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Heil, Haider?

National Review, March 6, 2000 by David Pryce-Jones

The EU finds a whipping boy

AMAN named Joerg Haider is at the center of a storm reverberating throughout Europe, an artificial storm, but dangerous all the same. He is from Austria, a country that rarely rates headlines. But who is Haider, what is he?

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An unsavory piece of work, to be sure. Born in 1950, the son of minor but enthusiastic Nazi officials, he grew up in the atmosphere peculiar to postwar Austria, in which people steadfastly avoided coming to terms with the country's recent devotion to Adolf Hitler, its favorite prewar son. In a tacit conspiracy, the ruling elites in the conservative People's party and the Social Democratic party--known respectively as the Blacks and the Reds--pretended that Austria had been an innocent victim of Nazism, with nothing to atone for. The truth, of course, was that Austrians had contributed more than their fair share to the Nazi cause. Nearly fifty years were to pass before a government accepted the obligation to apologize and make restitution, by which time few of the victims were still alive to benefit. Rejection of responsibility for Nazism, coupled with at least a measure of unspoken defiance, has generated moral and intellectual evasion in the man on the Austrian street, and Haider particularly speaks for him.

As a politician, Haider rose to become leader of the Freedom party, which has neo-Nazi origins. He seemed sincere when he said that the Waffen SS deserved "honor and respect," that Hitler's employment policies had been "orderly," and that concentration camps had been "punishment camps," implying that the inmates were actually miscreants. He has since retracted all of this loudly and often, but his supporters and his opponents alike sense that such views may indeed express the inner man. For many years, Haider has advocated a nationalist policy of Austria for the Austrians, especially in controlling would-be immigrants and guest workers.

A stylish dresser, driving a Porsche, skier and sportsman, with a photograph of his friend Arnold Schwarzenegger in his office, he cuts a dashing and even charismatic figure, lord of an estate comprising the whole valley of Barenthal, in the province of Carinthia. This was the property of a Jewish family until an uncle of Haider's "acquired" it in 1941 through the usual Nazi process of theft. Token compensation was paid after the war. In Austria, war-profiteering of this kind is so normal that nobody seems to hold it against Haider, and he was elected governor of Carinthia.

But politics can be complicated, and one aspect of Haider's popularity is positive rather than creepy. For years, the Blacks and the Reds cozily contrived to govern in coalition. Voters had been unable to throw the rascals out. Between them, the Blacks and Reds put in place a system known as Proport, which divided the spoils of office proportionately between them. The civil service from the highest rank down to village postmasters; museum and opera officials; the media, the bar, schoolteachers and academics; anyone in need of a franchise or a license, down to the level of a taxicab--all were subject to Proport. My turn, your turn. This surreptitious but institutionalized sweetheart dealing corrupted the entire society. Scandal continuously blistered Austrian public life. Needless to say, Blacks and Reds ensured that their own did not end up disgraced or imprisoned.

Haider upset that arrangement. In the general election last fall, his Freedom party received 27 percent of the vote, too small to form a government, but large enough to push its way into a new coalition. After a period of to-ing and fro-ing, the Freedom party and the Blacks agreed to a coalition government, without the Reds. Refusing a post in it, Haider himself remained governor of Carinthia. The election and the coalition-forming conformed in every respect to law and due procedure. Voters had broken the Black-Red cartel; it was their decision; and it might be supposed that nothing more remains to be said.

How very wrong. Austria is one of the 15 members of the European Union, and in a unanimous roar of rage the leaders of the other 14 propose to boycott and ostracize it, in effect repudiating democracy because they dislike its outcome. The several European treaties do not provide even the semblance of a right to adopt such a threatening and authoritarian position. Interference like this is unprecedented in the dealings of democratic states with one another.

Playing with the truth, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany trumpets, "If we make it clear that we want nothing to do with politicians like Haider, that is not interfering in another country's affairs." Belgium is a country with a Proport of its own, between Flemings and Walloons; it is a world champion in corruption; but its foreign minister now advocates throwing Austria right out of the EU. Even Britain has joined the pack baying for sanctions. The Prince of Wales has been obliged to cancel an engagement to attend a trade fair in Vienna. Non-European Israel withdrew its ambassador, although the veteran Viennese anti-Nazi Simon Wiesenthal has affirmed that Haider is a radical, not a neo-Nazi, and has never expressed any anti-Semitic opinion. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright conceded with comic graciousness that Austrians had the right to choose their own government, but advised them not to do so. The American ambassador to Vienna has been recalled.

Heil, Haider?

National Review, March 6, 2000 by David Pryce-Jones

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