Austria's extreme-right Freedom Party (FPO), led his party to scoring nearly 23 per cent in the country's general election on October 9.
Haider, a 44-year old millionaire who once openly expressed his admiration for some of Hitler's policies, is redrawing the political map of the country. Key to the FPO plans is an attempt to break up the coalition between the Social Democrats and the Christian Democratic Peoples Party which has ruled the country for the last eight years.
While the FPO vote rose by seven points from the 16.5 per cent scored in the last election, the Social Democrats fell eight points to 35 per cent, and the Peoples Party fell four points to 28 percent. The Green Party got 13 per cent.
While this still enables the SD-PP coalition to govern, it has lost the two-thirds majority which enables it to pass constitutional laws. Moreover, it seems likely that on some key issues some Peoples Party deputies will now vote with the FPO rather than the coalition.
Like other far-right populist parties in Europe, the cutting edge of Haider's appeal is opposition to immigrants and refugees. In his 1993 book What I Want - Freedom, Haider de. nounces the "utopia" of a multicultural society and rants about Austrians being reduced to "foreigners in their own land".
Central elements of FPO ideology, as propounded by their theorist-in-chief Andreas Mölzer, are pan-Germanism, economic liberalism and opposition to "social democratic corporatism" in the name of "individual freedom".
While the FPO does not (yet) argue for Austrian integration into a "greater Germany", it reiects the idea that there is an Start of an inglorious tradition: Hitler, history's most infamous Austrian, promoted anschluss Austrian nation: rather Austrians are part of the "great community of German peoples".
Anschluss This of course has loud echoes of the in-gathering of the German speaking peoples undertaken by Hitler, especially through the anschluss with Austria.
• Like French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Haider rejects the Hitlerite corporate state and embraces Thatcher-style economic liberalism, counterposing the free market to Austria's mixed economy and welfare state.
Mölzer argues that the FPO conception of freedom is radically different to that of 1789. The French revolution, producer "vrannv" hvtrving to combine freedom with "equality and fraternity".
The FPO campaigns strongly against the nepotism and corruption of the old party system; and indeed the old system, which until eight years ago had been virtually one-party social democratic rule for 40 years, is corrupt.
Although Austria is much countries, it too is beginning to suffer from mass unemployment and economic recession. reinforcing the impression that the old system has failed. Disillusionment with the old system is also represented by the vote for the Green Party.
The FPO strategy is now very clear: to break the coalition and force the Christian Democrats into a new, right wing, coalition Pressure Erhard Busek, leader of the. Peoples Party, has renewed the coalition but is under strong pressure from the right-wing of his party. If the FPO surge continues the clamour for a coalition with the FPO at the next election has a high chance of success Haider's new advance has undoubtedly been helped by the victory of Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing coalition in the March 1994 elections in neighboring Italy.
The trend to increasing support for right-wing populist parties was also shown in the October 9 local elections in Antwerp, Belgium, where the Flemish Vlams Blok emerged as the largest party in the new municipal administration.
climbdown. Teet. mand among signalSOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.70, October 22 1994, Page 11