No one feels indifferent toward Haider. His attacks on Austria’s liberal immigration policies and his occasional apologies for the Third Reich have made him a populist hero to some Austrians. Others see him as an embarrassing–and potentially dangerous–reminder of their country’s dark history. Outside Austria, he is viewed with alarm. When it became clear last week that the Freedom Party would join the government, Austria’s neighbors warned Vienna not to expect business-as-usual. In an extraordinary attempt to quell outsiders’ anxieties, Haider and Sch??ssel signed a declaration renouncing Austria’s Nazi past and affirming their commitment to democracy and human rights. It did little to stem the wave of international opprobrium, and many Austrians were left wondering what price their country would pay for putting Haider’s party in power.
The answer came quickly. Hours before the new government was even sworn in, Israel withdrew its ambassador, the second time in two decades the Jewish state has disrupted relations with Austria. The first was in 1986, when Kurt Waldheim was elected president; Waldheim, a former United Nations secretary-general, had hidden his role as a Nazi intelligence officer in the Balkans during World War II. “The inclusion of an extreme-right-wing party, whose leaders have made serious statements about the Nazi regime… should outrage every citizen of the free world,” said a statement issued by Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s office. Washington called its ambassador home for consultations.
The harshest reaction came from the European Union. The 15-member organization immediately imposed sanctions aimed at isolating Austria diplomatically–barring high-level contacts with Austrian ambassadors and excluding Austrian officials from top jobs at EU institutions. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fisher called Haider’s ideology “a relative of National Socialism.” “Europe can do without Austria,” Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said, adding that it would be “immoral to go skiing in Haider’s Austria.” “We will not behave with this government as if it were a normal government,” a spokesman for French President Jacques Chirac told NEWSWEEK. “This is a sad and negative development.”
Austrians had seen it coming for months. Haider’s rise to countrywide power began last October, when his Freedom Party won an astonishing 27 percent of the vote in the national elections–the most the party has attracted in its 45-year history. Partly because of Haider’s success, neither the Social Democrats nor the People’s Party–the two largest parties, which have dominated Austrian politics since World War II–was able to carve out an absolute majority in Parliament. All throughout the winter, Austrians watched in dismay as Victor Klima, leader of the Social Democrats, and Sch??ssel, his People’s Party counterpart, tried in vain to form a new coalition government. But those efforts collapsed two weeks ago, and Sch??ssel turned to Haider in what many saw as an opportunistic ploy to make himself the country’s next chancellor.
They are unlikely political bedfellows. While Sch??ssel is a dapper, moderate-to-conservative figure, Haider represents the darker side of Austrian history. His father was a follower of Hitler’s before Austria was annexed by the Reich in 1938; his mother belonged to a young women’s Nazi association. “He’s never sought to distance himself from his upbringing,” says a Western diplomat in Vienna. “He has a certain respect for it.”
Haider, 50, drew the attention of extreme-right-wing leaders while still a teenager, giving a speech on Austria’s “German identity,” which was reprinted in a neo-Nazi newspaper (time line). In his 20s, he moved from Vienna to the mountainous state of Carinthia, where he became active in the Freedom Party, which was a home for former Nazis after World War II. Some speeches he gave in the 1980s and early 1990s appealed directly to that aging constituency. He told a reunion of veterans of the Wehrmacht–the Army of Nazi Germany– that the Waffen SS, Hitler’s shock troops, “deserves all the honor and respect of the Army in public life.” As governor of Carinthia in 1991, Haider praised the “orderly employment policy” of the Third Reich. The remark created an uproar, and Haider was forced to resign, but he was re-elected to the post in 1999. A lawyer by training, Haider lives with his wife and two daughters in Carinthia and owns a 38,000-acre estate that reportedly once belonged to Jews forced to sell the land after the Anschluss, Germany’s annexation of Austria.
The Haider phenomenon has drawn unwanted attention yet again to Austria’s Nazi connections–and the country’s seeming inability to come to terms with its past. Unlike Germany, Austria has spent decades denying its responsibility for the crimes of the Third Reich. But the presidency of Kurt Waldheim–which made Austria an international pariah for five years–forced many to rethink the belief that Austria was Hitler’s “first victim” and confront their country’s willing partnership with the Fuhrer, who was born in Austria but considered himself a German. In classrooms and on television, Austrians are now bombarded with words and images that document Austria’s role in the Third Reich, which was greeted enthusiastically by the majority of Austrians. Waldheim’s history reminded Austrians that many served in the Wehrmacht, and were well aware of, or participated in, atrocities against Jews and other groups. Schoolchildren make field trips to Mauthausen, a concentration camp where tens of thousands perished. Still, some question whether Austria has fully acknowledged its history, and regard Haider’s rise as the most powerful example of that failure.
Last week many Austrians were quick to disassociate themselves from Haider and his party. More than 15,000 demonstrators on Wednesday night jammed Helden-platz–where Hitler addressed cheering crowds after he marched into Vienna in 1938–waving placards and denouncing the new coalition. Many of the posters compared the new government to the 1934 fascist regime that paved the way for the Anschluss. “Haider stands for racism and intolerance,” said Sandra, a 26-year-old writer, who wouldn’t give her last name and carried a poster that read 73 percent did not vote for Haider. Others took a less critical view. “Haider’s a revolutionary, he gives a counterattack, and that’s rare in Austria,” said Peter, a 40-year-old technician watching the protest. “He might be a Nazi sympathizer, but so what? That’s like saying he quotes Robespierre–it was long ago.” Several newspaper editorials, meanwhile, lashed out against the international condemnation of Austria. “Chirac and company act like authorities who are above the people’s will,” the conservative Vienna daily Die Presse said. “They behave like a troop of policemen surveying political correctness.”
Is Haider a neo-Nazi? The populist leader clearly draws on a dwindling ex-Nazi constituency, but he has widened his appeal considerably. Haider has distanced himself from his previous pro-Nazi comments and tried to emphasize his enthusiasm for American values. He’s attended economic symposiums at Harvard University, run in the New York City Marathon and visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington in 1994; last month he appeared on a podium alongside New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani at a dinner honoring Ronald Reagan sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality. The mountain-climbing, ski-crazy Haider has skillfully recast himself as a vigorous alternative to the two stodgy political parties that have run Austria for decades. Many Austrians have grown resentful of the cumbersome role that the two established parties play in daily life: according to one popular joke in Austria, every grammar school has to hire two cleaning women–one from the Social Democrats, one from the People’s Party. “Haider represents in dress and speech all that’s modern and new,” acknowledges Peter Schieder, a Social Democratic member of Parliament. “He has positioned himself as an alternative to an ossified political system.”
Haider also appeals to a growing xenophobic strain among many Austrians. During the past decade, the Balkan wars and collapse of communism have sent hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans across the border. Immigrants now make up nearly 10 percent of Austria’s 8 million people, and nearly a third of the population in some districts of Vienna. Although unemployment is at a record low, resentment toward the new arrivals is simmering–particularly among lower-income young men. During the last election campaign, Freedom Party posters warned of overforeignization, a word coined by the Nazis. “Austria has readily accepted immigrants since the 1956 Hungarian revolution,” says Social Democrat Schieder. “Now Haider comes and says, ‘They’re taking your jobs.’ It isn’t true, but people of low social standards want to use excuses.”
The European Union has regarded Haider’s xenophobic platform with alarm. The international body has recently sought to play a more activist role–promoting free trade, open borders and human rights. “The EU embraces a set of values that makes it unacceptable to have someone who practices the politics of hate and won’t distance himself from history play a significant role in the government,” says a Western diplomat in Vienna. With Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary pushing for membership in the organization, the EU also saw the presence of Haider in the Austrian government as a threat to one of its prime goals: EU expansion. At the European Summit in Istanbul last November, EU leaders told Austrian leaders bluntly that they ran the risk of diplomatic isolation if Haider’s Freedom Party came to power. The warning was repeated later in Helsinki. Sch??ssel, who was then the country’s Foreign minister, apparently ignored them.
Haider’s ability to influence the new government in Vienna is still unclear. To prevent the uproar from growing, Haider has promised to stay out of the coalition in Vienna. Instead, he’ll continue on as governor of Carinthia–but many observers expect he’ll pull the party’s strings from his Alpine outpost. As vice chancellor, Haider appointed his longtime party deputy Susanne Riess-Passer, nicknamed by some Freedom Party members “Queen Cobra” because of her ruthless allegiance to Haider. Although Sch???ssel has called himself “the guarantor of Austria’s stability,” others aren’t so confident that he can outmaneuver the ambitious Haider. Says Schieder: “Haider is faster and more dangerous, even outside the government.” Some of Haider’s most controversial proposals–a ban on immigration, opposition to expansion of the European Union–may at least receive a new airing. A loose cannon, he could also potentially embarrass the Austrian government with public remarks such as the one he made last week about the French president. “Chirac is a megalomaniac who doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Haider said. “I have no reason to bow down before him. I don’t care who he is.”
Austria’s days as the third most prosperous nation in the EU could now be threatened. The country is bracing for a sharp drop in tourism, which brings in hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Already there are signs of trouble: a medical convention that was to be held next year in Innsbruck, the setting for both the 1964 and the 1976 Winter Olympics, was abruptly canceled. The crux of the new government’s economic program–an ambitious privatization scheme–could collapse if international investors react unfavorably to the new coalition. “The price that the economy has to pay for [Haider] is too high,” says Wilfried Stadler, a former top financial officer with the People’s Party and now the director of an Austrian bank. “The damage will be measurable soon.”
The biggest danger, many Austrians fear, is that such isolation could stir up resentments against Europe, and empower Haider even more. “We Austrians feel attacked, and Haider’s polls are rising,” says Rene Siegl, a managing director of the Austrian Business Agency, an investment consultancy. “The result of all this will be a strengthening of Haider, and the growth of an anti-EU movement.” Many observers say that if President Thomas Klestil had called for new elections, rather than allow the coalition to form a government, Haider would have won even bigger. In a commentary titled “Dark Years Ahead,” the Viennese daily Kurier noted the mounting pressures on Austria and said that “one has to doubt that this new government will be stable for long.” For Austrians, a collapse of the coalition could mean an even graver prospect: Haider as chancellor. That seems unlikely for now–but it’s certainly not out of reach.
