TIME EUROPE
FEBRUARY 14, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 6
A Right Mess!
Jörg Haider's Freedom Party joins the Austrian government and shakes up the E.U.
By ROD USHER
He says all the wrong things--then he says all the right things. He is merely a brash, bungee-jumping populist politician--or he is a racist and an apologist for aspects of Nazism. He could play Clint Eastwood's role in a remake of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly--or he is just plain bad. What is certain about the jabs and feints of 50-year-old Jörg Haider's right-wing ideology is that last week it brought him and his Freedom Party into coalition government in Austria--and left the 14 other member countries of the European Union in a state of impotent indignation. As Haider and Wolfgang Schüssel, leader of the conservative People's Party, signed their deal--despite the misgivings of Austrian President Thomas Klestil--the score was Demagoguery 1, Diplomacy 0.
All the E.U. leaders' joint cajoling, then heavy threats, to try to keep Haider from power had failed--even with the U.S. and Israel, in rare forays into European domestic politics, adding their weight. By week's end, some observers felt they had merely served to reinforce the 27% of the votes Haider's party won in Austria's elections last October. Anneliese Rohrer, domestic affairs editor of the Vienna daily Die Presse, said: "Austrians do not like to be kicked around. They are saying, 'Well, if they all hate him, he must be good.'" She says the worst outcome for Haider would have been being ignored and left "a comparative nonentity as Governor in his home province of Carinthia."
But E.U. leaders, remembering an Austrian-born populist with a minority who climbed to power from a coalition in 1933, believed that they could not just say nothing. "We are aware of possible reactions and feelings among Austrian people, but ... we think it is our duty," said Frédéric Desagneaux, a spokesman for French President Jacques Chirac. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder saw the threats to ostracize Austria as "an expression that we stand for a Europe based on values, and that Mr. Haider has violated these values."
The leaders, falling in behind Portugal's Prime Minister, António Guterres, current President of the Council of Ministers, also wanted to send a message to countries seeking E.U. entry in central and eastern Europe. Desagneaux said the reaction to Haider "is a signal to candidate countries that they shouldn't go in for dangerous political experiments." Among those candidates, the response was cautious, which is understandable given that Austria could hold out against E.U. enlargement in retribution. But Czech President Vaclav Havel, while not denouncing Haider outright, was clear enough. Recovering from flu in a Prague hospital, Havel said through his spokesman: "The European Union which the Czech Republic wants to enter is based on common values and mutual respect, and cannot idly watch the rise of dangerous extremism."
Others inside and outside Austria argue that Haider's extremism is different from that of, say, France's Jean-Marie Le Pen or Germany's frightening neo-Nazi groups. They see him not as a fascist but as a cunning opportunist. Says Die Presse's Rohrer: "He's a racist if it serves his purposes; he's a xenophobe if it serves his purposes; he's pro-Europe if it serves his purposes; and anti-Europe if it serves his purposes. Haider would be orthodox communist if it helped him to get to power."
What was clear amid the diplomacy and demagoguery was that the other D-word--democracy--had taken a serious dent. Though E.U. leaders abhor fortress politics based on disparaging immigrants as crime-causing, job-snatching aliens, Schüssel-plus-Haider adds up to a clear majority in the Austrian parliament. "It's not as if the elections were rigged," says Jean-Yves Camus, a Paris-based political scientist with the European Center for Research and Action on Racism and Anti-Semitism. "I'm worried that we may be helping Haider to achieve his objective, which is to govern alone." Helping Haider get as far as he has was the fact that many Austrians were fed up with their staid two-party system. And after he broke it at the ballot box in October, no wheeling and dealing by the long-dominant parties could stick it together again.
What does it mean to have members of a democratically elected far-right party sharing power in Austria? Before the signing, about 15,000 Austrians took to Vienna's streets carrying placards with slogans such as "War Against the Fascists." One, in English, screamed, "The Roof is on Fire!" Like many outside Austria, plenty of the demonstrators saw Schüssel as the real villain for being hungry enough for power to open the door to Haider. The protests continued after their deal was struck.
Both Haider--who will not join the government but will wield enormous influence in the coalition--and Schüssel--who rises from Foreign Affairs Minister to Chancellor--are desperate to put out the fire of international condemnation. They signed a declaration pledging "adherence to the spiritual and moral values which are the common heritage of the peoples of Europe." It says they will "work for an Austria in which xenophobia, anti-Semitism and racism have no place."
It is largely Haider's equivocal remarks about some of these very subjects that necessitated such a declaration in the first place. During last year's election campaign, for example, Haider was interviewed by the Vienna weekly Falter. Asked who were the worst criminals of the century, he named Hitler and Stalin--then added Winston Churchill. In a later interview, Haider denied having said this.
In an interview with Time last week (see interview), Haider said he had already admitted "some mistakes in the past," and had apologized "for having wounded people by this." He said of his Freedom Party: "We are a young movement--35% of our voters are people between 19 and 30 years. They want to look into the future and not to look back. But we know that we have to keep in mind this dark period of Austrian history ... and to prevent a [return] to such a bad period." MORE>>
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