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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
The rise of Joerg Haider forces Austria to face the truth about its history -- and puts the European Union in a bind.
Feb 7, 2000 | Last week, as hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Vienna to protest the entry of Joerg Haider's anti-immigrant Freedom Party into the Austrian government and as European leaders denounced Haider himself for xenophobia and extremism, an odd little statement of outrage appeared on the Freedom Party (FPV) homepage.
"We were informed in September 1999 that a counterfeit of our website existed on the Internet," the statement begins. "We distance ourselves expressly from the altered content and the links on this website. We have no relations whatsoever with these cyberterrorists."
The cyberterrorists in question, as yet unidentified, have played a grim joke. On a site otherwise resembling the FPV address, tucked away under the heading Blue Links, are a few cheerily nationalist German phrases where lists of regional party headquarters should be. Each phrase hides a link. "Crusaders for our time" links to the Ku Klux Klan homepage. "We don't understand the language, but the symbols are right" connects to France's National Front, the right-wing party of Jean Marie Le Pen. And "Songs from the Homeland," the most incendiary link of all, contains banned hate groups and their songs -- everything from "Fuehrer, Fuehrer" by Romper Stomper and "Into the Oven" by Macht und Ehre (Power and Honor) to "Six Million Lies" by No Remorse and "Coon Shootin' Boogie" by Aryan.
The butt of the joke may be Haider and his party. But the punch line touches on Europe's deepest fears. The European Union members have reacted vehemently to the rise of the Freedom Party, imposing diplomatic isolation on Austria and, in the case of Belgium, hinting at expulsion. Having rebuilt themselves upon the ruins of two world wars, having survived a bloody century, the states of the EU have gone to great lengths to assure the rest of the world -- and themselves -- that the next century will be different.
In 1999, they adopted a single currency. Border controls have all but vanished (it is now possible to drive from Calais in northern France to Bari at the southern tip of Italy without a customs check). In November, several of the countries will begin to formalize a new military alliance. Slowly but surely, inch by bureaucratic inch, EU countries have been working toward a comfortable peace with one another, toward a trade-based harmony of languages, currencies, flags and cuisines.
Now, just as the road ahead seems clear, as the Balkan wars wind down, and even Turkey and Greece look ready to settle long-standing disputes, they find themselves confronted by Haider's party, and everything that it represents -- everything that the counterfeited links grotesquely imply -- in the government of one of its own member states.
Austrians have not been thrilled by the EU's reaction. Many have expressed shock at the threat of diplomatic isolation. After all, Haider's party did not stage a military coup. It won seats in a legitimate election and stands to win even more if this new coalition falls apart and new elections must be held.
Some EU countries, Italy in particular, seem uncomfortable with the overweening tone of the response. In 1994, a neo-fascist party, the National Alliance, joined the government in Rome. Despite a lot of hand-wringing, nothing much happened, and like so many Italian parties, the National Alliance vanished as quickly as it had come.
The EU has not backed down so far, but its bark will be worse than its bite. Already, economic sanctions have been ruled out, if they were ever seriously considered.
In a sense, the message of the member states is not for Haider and the Austrians. It aims to cow far-right parties in their own countries, and to discourage coalitions with them. In France, where the National Front remains a force, this is a concern. And in Germany, where the mainstream conservative party faces the worst scandal in its history, politicians fear the possibility that large numbers of right-leaning voters will defect to the handful of extremist parties. To make themselves clear on this point, the Social Democratic governments that make up the bulk of the EU are more than willing to wax anti-democratic.
