TOP STORY: AUSTRIA TILTS TO THE RIGHT: Missteps of church and political establishment aid rise of Au

c. 1996 Religion News Service VIENNA _ He bashes them at will, but Joerg Haider has Austria’s political and religious establishments to thank for his rising fortunes. The leader of the resurgent Freedom Party torments the ruling Social Democrats and Christian Democrats by claiming that in their zeal for European unity they have sacrificed the […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

VIENNA _ He bashes them at will, but Joerg Haider has Austria’s political and religious establishments to thank for his rising fortunes.

The leader of the resurgent Freedom Party torments the ruling Social Democrats and Christian Democrats by claiming that in their zeal for European unity they have sacrificed the country. And he contrasts his anti-immigrant appeals with the Catholic Church, which preaches tolerance but finds its voice muffled by internal struggle and Catholic discontent.


Haider’s growing appeal, evinced most recently in European Parliament elections in which his party won a third of the vote, is the latest manifestation of a continent tilting right, toward populist remedies that would seem to make the medicine of European unity more palatable.

Every country in Europe, including Austria, is practicing some form of economic austerity to reduce deficits and increase growth to ultimately create a common currency. But unlike many European countries with 12 percent unemployment, Austria’s jobless rate is an enviable five percent.

If Haider’s Freedom Party now captures a third of the vote with five percent unemployment, how vast will its fortunes be should Austria’s problems worsen?

And that is the question that people here are debating. Some are worried that this urbane, smooth talker, whose father was an ardent Nazi and has a history of reversing positions to suit the political climate, will find his way to the chancellor’s office by 1999, and one day one kick out of the country some 80,000 political refugees and up to 200,000 illegal immigrants.

Others say Austrians mindful of the nation’s questionable behavior during World War II, when nearly 200,000 Jews perished with the government’s complicity, would bar Haider from reaching the highest rung of power.”I think what we’re seeing is a very modern rightist populism that might be the shape of things to come,”said Eugene Sensenig, a social scientist in Salzburg who predicted that Haider could become the next chancellor when elections are held in 1998 or 1999.

But Hubert Feichtlbauer, the Vienna-based president of the European region of World Union of Catholic Journalists, said reaction to the recent vote is exaggerated.”This was a European election, not a national one,”he said.”I think the outside world is in some ways misled because many of these votes are a protest of the government and certainly not a right-wing extremist feeling. (In Austria) I still think there is a great awareness of the dangers of Nazism and of any rightist party.” Haider’s supporters reject both interpretations, saying neither their man nor his party fosters extremist views.”This is ridiculous,”said Helene Partik-Pable, a Freedom Party member of Parliament responsible for internal affairs.”We are not racist and we are not intolerant. In this time everybody is a Nazi or Fascist who says we have too many immigrants and this is the wrong attitude. We must be allowed to discuss this problem because it’s a very important point for the people who must live with all the immigrants.” One year ago, at Haider’s prodding, Austria implemented one of the toughest immigration laws in Europe, reducing the number of eligible immigrants and refugees and tightening residency rules. The initial law even barred many foreign university professors and managers of international corporations from working here. Those provisions were later struck from the law.

Haider’s party is now trying for further restrictions which would completely halt immigration and force the repatriation of refugees, most of whom are from Bosnia.”There is this climate of fear among refugees because they are in a very difficult situation,”said Josef Erbler, who heads the Salzburg-based Afro-Asian Institute, which works with refugees. He noted that many of the Bosnian or Turkish refugees have no homes to return to. Some have applied for political asylum and wait nervously as the government becomes more receptive to restrictive border practices.”I see echoes of the past,”said Leon Zelman, executive director of the Jewish Welcome Service of Vienna, a city-funded tourist organization that sits on the square adorned by the gothic St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Haider, he said,”brings so much angst to people. He says, `Look, I want to help you keep your jobs.’ This is what they said in 1938. `The Jews are taking your jobs.'” Zelman, 69, arrived from Poland 53 years ago. He is among the 1,200 Austrian Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.


Paul Grosz, 71, president of the Austrian Federation of Jewish Communities, said of Haider:”He’s dangerous because he’s much more able to use the truth of democracy than other such people do. He hasn’t said a single anti-Semitic word yet but he defends those who do.” Last year Haider angered a sizable number of people by meeting with a group of elite Nazi Waffen SS veterans and calling them”decent folk.”In the past he has praised Hitler’s idea of forced labor.

Partik-Pable defended Haider, saying he was showing compassion for men who were forced into service.”It is very common to blame the elder generation for all the crimes which happened in the Second World War,”she said.

It is this mix of historical judgment and populist rhetoric that causes some alarm in a country that has only recently come to grips with its behavior during World War II. Although Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938, some say the country long supported the ideas of Hitler, who was born in Austria, and became zealous in the elimination of Jews.

Haider’s father was a devoted Nazi long before the annexation.

The country had 42 synagogues and a thriving Jewish population of some 300,000 before the war. As many as 200,000 are believed to have been killed during the purge and no one doubts that many Austrians were their willing executioners.

Austria has taken several steps toward confronting its wartime past. It has established a $50-million fund for victims and admitted to being part of the driving force of the Holocaust. In 1993, Vienna opened the city’s first Jewish Museum. The University of Vienna has established a Jewish studies program.

The sins of Austria’s forebears are recited at regular memorial services at the Mauthausen concentration camp near Vienna. The deeds are displayed in a wide range of books. Television programs recount the horrors.


In Austria, as in Germany, public denial of the Holocaust is a crime.

Last month, in another sign of reconciliation, the government hosted a benefit auction in which thousands of unclaimed art objects looted from Jewish homes by the Nazis raised $14 million for Jewish survivors and families.

The powerful image of the Holocaust still hangs heavy over the affairs of Austria, as it does in Germany, which is why Haider and his supporters believe they are being maligned.

Yet Haider’s real designs are clouded. Once a backer of European unity, he reversed his position in 1994 when Austrians were being told that membership would require economic belt-tightening.

In 1992, Haider, who has spent most of his 15 public years as a political neophyte, said that the idea of Austria was an error of history, and that it was properly part of Germany. Nowadays, he is the country’s top nationalist.”He has no vision. He’s very clearly following opinion polls,”said Franz Karl Pruller, who heads the foreign aid department of Caritas, the Catholic relief group that works with refugees.

The polls show a steady erosion of support for the status quo _ the governing Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats who have shared power for most of the post-World War II years. In addition, Austrians, 80 percent of whom are at least nominally Catholic, are continuing to leave the church because of scandals and a rigid orthodoxy some say does not address their everyday concerns.

The church is still reeling from charges of pedophilia against Vienna’s former top cleric, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, who retired last year. The allegations caused a furor, prompting a petition drive demanding church reforms, including more local authority over the naming of bishops and cardinals. The initiative gathered 500,000 signatures, five times the organizers’ original goal.


Since then, thousands have left the church, and many of them refuse to pay the church tax of up to 1.5 percent on incomes. What’s worse, scandals and the reform efforts have caused the institution to lose some of its moral authority, which gives anti-immigrant supporters an opening in public affairs.

Erich Latenberger, editor of the Catholic news agency Kathpress, said that Haider uses the church as a wedge. “The party of Mr. Haider has some use for the church. He uses immigration, for example, to contrast his positions from the church and Catholic organizations.” Lest it be accused of meddling in politics, the church hierarchy has refrained from directly attacking Haider. In fact, some of its leaders _ notably Bishop Kurt Krenn, the archbishop of St. Polten near Vienna _ openly support the party.

But most church leaders attack Haider’s ideas. Cardinals and priests inveigh against selfishness, and urge tolerance toward refugees.

Pruller said the church is in something of a bind these days because of the internal conflicts over orthodoxy and an increasingly individualistic society after the end of the Cold War.”The church is no longer an instrument of social order,”he said.

During the Cold War, the church found a degree of solidarity among the people in representing the”correct”side of the clear line between democracy and communism, much as the church did in Poland.

Now, Pruller said,”There’s nothing that you have to oppose anymore because the communists are gone, and therefore the church today is like in any other country.” MJP END HEILBRONNER


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