opposes multiculturalism, declaring that not a single instance of a successful multicultural society exists “anywhere in the world”. Like Hanson he also claims that there is a conspiracy by the powerful against him, the ‘ordinary’ Austrian who speaks the ordinary person’s language. In 1991 he claimed that activists of his party were being treated “like once the Jews”, and during the Carinthian state elections of 1999 there was a campaign poster that showed him with the slogan “This man blocks the path of the powerful”. Also like Hanson, he claims that the nation’s business interests have been flogged off to foreign capitalists, by traitorous and corrupt elements primarily in the Labor party who he called “thieves, liars and frauds” (Czernin 32) . Pauline Hanson, it will be remembered, criticized John Howard as a “career politician” who was “unable to decide if he was a ‘citizen of Australia’ or a ‘citizen of the world’” (Philipps 161). Haider, who bitterly opposed Austria’s joining of the European Union in 1994, has alleged that Austria’s political establishment is more directed towards Brussels than its own citizens. The European Union is much the same “Big Brother” bogeyman for Haider as is the UNO for Hanson. After the sanctions of March 2000 he gleefully picked fights with President Jacques Chirac, whom he called a “pocket-sized Napoleon”, and the whole Belgian cabinet, alleging that it had abetted the serial rapist and child murder Marc Dutroux. The most notorious statements are those relating to National Socialism. Haider’s father was a member of the SA and had to flee Austria for Germany in 1935 on a charge of murdering a policeman. As a young man, Haider had advocated the ‘Anschluss’ of Austria to Germany, and throughout his career has defended aspects of Nazism. As half of Europe was once occupied by German forces, it is no surprise that French, Dutch, Belgian, British or Danish politicians reacted with outrage to the admittance of Haider’s ilk into a federal government. Only now did they take full note of Haider’s insensitivity and invective. In a 1989 interview Haider was asked which historic personages he detested the most, and his answer was “Churchill and Stalin.” (Czernin 21) In another interview of 1995, he alleged that “historically”, it was still “an open question” who had started World War II (45). He claimed that the “resistance” of the Wehrmacht to Stalin’s armies had made the re-birth of democracy in Germany and Austria possible. (44) About the collapse of Hitler-Germany in 1945 he said that not many Austrians had reason to be glad let alone proud at this historic event. (36) In an interview with the newspaper Kurier (9 Feb 1995) he referred to the Nazi death-camps as “correctional camps”. About the holocaust he made offensive remarks, such as putting it on a par with the expulsion of the Sudentendeutsche in 1945. In a parallel to PM John Howard, Haider said he saw no reason why the Jews of Austria were owed an apology: “Only people without character constantly apologize” (Interview profil, 18 Feb 1985 ). At a rally of war veterans in 1989 (including SS and Waffen -SS) he exclaimed that no German veteran who had fought in the war, regardless of which organization he once belonged to, should be excluded from such a ‘dignified’ occasion. (29) The best-known instance of Haider breaking a political taboo occurred in 1997, when he went – uninvited, out of a deep-seated urge to associate with former Nazis – to a meeting of former SS and Waffen SS. There, in an impromptu address, he held them up as shining examples for today’s youth and praised their steadfastness of character. (It should be remembered that it was the sole responsibility of the SS to operate the death camps.) International commentators were as dumbfounded by Haider’s electoral victory as they had been by the Pauline Hanson phenomenon. Until the Waldheim scandal, Austria’s image had been that of a somewhat backward, but benign and culturally homogenous Alpine nation which knew few, if any, social tensions. Is the economy doing badly? Well, there is a big national debt, but the economy itself is strong (we have the highest proportion of Mercedes owners in the world). Is unemployment high? At 6.5%, it is substantially lower than the EU average of 10.5%. Has the government recently cut back on benefits and services? Again no; unless one sees the reduction of paid maternity leave from 24 months to 18 months as a severe cutback. Have taxes been raised? Actually, the government lowered income tax across the board in 1999. University education is still free and access to it unlimited, the health service one of the cheapest and best in the world, the average retirement age is 57 and 55.8 years for men and women respectively, and the environment the envy of many other nations. There is a mixture of reasons for the rise of Haider, many showing striking parallels with Hanson’s rise. Haider’s power-base is in Carinthia, where his share of the vote in the gubernatorial elections of April 1999 was 42%. Carinthia, alone of the 9 Austrian states, has an ethnic minority that occasionally demands more rights - as a result, Carinthians tend to be fiercely nationalistic. During the Nazi years, Carinthia had the highest proportion of card-carrying NSDAP members anywhere in Germany. Many acts of brutal repression against the Jews and the Slovene minority fell into a collective memory hole after 1945; when the new generation demanded a reckoning with the past in the late 1980s and 1990s, there was a backlash. Also like Queensland, Carinthia was never industrialized and never developed an urban culture; its capital Klagenfurt has only 90.000 inhabitants. As a result, the rural population has more political clout than is good for the region. Carinthians see themselves marginalized and are resentful of the political elite of the capital Vienna; most of the FPÖ politicians come from the provinces.