Rick Kuhn
from Monthly Review 52 (2) June 2000 pp. 21-35
For the first time since World War II the extreme right is a major component in a
national European government.
The ÖVP’s Wolfgang Schüssel may be Chancellor but Jörg Haider is in a stronger position. Haider is not a member of the new Federal Government. He has stayed at the head of the State Government of Carinthia, in the south east of Austria. While support for the ÖVP (Black) has slumped after the Black-Blue Coalition took office, the FPÖ (Blue) maintaining its position at the polls. And Haider exercises a quite different kind of control over his Party than Schüssel does over the ÖVP.
How could the Austrian far right could win 27 per cent of the vote in last October’s federal elections and now be an equal partner in government? It is particularly puzzling given that Austria is not only a wealthy country but is far from facing severe economic or social problems. Neo-liberal policies were introduced by the Grand Coalition between 1987 and 1999, in which the ÖVP was a junior partner to the Social Democrats (SPÖ). But the consequences of privatizations, cuts in the welfare state and deregulation of markets have so far been relatively mild compared with other developed countries. Corporatist arrangements between the ‘social partners’, business and labour, remained in place, not only in industrial relations but also in the formulation of the government’s economic and social policies. In terms of its political arrangements Austria was the last social democracy.
There is no comparing the situation in Austria with the economic crisis and social tensions in eastern Germany since 1990, where the rise of the extreme right has been worrying but on a much smaller scale, let alone Russia today or Europe during the early 1930s. Is Haider simply an anomaly, a purely Austrian phenomenon? Before looking at the forces behind the FPÖ’s participation in government and strategies to end it, however, it will be important to work out exactly what sort of party it is.
Right wing extremism, right wing populism, fascism?Since taking over the leadership of the Freedom Party in 1986, Haider has steered it in a fascist direction in terms of ideology, organization and personnel. The FPÖ has linked its criticisms of the established order in Austria to racist arguments. The new government’s program includes cutting immigration quotas for family reunions, targeting illegal immigrants, discrimination in schools against children who do not speak German, a longer waiting period before immigrants can become citizens, as well as standard conservative measures like further privatisations, cuts in health, education and welfare spending, greater outlays on defense, law and order.
For the FPÖ, unemployment, job security, education and health problems are explained
in terms of the numbers of foreigners in Austria. Shortly after taking office as the
Premier of the State of Carinthia in March 1999, Haider started to dismantle the system of
bilingual education for the Slovene minority.
Calculated references to National Socialism have played an important role in the shift in Freedom Party ideology. They appeal to a nostalgia for the Third Reich, legitimize fascism as a means to full employment and the activities of the SS, as noble soldiers in the German armed forces. They are also signals to hard core fascist supporters that Haider is really with them, only constrained by legislation that outlaws holocaust denial and efforts to reestablish the Nazi Party. By being prepared to withdraw some comments and to argue that he has been misinterpreted, Haider also awakens sympathy for himself and his ideas, drawing those who vote FPÖ as a protest against the mainstream parties closer to him ideologically. These statements, combined with organizational measures and the authority Haider has gained from electoral successes since taking over, have been part of the process of transforming the ideology and structure of the FPÖ. The Party’s liberal wing was in the ascendant from the late 1970s to 1986. After becoming Party chairperson, Haider marginalized and then excluded it. In 1993, the last liberal FPÖ members of the National Council (lower house of parliament) left to form the Liberal Forum, which failed to win any seats in the national elections in 1999. The Freedom Party is now a thoroughly top down organization (a Führerpartei) under Haider’s control. No criticism of his policies or person is tolerated. A series of Party officials and members have been removed from office and/or expelled. Whole State organizations, recently in Salzburg, have been reorganized to ensure Haider’s unquestioned authority. For this reason Haider’s recent resignation from the leadership of the Party and replacement by the Deputy Chancellor Susanne Riess-Passer can only be regarded as a cosmetic change. Riess-Passer, a long term and loyal subordinate of Haider’s, can be relied upon to carry out his instructions. The maneuver also provides him with a further excuse to distance himself from any unpopular policies implemented by the government.
Haider has promoted seasoned fascists in the Freedom Party. ‘Rightwing outsiders,
even neo Nazi elements have been received into the FPÖ, won positions in the Party and
have been elected to public office through it’.
The Freedom Party has a great deal in common with the Nazi Party in Germany and Mussolini’s Fascist Party: an extreme nationalist and racist ideology, an authoritarian internal structure, a breathtaking cynicism in its populist appeals, particularly to small business people and other members of the middle strata. At this stage, it still lacks a central element of fascist parties: a para-military fighting organization with the potential to attack victims and opponents on the streets. Le Pen’s Front National in France and groups in Germany do include such elements. But they are much less influential than the Freedom Party. At this stage it would be a large risk for Haider to start building a fighting force, scaring away large numbers of people who have voted FPÖ as a protest. But participation in government legitimizes his activities in general and paves the way for more radical steps. By agreeing to a neo-liberal program for the Black-Blue Coalition government, the Freedom Party is also specifically attempting to win more widespread support from the capitalist class. These developments and the inevitability of deep social tensions during the next global recession make full strength fascism a real threat in Austria.
There are several factors behind Haider’s success. Longer term elements include the nature of the Party he took over, the third largest throughout the period since 1949, and, closely related to this, the circumstances and consequences of the myth of Austria as the first victim of National Socialism.
Where Haider and the Freedom Party came fromSince the late 19th century, politics in the German speaking provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, after World War I, the First Austrian Republic were organized around three ‘camps’. The Christian Social Party started as a vehicle of petty bourgeois protest against aristocratic rule and the expansion of big capital. This was the forerunner of the People’s Party. By the start of the 20th century, through an accommodation with the established order pioneered by their preeminent leader Karl Lueger, the Christian Socials had become a conservative, anti-semitic and clerical organization with solid support amongst the peasantry and Catholic middle classes that benefitted from the patronage of sections of the ruling class.
With the Austrian economy in ruins, Christian Social Chancellor Engelbert Dolfuss ended parliamentary democracy, shortly after Hitler took power. Having defeated the labour movement in a short civil war in 1934, Dolfuss and his successor Kurt Schuschnigg presided over an Austro-fascist regime, squeezed between Fascist Italy and Nazi German.
From 1889, the Social Democratic Party built a solid working class base. But its leadership, and especially the right wing led by Karl Renner, supported the Empire’s war effort in August 1914, just as their German counterparts did. After the 1918 revolution, Renner was the first Chancellor of the Austrian Republic. But Social Democratic participation in government ended in 1920 and was followed by right wing coalitions dominated by the Christian Socials. However, the SPÖ has participated in all post World War II Austrian governments, apart from the period when the People’s Party ruled alone between 1966 and 1970, and since February 2000. The Socialists were initially junior partners to the ÖVP. They governed alone between 1970 and 1983, as senior partners to the FPÖ to 1986 and to the ÖVP to 1999.
The third political current in Austrian politics has been German nationalism; with a
strong emphasis on antisemitism, it long favored unification with Germany. The main base
for German nationalism was anticlerical elements in the urban and rural middle class and
elements in the state bureaucracy. From the 1918-20 border war with the new Yugoslavian
Republic, racism and German nationalism had a stronghold in the southern province of
Carinthia. During the 1930s, the Nazi Party became the dominant element in this camp. As
early as 1930, Haider’s father went to Munich to join the Storm Troops. In 1938
Austria was incorporated into Germany (Anschluss).
Western and Russian forces occupied Austria after World War II. But in a fiction designed to undermine efforts to reunite the country with Germany again, which also concealed the class basis of Nazism, the occupying powers deemed Austria the first victim of National Socialist foreign policy. The Social Democratic and People’s Party politicians who emerged from the camps or returned from exile accepted this distortion, to accelerate the shift of authority from the occupiers to Austrian institutions and to prevent an east-west partition as occurred in Germany when the Cold War set in. Consequently, the process of denazification was even more half-hearted than in West Germany.
When former Nazis were allowed to vote again in 1949, the People’s Party and the Social Democrats tried to win their support. But a new party, the Union of Independents, specifically targeted this group. Its founders hoped to reincorporate them into parliamentary politics around a liberal nationalist ideology, which had elements of continuity with the old third camp, but was hostile to National Socialism. The Union won 12 per cent of the national vote. The defeat of the October strike wave in 1950 broke militant and Communist influence in the union movement. This established a precondition for a corporate system of industrial relations. Not only were wages and conditions negotiated in the Parity Commission between the highly centralized Austrian Trade Union Federation and the Workers’ Chamber (elected by all workers) on the one hand and Chambers representing business and farmers on the other. Under the Grand Coalition, the Commission was increasingly involved in all aspects of social and economic policy. Meanwhile, the Union of Independents was increasingly dominated by its right wing. When it was reformed as the Freedom Party in 1956, ‘its top leadership consisted almost without exception of former National Socialists’. The Chairperson, Anton Reinthaller, had been a Minister in the Nazi government of Austria, which oversaw Anschluss. While German nationalism and the idea of a racial community (Volksgemeinschaft) were characteristic of the Party’s conservative wing, the organization was electorally oriented and still included a liberal current. The Carinthian FPÖ inherited the particularly right wing traditions of German nationalism in that State. After 1953, support for the Union of Independents/Freedom Party in federal elections was less than ten per cent. But the Party established a national organization and was the only opposition in the National Council after the Communist Party lost its representatives. The same sentiments which inspired the FPÖ’s right wing also saturated the Austrian Gymnastics Association, a cultural and sporting body, several other youth organizations and university student fraternities. His family background and membership of these groups shaped the young Jörg Haider’s outlook. At 14 he joined the Freedom Party’s own youth organization. At the age of 16, in 1966, he made a prize-winning speech for the Austrian Gymnastics Association, published as ‘Are we Austrians Germans?’ by a neo-nazi newspaper in Germany.
In Germany, the Free Democratic Party started out much like the FPÖ. But its liberal wing came to dominate the FDP and it established a place in German politics by moving to the center. From the late 1950s, the Party’s chairperson Friedrich Peter nudged the Austrian Freedom Party in the same direction, hoping to turn it into an acceptable alternative coalition partner for either the People’s Party or the Social Democrats. The National Democratic Party split from the Free Democrats in 1966-67 was a reaction to this strategy. Peter appreciated Haider’s oratorical talents and became his first important patron. During the 1970s and early 1980s, when the SPÖ was in government alone, Haider acclimated to the liberal turn in his Party’s tactics.
As the long post-war boom spluttered to an end, the Social Democrats lost their majority in the National Council and entered into a coalition with the liberalizing Freedom Party in 1983, now under chairperson Norbert Steger. But the FPÖ’s right wing, especially in Carinthia, was restless and Haider turned himself into the figurehead of this dissatisfaction. When he replaced Steger as Party leader in 1986, the SPÖ ended the coalition. But the Freedom Party’s share of the vote at the subsequent elections doubled.
Haider was now at the head of a significant national Party, with almost 37 000 members. It was still far from ideologically homogenous and consisted of a series of regional organizations often revolving around loyalties to State and even local leaders. Haider started to change this, as we have seen, by driving out the liberals. In the late 1990s, he also asserted central control over the state Party organizations in Salzburg, Vienna and Lower Austria. Loyalty to the FPÖ now means loyalty to Haider.
Unlike fascists in other countries, Haider has not been faced with the task of creating an organization from the ground up or of capturing a conservative party with deep bourgeois democratic traditions of its own. The Freedom Party was not a fascist party at its foundation and in the strict sense is still not one. But there is a very strong bond of continuity between it and the Nazi Party. It has always included a layer of activists open to fascist ideas and since 1986 this layer has been given greater confidence, direction and tighter organization by Haider. It has also been expanded through an influx of people from small neo-Nazi groups.
Opportunist protestThe longer term elements in Haider’s success have been supplemented by recent developments: widespread insecurity during the last decade and a half and a series of maneuvers to expand support for the Freedom Party at the expense of its competitors. The political and economic circumstances of the last decade and half in Austria have been particularly favourable for Haider. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Freedom Party did not benefit particularly from being the party of opposition to a Grand Coalition. The economy was expanding rapidly. Anti-communism and Austria’s position as a formally neutral state on the edge of ‘the west’ helped cement a social consensus. The period since the reformation of the Grand Coalition in 1987 has been different. It is certainly true that the Austrian economy is far from being in crisis. The unemployment rate remains below five per cent (using the standard European Union [EU] measure). But economic growth has been slower. And, as a consequence, the restructuring of Austria’s place in the world economy has not been cushioned as it was during the period of post-war reconstruction. Major economic changes have increased the insecurity of all social classes. Preparation for joining the European Union in 1993 has been only one aspect of globalization. Most of Austria’s very large state owned manufacturing and banking sectors has been privatized. In 1998 alone, the Austrian Government raised almost three billion dollars by selling off government enterprises. Many jobs have been axed. But unemployment figures have been depressed by large numbers retiring early. The Grand Coalition also made cuts to education and social security. In June 1999, it legislated for a taxation reform in the interests of business.
So Haider has been well placed to the direct popular insecurities (during the period of
relative economic stagnation since the late 1970s) against immigrants and ethnic
minorities, He has called for a halt to immigration, pointing out that the number of
unemployed is similar to the number of resident foreigners and blaming them for crime. He
champions the cultural rights of the German majority, threatened, he claims, by
concessions to foreigners. One of the Freedom Party’s attempts to channel discontent
in 1993 was the collection of signatures for an initiative to force the National Council
to consider a series of racist demands. These included stopping all immigration, exclusion
of children who don’t speak German from normal education and a 30 per cent limit in
any class on the proportion of children of compulsory school age whose first language was
not German. The fact that Austrian governments and the ÖGB, through the Parity
Commission, pursued discriminatory policies against foreign workers for many years made
racism more respectable. During the 1990s, the Grand Coalition went further, implementing
measures demanded by the FPÖ that reduced immigration, tightened asylum laws and required
foreigners to carry full documentation of their residency status at all times.
Using Nazi terminology to describe "threats" to the German ethnic majority, Haider has also cashed in on the limited denazification of Austria after the War. The People’s Party contributed to this success in its desperation to have Kurt Waldheim reelected to the largely ceremonial position of National President in 1986. A striking symbol of ruling class politics in Austria, Waldheim had forgotten that he had been a Nazi even before Anschluss. He was reelected on the back of an apologetic campaign, which rejected "foreign" (in some formulations, "Jewish") interference in Austrian affairs. Of course the Freedom Party was in the best position to benefit from the legitimation of such sentiments. Haider’s statement about the effectiveness of the Nazi’s employment policy in 1991, for example, reinforced his support amongst the hard right in Austria and appealed to the much wider constituency of people who thought Waldheim had also been unfairly victimized for his Nazi past. It also lost Haider the position of head of the Carinthian government which he held from 1989. But, zigzagging back and forth from the National to the Carinthian State Assembly, he regained the position in early 1999, when his Party won 42 per cent of the vote in the State elections.
As Haider has extended his control over the Freedom Party he has maneuvered to expand
its support base. This has not only involved very rapid shifts and reversals in policy, as
with the FPÖ’s policy on EU membership, but also the modification of long standing
traditions. So Haider has on some occasions played down aspects of the German nationalist
tradition, preferring a German-Austrian to a pan German racial community. The late 1990s
have seen a series of overtures to the reactionary wing of the Catholic hierarchy, in an
attempt to undermine a element in the support base of the People’s Party.
The FPÖ has also targeted the Social Democrats’ working class base. Haider’s attempt to split the trade union movement by setting up a union associated with his Party in 1997 flopped. Appealing to conservative attitudes to women, he has also promised increased payments to families where the mother stays at home to look after children. But the Freedom Party’s main appeal to workers was as a means of protesting against the Grand Coalition’s neo-liberal policies. The FPÖ’s largest gains in 1999, compared to the 1995 federal elections, were at the expense of the SPÖ.
The Austrian Greens eventually provided an alternative avenue for electoral protests against the Grand Coalition, winning seven per cent of the vote in 1999. They first won seats in the National Council in 1987, but suffered severe internal divisions until 1994. The main obstacle to left wing opposition to the Social Democrat/People’s Party Government, however, was not the lack of a parliamentary vehicle, but the hegemony of the SPÖ. Government policy accommodated to, but did not create the sources of the real insecurities experienced by the Austrian population. Global integration and pressures on profit rates meant that Austrian corporations needed to cut costs, rationalize employment and push the government into reducing taxes and public outlays, while delivering windfall profits to the buyers of privatized state enterprises. Decades of ‘social partnership’ have meant that the Austrian Trade Union federation, which claims one and a half million members in a country of only eight million people, has been more concerned to negotiate the terms of these changes than systematically mobilize workers to oppose them. Union density has been falling in Austria and support for the Freedom Party, even amongst organized workers has been growing. Its strongholds in the union movement are in the police force, security services and Defense Ministry. The Austrian trade union movement is large, coherent and potentially powerful. But its sizeable bureaucracy, tightly integrated into the two main political parties, especially the SPÖ, has not led a serious mass struggle against a government for generations. Strike levels in Austria have been low by international standards for many decades.
The seeming paradox of the FPÖ’s success is therefore best explained in terms of the state of capital accumulation, the mainstream parties and the Freedom Party itself. A concern to shore up their competitiveness and profits has led wider sections of the capitalist class to support more radical neo-liberal policies promised by an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition. At the same time, the stresses and uncertainties created by domestic and international capitalist competition has led many Austrians, disillusioned by the mainstream parties, to look for political alternatives, despite ongoing prosperity. Both the SPÖ and the ÖVP have been been complicit in the restructuring process over the past decade. The existence in the FPÖ of a significant layer of rightwing extremists and fascists, with a long tradition and considerable experience, meant the Party, under Haider, was well placed to use racism to mobilise this discontent. The recipe for the Freedom Party’s rise has distinctively Austrian proportions of capitalist restructuring, racism, racist organisations and discredited political institutions. But the ingredients can be found across the planet.
Schüssel has claimed that, by giving the Freedom Party political responsibility, he will domesticate Haider. German conservatives made exactly this argument when they put Hitler into power in 1933. This approach can only accelerate the emergence of a powerful fascist movement in Austria. Outside Austria, the strategy for dealing with Haider that has attracted most attention is one of international diplomatic isolation by EU and other countries. This has been important at a symbolic level, enheartening Haider’s opponents in Austria. In practical terms the diplomatic boycott has been of marginal significance. Although bilateral meetings with Austria have been reduced, most governments have taken care not to let this affect their trade. Austria, moreover, continues to participate in the multilateral forums and activities of the EU, particularly at the bureaucratic level.
The demonstrations inside Austria against the Freedom Party have been of much greater real significance. Three hundred thousand people crowded onto Vienna’s Ringstrasse on February 19 to protest the Black-Blue government. This put enormous pressure on the government, established a solid foundation for further activity and pushed Haider into his tactical resignation from the FPÖ’s top post. The SPÖ, Greens, human rights organisations, women’s groups, social democratic union fractions and some unions supported the action. What is more, the largest identifiable element in the demonstration was trade unionists with their banners.
The massive mobilization against the new government drew on a tradition which goes back to the ‘Sea of lights’ in January 1993, when 250,000 people turned out against Haider’s racist initiative and fascist murders of asylum seekers in Germany. That demonstration played a decisive role in ensuring that he did not reach his target of 500,000 signatures. When the prospect of an ÖVP-FPÖ coalition first emerged after 1999 elections, there was a demonstration of 50,000 in Vienna. This, at least, delayed its formation by several months. Other large protests preceded and have followed the February 19 event. The rich and famous, including members of the government, suffered the indignity of having to enter the Opera Ball, the highlight of Vienna’s social calendar, through a 15,000 strong picket. These actions have found support in rallies against Haider in Germany, France, Britain, the United States, Italy, the Czech Republic and Denmark.
The size of the demonstrations against Haider indicates the scope for involving people in ongoing activity. But by themselves they have proved insufficient to paralyze the FPÖ, rule out further evolution in a fascist direction or bring down the Black-Blue Coalition. They do indicate the immense potential that can be tapped to achieve these goals and to slash the roots of fascism in an economic system which creates insecurities about jobs, incomes and social wellbeing. Senior union officials have taken a strong verbal stand against aspects of the government’s program. Union leaders have also endorsed token strikes over government plans for rationalization and to totally privatize Telekom Austria, the Post Savings Bank and Austria Tabak. But the ÖGB, whose President is an SPÖ parliamentarian, has expressed a willingness to negotiate, rather than initiating preparations for sustained mass industrial action.
There has certainly been strong rank and file support for a militant response to
threats of privatisations and cuts to workers’ entitlements. The SPÖ and ÖGB,
however, regard demonstrations and strikes as props in an electoral strategy and in
negotiations with the government, rather than as means to bring it down. In March, the new
chair of the Social Democrats, Alfred Gusenbauer, said he was prepared to grant the
government a probationary year. He and the Greens’ leader, Alexander van der Bellen,
initially favoured EU sanctions, but later softened their positions. So it will take
consistent, organized pressure from below, independent of the SPÖ, Green and ÖGB
leaderships, to bring about the kind of sustained action that can not only stop the
Black-Blue measures but bring down the government in a way that cripples the right.
* Rick Kuhn teaches on Australian and international political economy at the Australian National University and is a labor movement activist. He thanks Kerstin Andrae, David Glanz, Gareth Dale, Tom O’Lincoln, and Ellen Meiksins Wood who provided valuable encouragement, ideas or criticisms in the preparation of this article. [main text]
1 There is a partial precedent, the fascist Alleanza Nazionale/MSI of Giannfranco Fini was a junior partner in Silvio Berlusconi’s 1994 coalition government in Italy. [main text]
2 ‘Konflikt um zweisprachige Posten’ Standard (Vienna), May 29 1999. [main text]
3 Brigitte Bailer and Wolfgang Neugebauer ‘Die FPÖ: vom Liberalismus zum Rechtsextremismus’ in Stiftung Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes Handbuch Österreichischen Rechtsextremismus (Wien: Deuticke, 1994) p.383. [main text]
4 In 1999, an article in a weekly journal edited by Mölzer was editor in chief of a weekly which carried an article which called Hitler ‘a great social revolutionary’, Peter Mayr ‘FP-Ideologe im Visier des Staatsanwalts’ Standard August 4, 1999. [main text]
5 Thomas Vasek "Braunes Revival" Profil, (Vienna), April 21 2000. [main text]
6 Gerd Kräh Die Freiheitlichen unter Jörg Haider (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996) p. 80. [main text]
7 Eugene Sensenig-Dabbous ‘Social democracy in one country: immigration and minority policy in Austria’ in Gareth Dale and Mike Cole (eds) The European Union and migrant labour (Oxford Berg, 1999). [main text]
8 Georg Windisch ‘FPÖ sucht Kulturkampf-Gefährten’ Standard August 20, 1999. [main text]
9 Österreichische Volkspartei and Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs Zukunft im Herzen Europas: Österreich neu regieren (Vienna, 2000) p. 25. [main text]
10 ‘Neue Linke aufbauen! Für die Mai-Demos mobilisieren!,’ Linkswende, (Vienna), April 2000, http://members.xoom.com/linkswende/. [main text]
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