Joerg Haider in historical perspective
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 22:03:47 -0000
From: Mark Pittaway M.D.Pittaway@open.ac.uk
A number of very important points have been raised in relation to this topic. Warren Williams is correct to point out that the term far right - but also the terms neo-fascist and neo-Nazi are regularly used as terms of abuse to describe any kind of right-wing movement we may not particularly like. I have heard terms like neo-fascist used to describe right-wing movements like Hungary's Independent Smallholders' Party which is plainly not a neo-fascist movement. When describing the post-1986 FPOe I have used the term right-wing populism. The Haider FPOe shares much in common with movements that cannot be classified as conservative in the traditional sense but whose relationship to the conventional extreme-right is also ambiguous. One might therefore group the FPOe with party's like Canada's Reform Party, Britain's United Kingdom Independence Party, Norway's Progress Party or Italy's Lega Nord. Yet to classify the FPOe in this way is not to dismiss the very real concerns I and many others have about the FPOe's commitment to democratic norms and values. I don't want to deal with the dozen or so soundbites that have been used to characterise Haider's political positions here - there is a lot of evidence of links between the FPOe and explicitly neo-Nazi political organisations (for an overview see Brigitte Bailer & Wolgang Neugebauer "Rechtsextremismus" in Reinhard Siedler, Heinz Steinert & Emmerich Talos (eds.) "Osterreich 1945-1995" (Wien, 1995)). Also I would maintain that the programme of the party is based on racist assumptions, an explicit rejection of the concepts of either a multi-cultural or non-German Austria, and hostility to gender equality in the public sphere.
Then there is the question of the relationship between the FPOe and the National Socialist past. Although the FPOe from the 1960s until Haider's election as leader in 1986 attempted to recast itself as liberal party it has been seen as the representative of pan-German or at least national sentiment in Austria. The Freedom Party was founded in 1956 from an earlier grouping the Wahlverband der Unabhangigen created in 1949 to represent those voters who were denied the franchise in 1945 because of their connections to the National Socialist dictatorship. Therefore the party itself has at the very least an ambiguous relationship to the past. Furthermore when reading Tim Kirk's book "Nazism and the Working Class in Austria" and his description of public attitudes to Nazism in Austria prior to 1938 I was struck by the similarities between the appeal of Nazism in the 1930s and the appeal of the FPOe in the very different 1990s. There is clearly a case to answer here - though that is not to suggest that the 27% of the Austrian electorate who voted for the FPOe in October are neo-Nazis in any shape or form. Certainly as T. Mills Kelly points out the kind of national populism that the FPOe represents can be traced back to the monarchy also, though the antecedents are to be found in the pan-Germanists rather than with Lueger.
Then there are the points about the contribution of Austria's post-war political order. Proporz and its spread into all spheres of daily life is rapidly being identified as the source of Austria's ills. Maybe we should look at this historically. Proporz came into being in the context of a political system where there was a perceived need to avoid the conflict between political Cathlocism and Austro-Marxism that led to civil war in 1934 (and at least in the early years following World War Two to create a sense of unity among Austria's non-Communist political forces in the face of the Soviet presence in the east of the country). Proporz formed a key plank of "social partnership" along with the nationalisation of key industries, social reform and the prices and incomes agreements. Until the early 1980s this system of "social partnership" was economically successful. Austria went from the semi-periphery of the European economy during the inter-war years to a position where it's citizens enjoy one of the highest standards of living in Europe. The problem has arisen because much of the "social partnership" was dismantled by the administrations of Chancellors Vranitzky and Klima while proporz has remained - creating an impression of self-interested parties feathering their own nests while recession, unemployment and insecurity have hit the country. And lastly a response to Warren Williams's points about the "divisiveness" of the Austrian left. The trajectory of the SPOe has been similar to those of other western European social democratic parties. I don't think that the SPOe of Franz Vranitzky or Viktor Klima sees social problems in class terms any more than does the Labour Party of Tony Blair in Britain. In the 1970s under Bruno Kreisky the SPOe buried its Austro-Marxist past with its opening to the middle class and its performance in office as a party of liberal social reform - a process completed with the name change of the early 1990s when it dropped the Socialist in favour of Social Democratic. For all of the post-war period it supported "social partnership"; where the SPOe goes in the absence of consensus between the parties is anyone's guess. I suspect many radical voters have already gone to the Greens, and the experience of its sister parties elsewhere in western Europe does not suggest a quick return to the politics of class conflict.
Mark Pittaway
Dr. Mark Pittaway
Lecturer in European Studies
Department of History
The Open University
MILTON KEYNES
MK7 6AA
UNITED KINGDOM