As someone considerably further to the Left than Gerd
Nonnemacher, I have to say that I support everything he says
about Haider and the EU's response to his party's inclusion in
government.
It is without doubt the case that those who voted for the FPO were
largely dissatisfied with the system of proporz in Austria and the
wanted someone who would shake up the cosy consensus
between christian and social democracy which has dominated
Austria and Europe since the war. Mrs Thatcher, who on many
counts was to the right of Haider, came to power on the back of the
same resentment and Tony Blair is trying to shift Europe further
and further into accepting the necessity of structural reform based
on the same assumptions. What is the difference between Haider's
attacks on Proporz and Blair's on the "forces of conservatism" who
are holding back the liberalisation of the European market. They
are both part of a global neo-liberal agenda.
In the case of Haider, because he has to rely on the support of an
older generation who look nostalgically back to the past, this has
involved some very dubious statements on immigration and on the
Nazis and yet this is also no different to Mrs Thacher in 1979
saying that British people feel swamped by an alien culture or Jack
Straw promising to send the Afghani hijack victims back without
any investigation. Equally the Labour government's polices on
immigrants and asylums seekers with dispersal and the granting of
vouchers rather than benefits would cause outrage if carried out - or
even proposed - by Haider.
So why does a left-winger say all this? Firstly because to throw
around the term Nazi or Fascist against people like Haider is to
belittle the term, is to contribute to a non-recognition of it when it
does occur. It also prevents us from recognising that his policies
are already being carried out by other governments and that we had
18 years of a Tory government which started down this path many
years ago.
Secondly, the main reason, and this is again where Gerd is right,
is that the EU telling Austria that it cannot have the government
that it wants is to play right into Haider's hands. This sort of
behaviour is a gift to the right-wing Eurosceptics.
Thirdly, what if we had a government somewhere which decided
that socialist policies were to be introduced. Would the EU allow
PDS participation in the German government for example?
What is required now is not a knee-jerk anti-fascism but a
considerd analysis of the reality rather than rhetoric of policies in
Europe today. The real dangers lie not in a return to Hitlerism but in
the triumph of a rampant, neo-liberal Anglo-Saxon economic
agenda which threatens to dismantle the last vestiges of collective
values. That is the Trojan horse that Haiderism represents but it is
one which has been within the walls for a long time already.
Peter Thompson
Peter Thompson
Germanic Studies
University of Sheffield
Sheffield S10 2TN
Tel 0114 222 4907
Fax 0114 222 2160
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/D-H/gs/
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Die Wissenschaft gibt, welcher in ihr arbeitet und sucht, viel Vergnügen, dem welcher ihre Ergebnisse lernt, sehr wenig.
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