Austria
Who let in Jorg Haider?
THE RECENT INCLUSION of Jorg Haider's Freedom Party in Austria's coalition government has been met by mass protests on the streets of Vienna and other Austrian cities. As protests continue around the world at this increased influence of the far right, WALTER SCHULTZ from Die Linke, Austrian paper supporting the Fourth International, reports from Vienna.
Platform for a World against Racism
We do not feel obliged to claim Austria’s "innocence". The would-be government does not have the support of the majority of Austria’s population.
We have no reason to claim Haider is "just another" populist. He is not. He is a populist that uses xenophobia, racism and the denial of the Holocaust.
The major threat is not the increase of direct violence against minorities. The major threat is the signal that far right agitation and action is not only OK but earns you a place in government. As opportunism is one of the most prominent features of the ‘Austrian mentality", this is a severe political danger. We have reason to be afraid of:
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the final end of refugee or integration policies
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increasing xenophobia, racism and even antisemitism, because Austria has never faced its past and now people have governmental legitimation for such attitudes
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law and order policies instead of cooperative strategies to deal with crime and conflict
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abolition of progressive women’s policies (e.g. the post of the minister for women’s affairs will be cancelled and replaced by an extended family ministry)
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severe restrictions to freedom of art, especially where it puts a finger on the state of the Austrian society (already, in Carinthia, artists are faced with political limitations to their work)
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restrictions to the freedom of press, because subsidies for critical media products will most certainly be cut down.
We don’t know yet what to do about it. we need both your solidarity and your ongoing criticism. don’t stop looking at our country.
Vienna , February 2000
Last October there were parliamentary elections in Austria. For the first time in the last 30 years it wasn't clear that Social Democracy would have the majority in the government or that the Chancellor would be a Social Democrat.
The Social Democrats got 33% and the Freedom Party of Jorg Haider got 27%. The Austrian People's Party, the party of Wolfgang Schussel who is now Chancellor, also got 27% with only a few dozen votes less than the Freedom Party. The Greens got around 9%.
In this situation nobody believed that that the Freedom Party would end up in government. Everybody in Austria thought that there would be lengthy negotiations between the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats but that in the end they would form a coalition.
In November there was a big demonstration in Vienna of 70.000 people, particularly young people, something that is unusual in Austrian politics, but there were also many trade unionists with one single demand " No Coalition with Racism". This was posed above all as a signal to the Social Democrats not to negotiate with Haider's Party.
There were secret negotiations between the Austrian People's Party and the Freedom Party because Chancellor Schussel said that it was not possible to agree a common platform with the Social Democrats so instead he would to negotiate with the Freedom Party. From this point of view what has happened is the responsibility of Schussel's Peoples Party.
From this moment on there were spontaneous demonstrations throughout Austria, mostly of young people and students who came out into the streets to protest.
The demonstration on the day when the government was formed was also very spontaneous - the organisations of the far left were not the leaders of this movement.
On Saturday February 12 there were 20,000 in Vienna and several thousands in other Austria cities. Then there was the massive demonstration in Vienna on February 19 with 300,000 people which was preceded by actions by students.
The mass demonstration was organised by committees of the far left and also committees of artists and other democratic personalities. But the Social Democratic Party and the trade unions also called on their members to protest.
At the same time there were actions of solidarity in many other European cities. Now the movement has said there will be weekly protests every Thursday night.
In order to understand what has happened you need to know something about the specifics of Austrian history.
Anti-Semitism
Firstly, anti-Semitism is an element of Austrian politics that goes back to the 15th Century. The Catholic church had strong anti-Semitic elements and the Christian Social Party at the beginning 20th century also had an anti-Semitic ideology.
In November 1938 when the Nazis carried out the pogroms called Christalnacht the Viennese participated enthusiastically and in fact the Nazi leaders had to put an end to the riots to stop the whole city being burnt down.
During the Second Republic, after 1945, Austria was once more independent and anti-Semitism did not disappear. There was no de-Nazification in Austria - there were no official measures - no educational measures against Nazism.
There were thousands and thousands of Nazis - not the leaders but people who participated in this movement and nobody worried about it.
Austria was occupied by the Allies and in only a few weeks the liberation from Nazism changed into occupation. Each of the occupying powers had their specific characteristics:
In the French zone for example there were French officers who failed to act against anti-Semitism. The mayors of Tyrol and Vorarlberg in the West prevented Jewish survivors returning home and they were supported in this by these officers.
In the British zone in the south, partisans, mainly members of the Austrian CP who were Slovenes came into conflict with the British occupiers. Of course this was the time the cold war was beginning. So in both the French and British zones it was not at all the ex-Nazis that were considered the enemies by the occupying armies but the Slovenes.
The US zone in the centre of Austria was the centre of influence of intellectuals, teachers and high school students etc and they accepted "little nazis" i.e. those who had not been leaders and tried to convince them of the value of American style democracy.
In the Soviet zone in the North, things were quite complicated. Officially there was a sort of anti-fascism, coloured by Stalinism, and there were bureaucratic measures against the Nazis but since the Soviet troops were feared by the local population the antifascism taught by this army did not go very deep.
There were also political kidnappings and other crimes against Trotskyists and left wing independents in the Soviet zone so they were seen as an occupying force. The majority of Austrians living under soviet occupation saw them as the new enemy so discussions about Nazism or the crimes that Nazism committed were displaced.
Before 1938 there was a Jewish population of 180,000 in Vienna and at the end of the war there were only 6500. They formed a political milieu - many of them were from a bourgeois background but with liberal and tolerant ideas.
Almost all the Communist Party activists from the pre-war period had been killed, they had been in the concentration camps. Many left-wing social democrats had also died in the camps. So a whole political current was missing - there was no left wing or liberal current that was interested in talking about Nazism or anti-Semitism.
After 1945 the Christian Socialists created a new party - the Austrian People's Party. In this period the CP was getting 15% of the vote - but all the Austrian parties agreed on a consensus which said that Austria was the first victim of Hitler and of nazism. On the basis of this, it was not necessary to talk about what had happened or the crimes of the Austrian Nazis.
The period after 45 was one in which people tried to rebuild capitalism. All the parties, including the Communists tried to win former Nazis to vote for them and ignored the question of de-Nazification. The Freedom Party played a particular role in this process which I will return to later.
During the 1950s and 1960s anti-Semitism was less visible - but it still existed "under the skin". It could be found in the bistros and cafes in anti-Semitic jokes and this was not just perpetuated by the right but also Social Democrats that had a certain electorate and activists who were anti-Semitic.
In 1986 there was Kurt Waldheim's election campaign, and this was the first time that there was public discussion of the past relationship with Nazism.
During the campaign young socialists and intellectuals discovered that he had played a role in an army unit in Thessalonika in Greece where Jews were deported - even if it was not clear whether his role had been very active. And Waldheim's response to this - again an Austrian specificity - was to say, "I only did my duty". That's very Austrian - because the people in power say what should be done and Austrians do it.
This view is common to all parties including Social Democracy. After the Waldheim campaign, Austria was no longer the same as before. You had young intellectuals and historians who began to investigate the Nazi crimes and the role of Austrian Nazis.
For the first time there was an open discussion which was covered in the media and this influenced many people - particularly young people. It also meant that there was more of an international spotlight on Austria than previously.
Xenophobia
Before the First World War, Austria was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under the Habsburgs monarchy. This territory was much bigger than today's Austria and those who spoke German were only a small minority.
There are historians and economists who say that this monarchy functioned a bit like the system of centre and periphery of colonial empire. There were immense tensions between the different ethnic and national groups and this was one of the reasons why this state did not survive.
Amongst the German speaking population of the Empire there was a good deal of prejudice against the others - against Serbs, Czechs, whatever. At the time there was a sort of bourgeois liberal circle which discussed whether the Habsburg monarchy was the model of a multi-ethic society but the Czechs for example always responded that it was not a multi-ethic state but a prison of peoples".
In the 50s and 60s the Social Democrats encouraged migration by workers from Yugoslavia and Turkey but they did not take any measures to integrate them - they were only interested in their labour power. This attitude was also prevalent in the mainly Social Democratic trade unions.
In 1993 the Freedom Party tried to breath on the coals of xenophobia by organising a plebiscite under the slogan "Austrians First" with ten points which were openly xenophobic and racist.
Jorg Haider came to the attention of the media at this time and he said our goal is to get 1.5 million signatures. He claimed that this was not against foreigners but for Austria and the Austrians.
This led to the rebirth of an anti-racist movement. There was a massive demonstration of 300,000 people in Vienna and links were made which built on what had been done at the time of Waldheim in the 1980s. These were broad committees involving liberal opinion formers as well as the left. The effect was a defeat of the FPO: only 470,000 people signed the plebiscite.
The problem was that in the 1990s you had the Schengen accord and the Social Democratic policy was in favour of more and more restrictive laws.
There have been social democratic ministers of the Interior for more than 30 years and the last Social Democratic Minister of the Interior, Karl Schlogl is hated by the far left and the antirascist movement. He is the one that drafted the worst laws based on Schengen and encouraged police action against immigrants.
These were years in which Social Democrats had the majority within the government and Schlogl was Minster of the Interior it was at that moment that police killed a young Nigerian immigrant by taping his mouth so that he suffocated. And Haider always said that Schlogl was his man in the government.
So you can see that xenophobia and anti-Semitism is not at all something limited to the far right in Austria but is to be found in all the political parties with the exception of the Green party. And Social Democracy has a particular responsibility for the rise of the Freedom Party in the way that it has pandered to anti-Semitism and racism.
The Freedom Party
The Party was founded in 1947 under the patronage of the Allies as a party for the Nazis. It was an attempt to bring together former Nazis and integrate them into a democratic parliamentary system.
The Social Democrats were very much in favour of this party being created and supported it until the 1970s because they said that this would divide the big bourgeoisie into two different parties.
They were afraid of the situation that, as in pre-war Austria in which class struggles were very tense because on the one hand you had a very strong and militant Social Democracy and on the other hand only the Christian Democrats.
In the first 40 years after its foundation the Freedom Party ceased to be the party of ex-Nazis but it still had ex-SSers in it and people like that who were leaders of this party.
There was a previous coalition between the Freedom Party and Social Democracy in the 1970s and 80s with former SSers and Nazis in it. This was the time when a new head of the party Norbert Steger wanted to turn it into a new right neo-liberal party but he was unable to stabilise this because in Austrian society there is not the space for such a project - you don't have large layers that are bourgeois and right wing but at the same time tolerant and liberal.
In 1986 there was a real putsch inside the Freedom Party at their Congress and Jorg Haider became head of the Party. What he did afterwards was marginalise and expel the old Nazis and that is why he can say, as Chancellor Kohl also used to say that they were all born after the National Socialist era, so how could they be Nazis.?
Haider also marginalised all the "experts" who were right wingers but who were experts whether on politics or economics or what ever.
So those who shape the Freedom Party today you could say are Jorg Haider and a group of yuppies who are racist and right wing and neo-liberal but who don't have any particular political profile.
And the only thing that is important for their careers in the Freedom Party is that they are ready to do anything Haider says.
The Freedom Party doesn't have stable party structures. It only has 30,000 - 40,000 members and they are not organised. There are full timers and a few leaders in small towns but there is no real organisation at the base.
Part of the Austrian left says that Haider has only be able to do what he has done not because of party organisation but because he has had a good deal of exposure in the media. This is not completely false. The Freedom Party electorate is very young - the average is under 40 years old and 40% are workers. The media portray the Freedom Party as a working class party today!
The Freedom Party received a large number of protest votes in these recent elections because during the 1980s and 90s there was a very very stable system of social partners between the Social Democrats and the People's Party. Haider successfully portrayed himself as the answer to this monolithic bloc, as a voice for change.
When it was announced that there would be a coalition between the Peoples Party and the Freedom Party this was a big shock. A big part of Haider's electorate did not want this.
There were many interviews in the media that said that Haider is good because he is aggressive - he will tell the people up there what is what - but we don't want him to be Chancellor, we don't want him to be in the government.
Since the Freedom Party entered government, there have been new opinion polls and Haider's party has lost several points. The Social Democratic Party is stable, and the Greens almost doubled their showing with now 16-18%. Support for the Peoples Party has fallen dramatically.
What is happening is a radicalisation of the electorate. The Peoples Party can no longer claim to be the bourgeois party - the Freedom Party is now a major bourgeois party and those who voted for Haider who are from the working class who are former Social Democrats they are being driven away from the shock of the whole thing.
The programme of the Freedom Party is very far from being a Nazi programme. Its economic programme is a radical neo-liberal programme - a Thatcherite programme and others elements are different from Nazism. The party is not supported by capital either in Austria or internationally.
And Austrian capitalism is very dependent on outside support so the stock market fell sharply after this government came to office: some people were afraid there would be a stock market crash.
The Freedom Party rules out violence or fascist methods in this period - they are focused on growing through elections. But despite the fact that we do not see the Freedom Party today as a fascist party, it would be a huge error if their participation in government was accepted, if they were seen as a normal democratic party.
That is why in Austria, as in other places such as France, Flanders and Italy were we have seen a resurgence of the Far Right, mass mobilisations against these parties and the ideas that feed them are so key.
That is also why it is positive that there are calls to break diplomatic links with Austria from abroad - though the motives of the governments of the European Union are suspect when they themselves are carrying out the policies that fuel this development.
But the acceptance of Haider as a normal politician would reinforce the authoritarian, racist and xenophobic tendencies throughout Austrian society.
The strategy of the Freedom Party today is to have is to make themselves acceptable in our living rooms and this is the biggest danger of all.