Let me see if I have this straight. Israel is demanding international action against the Austrian government because its new governing coalition includes the Freedom Party, which is led by a man who has made “racist” statements. That’s the same Israel, of course, that officially discriminates against Arabs and that bulldozes the homes of Palestinians who refuse to live crammed into apartheid-like settlements.
How’s that for bald-faced hypocrisy?
Likewise, European Union nations have been issuing threats and devising sanctions against Austria for the same reason. Those are the same EU nations that are filled with former communist party members, who have leading Green movements that are epitomes of left-wing intolerance and nuttiness, that have any number of politicians who, in the observation of The New York Times, “have made excuses for Stalin or other dictators.”
Not to be outdone, the Clinton administration-two words that have become synonymous with hypocrisy-is joining in the fray, issuing dire warnings about the rise of Austrian extremism. Yet, unlike some other well-known country, the Austrians haven’t bombed anyone in recent months, haven’t imposed a policy of child-killing sanctions on any nation, haven’t deprived any foreigners of badly needed medicines because their leader can’t tell a legitimate pharmaceutical plant from a terrorist-run chemical weapons facility.
Whatever. Anti-Austria hysteria isn’t about a rational examination of the political scene on distant shores. It is about, well, hysteria. Apparently, leftists are so afraid of any dissent, and so unable to offer rational arguments for their positions, that they must depict any opponent as a Nazi.
Those of us who are libertarians or conservatives routinely are called Nazis by liberals, even when the policies we promote (noninterventionism, free markets, limited government) are the very opposites of the programs the Nazis promoted. So I know from experience that the ultra-far-right charges don’t always hold up under scrutiny.
Still, when I first heard the news reports about Joerg Haider’s Freedom Party getting 27-percent of the vote in recent Austrian elections, and about its inclusion last week in a center-right governing coalition, I thought that, perhaps, someone like Russia’s notorious anti-Semite Vladimir Zhirinovsky had gained power.
But I kept reading the news accounts about the neo-Nazi, Nazi-sympathizing, far-right, ultra-far-right, ultra-super-duper-exceedingly-far-right Freedom Party, but could not find any supporting information. Surely, if Haider was such a Nazi-lover, then he would have on the record at least as many inflammatory quotations as Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson or Al “rip your lungs out” Gore.
The main charge against Haider is that he supported Hitler’s employment policies. But how much checking would it have taken for the Associated Press, the network news stations or any other media establishmentarians to find out or report on the context of that support?
Thank goodness for the Internet. Here is an account by Justin Raimondo from his recent column on the antiwar.com Web site:
“This is the old cut-and-paste school of character assassination, in which single sentences are lifted out of context and presented on their face; in Haider’s case, it is a single phrase, a fragment of a sentence uttered in the heat of debate on the floor of the Austrian Parliament. . [I]n answer to Haider’s proposal that welfare recipients, both native and foreign born, be strongly encouraged to find private sector jobs under threat of a cut-off in benefits, the socialists replied that Haider’s proposal would be a return to the policies of the Third Reich! Overcome by such hypocrisy, the intemperate Haider replied that, unlike the Social Democrats, the Nazis had actually increased employment …”
Kind of takes the wind out of the “Springtime for Haider in Austria” hysteria, doesn’t it? On Sunday, The Washington Post ran an extensive story titled “Haider Plays on Fears of Foreigners.” Although it contains the typical far-right this-and-that hyperbole, the story at least printed some of the things this fiery racist actually said.
At the worst, Haider said “The Waffen SS was part of the Wehrmacht [German military] and hence it deserves all the honor and respect of the army in public life.” Sounds pretty bad, but, as Toronto Sun columnist Eric Margolis pointed out this week, “Some Waffen SS units committed atrocities. The majority of Waffen SS, however, were courageous soldiers who fought ferociously in a bad cause.” Which, he notes, isn’t that different from what Ronald Reagan said during a controversial trip to a German cemetery.
The Post’s section of Haider quotations on Jews included nothing even interesting let along incriminating. Just the typical statements about the horror of the Holocaust, about the fact that “It is known in my 20 years in politics, I never uttered a single anti-Semitic remark.” And he bragged about his close relationship with Jewish Austrians one of whom is his top adviser. Had Haider said anything inflammatory about Jews, I’m sure it would have been splashed across the headline. If that’s all the Post could dig up, then there’s precious little linking the man to Nazism.
What’s going on here?
Haider is opposed to open borders, fearing that waves of low-paid immigrant labor from Eastern Europe will flood into the country, driving down wages and harming the Austrian way of life. I don’t share his immigration views, but since when is it a sign of Nazism to oppose open borders?
Furthermore, the Freedom Party champions the privatization of industry, tax cuts, rooting out corruption as well as some questionable policies for increasing welfare for families. But, by and large, his program is pretty mainstream stuff. You may not agree with that brand of conservatism, but it has nothing to do with Nazism or fascism. To suggest otherwise is slanderous, illogical and Nazi-like in its totalitarian desire to paint opponents as pure evil, worthy of any rebuke.
But the Post article touched on the real reason the establishment is so alarmed: “[W]hat scares many EU governments is that his views may send a negative signal to prospective members and nurture doubts among their own populations about the wisdom of its eastward expansion. The EU is holding, or about to open, talks on prospective membership with 12 candidate countries, including four of Austria’s neighbors Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.”
In other words, the Euro-socialists and other Third Way governments fear that their uniform plans for the world are imperiled if anyone resists. And they are dangerously expanding an economic union into a political one-which is what the “extremists” always said would happen. So the real fear isn’t anything Austria might do to its minorities or its neighbors, but that Austria will complicate European unification – which is a big part of the global progressive agenda.
If that’s the case, then go get ’em Joerg Haider and let’s hope that other pockets of resistance emerge elsewhere.
February 10, 2000
Steven Greenhut is an editorial writer at the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif.
