Immigration and political radicalization

Wofgang Münchau's Eurointellgence Report (09/19/2018) makes this observation, which I would say applies to the US, as well: "Immigration has become to Germany what Europe has been to the UK - a permanent issue that ends up radicalising both sides in the debate, and society in general."

I wouldn't say that it applies to Austria, at least not yet. The far right (FPÖ) have made significant gains with anti-immigration demagoguery. And the conservative party (ÖVP) has also adopted a hardline anti-immigration program at the national level, although some of the party leaders in the federal states aren't yet willing to go full Orbán yet.

But the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) isn't showing any signs of what I would understand as radicalism yet. Although they have been pretty articulate in criticizing the ÖVP/FPÖ government's showy and highly ideological anti-immigrant policies.

Anti-immigrant policies in Europe

The anti-immigration agitation in Europe, as in America, is often a fact-free zone. Facts are very often more than inconveenient for the xeophobic narratives.

Still, facts do matter. Not to xenophobic politicians and agitators. But they do matter.

Christoph Reuter et al prsent a count of Syrian refugees in "Die Logik der Sieger" Der Spiegel 33: 2018 (11.08.2018):

Doch zumindest die Verlierer des Kriegs stehen fest: all jene, die sich gegen das Regime Assads erhoben. Doch letztlich hat das ganze Land verloren. Unter den 400 000 bis 500 000 Toten sind auch Zehntausende Soldaten aus Assads alawitischer Minderheit. Fünfeinhalb Millionen Syrer sind in Anrainerstaaten geflohen, dazu kommen sechseinhalb Millionen Binnenvertriebene, insgesamt etwa die Halfte der Bevölkerung von 2010.

[... at the least it is clear who the losers of the {Syrian civil} war are: all those who rose up against the Assads regime. Actually, in the end the whole country lost. Among the 400,000 to 500,000 dead there are also tens of thousands of soldiers from Assad's Alawite minority. Five and a half million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries, in addition to six and a half million internally displaced, altogether around half the population of 2010.]

War makes refugees.

Meanwhile, the Austrian government of Chancellor Sebastian "Babyface" Kurz continues to embarrass itself with it foreign policy that looks more all the time like subservience to Putin and Russia.

Here again the Russian state channel RT presentation of Putin dancing with the bride at the wedding of Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, after which she bows and kneels to the Russian President, Putin dances, speaks German at Austrian FM’s wedding 08/18/2018):

The event called further attention to the deferential attitude Kurz' government has been taking toward Russia and pro-Russian parties in the Balkans, as Adelheid Wölfl reports in Die türkis-blaue Politik sorgt am Balkan für Irritationen 20.08.2018. Over eight months into the existence of the new government, it's pretty clear that Chancellor Babyface (ÖVP) is following the lead of his Vice Chancellor Hans-Christian Strache, whose party (FPÖ) has an Agreement on Joint Endeavors and Cooperation with Putin's United Russia party. Wölfl notes with in the FPÖ has an "ideological alliance" with hardline nationalists in Serbia and the "Republika Srpska," which is actually part of Bosnia but which Serbian nationalists regard as a legitimate part of their envisioned Greater Serbia.

Austria in the past has sought to position itself as a kind of disinterested party that could mediate between contesting countries and factions in the Balkans. But Kurz and Strache appear to be tilting to a more pro-Russia policy, which positions them more as a partisan actors there.

Kurz' government has also made it a practice to divert criticism from its other policies and missteps by posturing on the immigration issue. So it's not surprising after the humiliating performance before Putin this past weekend, Chancellor Babyface is singing the close-the-borders song again.

Michaela Kampl reports on the latest rescue ship that has picked up refugees and is looking for permission from some country to dock the Diciotti with 177 rescued people on board. (Italien fordert von EU Lösung im Streit um gerettete Migranten Standard 20.08.2018) Babyface, who is currently serving a six-month turn as President of the Council of the EU, let it be known that he would prefer that no EU country allow rescue ships to dock there. This is the immigration policy equivalent of NAMBY, i.e., we'll dump the problem on someone else and not worry about the consequences. Instead of "let them eat cake," this is more like "let them drown in the sea."

No wonder that even members of Kurz' Christian Democratic Party (ÖVP) are asking just where the "Christian" part is in this government's policies.

The opposition SPÖ is calling him out on this diversionary tactic:

Schweigen oder schließen? Für #kurz gibt es immer nur diese 2 Optionen. Während die Außenministerin #kneissl mit dem #kniefall vor #putin aufregt, lenkt Kurz mal wieder mit Asylpolitik ab. Wie lange will er die ÖsterreicherInnen noch hinters Licht führen? pic.twitter.com/vmQv408re0

— SPÖ (@SPOE_at) August 20, 2018

Odd diplomatic mystery in Austria today

There's a strange event that went on this weekend in the state of Graz in Austria.

Russian President came to the wedding of Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, an independent sponsored for her post by from the far right national coalition party Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) on Saturday. The FPÖ which has had a formal "working agreement" with Putin's Russia United party since 2016. (Rechtspopulisten und Putin-Partei rücken enger zusammen FAZ 19.12.2016) The FPÖ/Russia United agreement commits them to the "strenthening of friendship and raising the young generation in the spirit of patriotism and joy in labor." Yes, that does have a bit of an "Arbeit macht Frei" ring to it. [Updated 08/19/2018: Italicized portion added to clarify that Kneissl was backed by the FPÖ to be the Foreign Minister although she is formally not a member of the party.]

Sebastian Kurz' government is officially describing Putin's visit as a "working visit." (Katharina Mittelstaedt und Walter Müller, Ein russischer Chor, doch kein US-Vertreter zu Gast bei Kneissl Standard 18.08.2018) Russia expert Gerhard Mangott has described this Putin visit to a European Foreign Minister's wedding as highly unusual for Putin, maybe unique. (Katharina Mittelstaedt und André Ballin, Putin bei Kneissls Hochzeit: Liebesgrüße aus Moskau Standard 16.08.2018) "Es ist ein protokollarisch und diplomatisch völlig außergewöhnliches Ereignis." ("According to protocol and diplomatic practice, it is a completely exceptional incident.")

Mittelstaedt und Ballin also report that when Karin Neissl herself was on a trip to Moscow in April, the Russian Foreign Minister brushed off the idea that Austria could play any role in mediating in the Syrian conflict. And Putin himself turned down her request for a personal meeting then.

Othmar Karas, a member of the European Parliament for the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), the party of Chancellor Kurz, recently framed the issue of Austrian and European relations to Russia this way:

ie können wir die großen wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Unterschiede in Europa ausgleichen, die es nach wie vor gibt? Wie können wir angesichts der Autokraten vor unserer Haustür Demokratie und Rechtsstaatlichkeit starken und unumkehrbar machen? Wie kann Europa eine globale Rolle spielen, damit wir nicht zwischen China, den USA und Russland wirtschaftlich und sicherheitspolitisch aufgerieben werden? Keine dieser Fragen kann Österreich oder ein anderer europäischer Staat alleine beantworten.

[How can we level out the large economic and social differences in Europe, which we have now as earlier? In view of the autocrats just outside our door, how can we strengthen democracy and the rule of law and make it irreversible? How can Europe play a global role so that economically and in security matters we won't be worn down between China, the US, and Russia? Neither Austria nor any other European state can answer any of these questions alone.]

But Kurz' government this year has seemed to spend little time on activities to promote common EU actions, even though he is currently serving a six-month term as the President of the Council of the EU. But his government has been doing political stunts to reinforces it reputation for being tough on immigration.

Karas goes on to explain:

Auch der österreichische Blick auf Russland wird von vielen EU-Partnern skeptisch beäugt. Ohne Zweifel ist Russland für Österreich ein traditionell enger Partner, vor allem was die Wirtschaftsbeziehungen betrifft. Doch dass die Regierungspartei FPÖ mit der Partei »Einiges Russland« von Präsident Wladimir Putin eine »Vereinbarung über Zusammenwirken und Kooperation« unterhält, ist doch mehr als ungewöhnlich. Und Österreich gehört zu einer Minderheit von EU-Staaten, die nach dem Giftgasanschlag in Salisbury die nicht aus Solidarität mit Großbritannien zumindest symbolisch einen russischen Geheimagenten mit Diplomatenpass ausgewiesen haben. Das war eine politische Entscheidung, die nichts mit den völkerrechtlichen Verpflichtungen aus dem Neutralitätsgesetz zu tun hat. Schließlich kritisieren österreichische Politiker zunehmend das an sich fast fertig verhandelte.

[... the Austrian {government's} view of Russia is seen skeptically by many EU partners. No doubt that Russia is traditionally a close partmer of Austria, especially on economic issues. That the government party FPÖ has an "Agreement on Joint Endeavors and Cooperation" with the Russia United party of Vladimir Putin, is certainly more than unusual. And Austria is among a minority of EU states, that after the poison gas attack in Salisbury on a Russia secret agent with a diplomatic passport did not at least symbolically express. That was a political decision that had nothing to do with obligations undert international law in the Neutrality Law. Eventually Austria politicians increasingly criticized it after it had almost been dealt with.]

Putin's main business in middle Europe this weekend is almost certainly the meeting he has scheduled with Germany's Angela Merkel later on Saturday.

The Big Three in the Austrian Chancellor's race

On Friday, I had the chance to attend the "Big Three" debate between the three leading candidates for Austrian Chancellor in the election of October 15 in the Design Center in Linz. It was sponsored by the leading state/provincial newspapers, including Die Presse (Vienna) and the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten (Upper Austria). The video of the debate in German is available online at the Kleine Zeitung and at Bei Steuerplänen schieden sich die Geister, Lucian Mayringer et al, Oberösterreichische Nachrichten 15.09.2017. (The sound on both is low for the first few minutes.)

Austria has a parliamentary system, with the President elected as head of state in a separate election from the Parliament. The head of government is the Chancellor, whose function is called Prime Minister in some other countries, and is typically elected by a majority in Parliament, which often requires a formal agreement between two or more political parties. Since 1987, the government has mostly been composed of some combination of the center-left Socialdemokratisched Partei (SPÖ) and the center-right Christian-Democratic Volkspartei (ÖVP). The third-largest party is the Freiheitliche Partei (FPÖ), which we could (generously) describe as far right.

The Big Three (l to r): Sebastian Kurz, Christian Kern, HC Strache

In this campaign, the current Chancellor Christian Kern is candidate for the SPÖ, Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz for the ÖVP, and Heinz-Christian Strache for the FPÖ. Technically, Kurz is running on the Sebastian Kurz List, but that's basically just a marketing ploy. Kurz is currently the leading candidate in the polls, and is trying to maximize the potential advantage of looking as he does 16 years old and to emphasize that he's a new and fresh leader. Actually, at 31, he's almost twice as old as he looks.

It was a relatively civilized debate, which the press commentary reflected. Here is one way in which an American has to remember that Austria is different from the US. In Austria, it's not considered normal for a candidate to, for instance, demand that their opponent be locked up. Or to complain that female reporters menstruate. But politics is inevitably about conflicts, so not everything was harmonious at the debate.

The topics included education, taxes, digitalization and employment, the budget, pensions, and immigration. But immigration and the status of non-citizens in Austria - a topic on which I don't pretend to be a disinterred party - was the main theme, thanks in particular to Kurz. Prior to 2015, xenophobia was mainly pushed by the FPÖ. For instance, in 1993 the FPÖ used an anti-foreigner referendum campaign to exploit nationalist and xenophobic sentiment. They called their campaign "Austria First." And in a fashion now all-too-familiar to Americans in our own politics, the FPÖ has consistently encouraged and maintained visible links to hardcore anti-democratic rightwing groups, some of which constantly flirt with neo-Nazi propaganda, the latter being illegal in Austria under the terms of the Independence Treaty of 1955 with the US, the then-USSR, Britain and France.

But Kurz has made the anti-immigrant theme his own. In Friday's debate, Kurz introduced an anti-Islam meme into a discussion of education ("Islamic kindergartens"). And he and Strache competed in beating the anti-foreign drums. Problems in the education system? According to Kurz and Strache, the only real problem there is that there are too many g*******d foreign children in Austria. Budget problems? Also because there are too many g*******d foreign children in Austria. Since current American levels of crassness aren't yet respectable in Austrian politics, they didn't actually use the cuss word.

Kurz claimed the low point for the day when he complained that there are too many Africans in Africa and they are still breeding more. Seriously! Maybe he was thinking that white South Africans have too high a birth rate. But I'm guessing not. It's a notable accomplishment for the leader of the ÖVP to come out of a face-to-face confrontation with Strache sounding like the more xenophobic of the two.

I was surprised that the word "terrorism" never came up in the debate, because Kurz and Strache have typically linked their hostility to foreigners with security questions. It was especially surprising because of the current report on Friday of what could have been an attempted terrorist attack in London.

But for me it was grim to hear with what a complete lack of compassion and realism the three candidate discussed the issue of refugees. All the three parties including the SPÖ have stressed the need to keep refugees out. Kern did introduce a bit of realism into Friday's discussion by talking about the real problems of war, climate change and economic crisis in the Middle East and North Africa. But it was discussed all but exclusively in terms of keeping the foreigners out of Austria.

I wouldn't want to minimize the seriousness of the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe, which is far from over. On the contrary, it's a chronic problem that the EU is currently handling with the "extend-and-pretend" approach which has been the dominant characteristic of Angela Merkel's approach to both the euro crisis and the refugee crisis. The current perception of the crisis in Austria has been heavily influenced by the refugee surge in 2015, with chaotic scenes in the city of Salzburg and the town of Traiskirchen. Ferry Maier and Julia Ortner present some of the substantive issues on the handling of refugees in Austria, including the state of the national and state emergency services, in Willkommen in Österreich? (2017).

A not-especially-diverse pundit panel discuss the discussion afterwards

But the Big Three couldn't find much time to address those substantive issues on Friday. Instead what was mainly on display were the polemical techniques the xenophobes have used to transform the image of desperate people fleeing war and severe persecution into one of coddled foreigners getting special benefits that Austrians don't get. And specifically into an image of Austrians being threatened by the presence of foreign children. It's ugly stuff.

On the bright side, there wasn't much use of favorite Islamophobe buzzwords, except for "Islamic kindergartens." (There were no similar complaints in the debate about Catholic kindergartens, of which Austria has plenty.)

On the other issues, the most substantive point was made by Chancellor Kern on tax policy, when he stressed that tax cuts, which all three are advocating, should be targeted to lower and medium income earners, not to corporations or the wealthy. And he stressed - accurately - that the Kurz and Strache proposals would most benefit the latter. None of the three wanted to be very specific about what program cuts would accompany their tax cuts. No one even mentioned the issues a large tax cut might cause for Austria under the terms of the eurozone Fiscal Suicide Pact, officially the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, better known as the Stability Pact.

Kern and Strache were agreed in opposing the increase of the retirement age, which Kurz supports.

But on other entries, all three generally took seemingly safe, stock, anodyne positions on most issues. All three are in favor of good education. They all favor increasing government efficiency. All three are committed to the TINA (There Is No Alternative) Angela Merkel/Herbert Hoover economic policies that are currently dominant in the EU. A symptom of the latter is that all three used "education" as a magic conjuring word that would solve all economic problems. And, if it doesn't, well, it's your own fault for making those infamous Bad Choices. Along with the usual fantasies about unemployed workers in their mid-50s retraining for new and better jobs.

The discussion was moderated by Wolfgang Braun of the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten and Claudia Gigler of the Kleine Zeitung. Gigler was the only female journalist with a role in the discussion. Afterwards, there was a half hour discussion of the event by six commentators, all of them white guys. There was some diversity there, though. At least one of the six on the pundit panel was probably younger than 50.

Like their American counterparts, the journalist panel was particularly interested in the horse race speculation. Who will get the biggest vote? And what kind of party coalition could then be built? On that score, it was pretty obvious that Kurz and Strache were campaigning for an ÖVP/FPÖ coalition. That probably contributed to Strache's relatively restrained conduct in the appearance, which is not always his approach.

It struck me early on that Strache was the most experienced politician of the three. He was quicker on his comebacks and easily employed humor. Kern sounds like a Chancellor, which he is. But a glad-handing politician, not so much. I would agree, though, with the commentators who noted that Kern's performance could enhance his credibility at governance. That is, for the voters for whom that's important. Kurz comes off like a well-spoken teenaged conservative twit who thinks there are too many Africans in Africa.

For an American used to the tiresome rituals of our own TV Pod Pundits, it's refreshing to see journalists actually act like journalists and pressing politicians to respond to their questions and not just letting them repeat their preferred talking points. Braun and Gigler did a good job of that during the main event. What was missing, though, was some much needed fact-checking. Strache, for instance, ranted at one point about hundreds of millions of euros being paid to support non-existent children. Which would be a suspect claim even it weren't coming from someone like Strache, who lies like breathing on topics like this. Kern then ridiculed Strache's claim with a more credible-sounding number about the entire cost of the program in question. But neither Braun nor Gigler offered any kind of fact-checking on the topic, which would have really been helpful. Especially since Strache's claim is a popular xenophobic talking point right now. In his mini-rant about there too many Africans in Africa, Kurz also used population growth rate predictions that were fantasy nonsense, which also could have used a real time fact-check from the reporters. (Not that his point had anything to do with mastering demographic forecasts.)

A final cross-cultural observation: The Chancellor's debate included no discussion about whether Austria should nuke North Korea. Or start a war with Iran. Or send more troops to ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Comparatively speaking, from an American viewpoint Austria has a much preferable set of problems to wrestle with.

Press reports:

• Iris Bonavida, TV-Konfrontation zur Wahl: Ein Dreikampf zwischen Kern, Kurz und Strache um die Migration Die Presse 15.09.2017
• Marcus Rohrhofer, Strache beim Dreiergipfel in Linz: "Ich sehe, Kurz wird ein Fan von mir" Der Standard 15.09.2017
• Andreas Kolle, Kern, Kurz und Strache in der ersten Dreier-Konfrontation Salzburg Nachrichten 16.09.2017

Veränderung mit Verantwortung: Neoliberalism and the center-left, Austrian edition

Austrian parliamentary elections are coming up in October. Among the three most important parties are the social-democratic/center-left SPÖ (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs), the Christian Democratic/conservative ÖVP (Österreichische Volkspartei), and the rightwing/populist FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs).

The SPÖ and ÖVP have been coalition partners in the national government for so long it's a wonder anyone can tell the difference between them anyway. But why let that stop the SPÖ from blurring that difference even more?

The SPÖ had earlier in the campaign adopted the slogan, "Holen Sie sich, was Ihnen zusteht" ("Take what you deserve"), as we see in this poster featuring Kern as a kinda-sorta man of the people. As a slogan, it has a little bite, vaguely promising to the a defender of the unfairly deprived. The opposition parties criticized it. An opposition party criticizing your slogan, imagine that! Who could have known? They said it sounded like the SPÖ was encouraging street thieves.

And Heaven forbid that one of the legendary parties of the European left would use a slogan that might mildly irritate people who would never consider voting for them anyway. So, of course, they changed it to "Veränderung mit Verantwortung" ("Responsible change").

It just doesn't get more boring than this.

Responsible Change is right up there with Stronger Together and A Better Deal. As forgettable as they are uninspiring. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the SPÖ hired establishment Democratic consultants from America that told them that of course the smartest approach for a center-left party that has held the Chancellorship for years was to use a slogan as bland and inoffensive as possible.

This is why the social democratic parties in Europe are in real danger of shrinking to minor centrist parties. Since the basic social and economic assumptions of the neoliberal ideology are conservative ones, the conservative parties have generally been less damaged by militant centrism than the center-left parties.

Maybe Bernie or Elizabeth Warren can swipe the Take What You Deserve slogan, since the SPÖ decided they don't want it any more.

But Responsible Change? Good grief! And consultants get paid good money to come up with loser slogans like that.

Frank Stronach, Canadian-Austrian billionaire and political clown (Updated 10/05/2012)

I just saw an interview from Austrian ORF TV with Frank Stronach, an 80-year-old Austrian-Canadian businessman who's running for Parliament for 2013 as a non-politician politician as head of a party of his own that he prefers to call a "movement."

The guy is so clownish that he makes the American Republican Herman Cain look like a bit of a policy wonk. His idea for solving the euro crisis is to have every eurozone country have its own euro with market-driven exchange rates. Which anyone with even the slightest understanding of what, you know, a currency is, means simply abolishing the euro and going back to national currencies, even if they each call their new national currency a "euro."

But he either didn't know or pretended not to know that's what it meant. And he promised to appoint a commission to examine the idea if he were elected Chancellor. But when one of the journalists interviewing him pressed him on who he would appoint to his council of wise men (which is what he called it), he couldn't come up with a single name.

The guy is a bad joke as a politician. Which he claims not to be, although he ran for office unsuccessfully in Canada back in the 1980s and has been active behind the scenes cultivating the Austrian political elite in the two main political parties. He ran unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1988 on the Canadian Liberal Party ticket. His daughter Belinda Stronach was elected to the Canadian Parliament for the Conservative Party in 2004 but later switched to the Liberals and served in the national Cabinet. She left Parliament in 2008 and is now CEO of the Stronach Group.

TV journalism is still alive, though, even though in the United States it's desperately gasping for breath. The four journalists interviewing Stronach pressed him pretty hard and challenged his answers when they were unresponsive or didn't make sense.

He's showing up in opinion polls with as much as 17% of the vote, but it's hard to believe he's going anywhere with his latest political kick. Surely a large part of those saying they favor him are really saying "none of the above." Remember when Herman Cain led the Republican Presidential race in opinion polls?

((Update 10/05/2012: The 17% figure was based on the dodgy presentation of a poll result in the Kronen Zeitung that did include none-of-the-above responses and other tiny parties like the Communist Party and the Pirate Party: Stronach als Senkrecht-Starter vor NR-Wahl 27,09,2012. See also the Lacker/Schwaiger article cited just below on the Kronen Zeitung's presentation.)

See Herbert Lackner und Rosemarie Schwaiger, Der Messias aus Ebreichsdorf Profil 29.09.2012; Georgina Prodhan, Frank Stronach launches election campaign: 'Austria is my homeland' Reuters 09/27/2012; Sebastian Pumberger, Stronach: "Ich bin die Person, die die Werte vorgibt" Der Standard 27.09.2012; Markus Huber und Elke Windisch, Opel-Übernahme. Wer ist Frank Stronach? Die Zeit 01.06.2009; Frank Stronach – der Turf-Tycoon aus Österreich Der Standard 04.04.2012 (a profile from 10 years ago); Here's a ZIB 2 interview with Stronach (in German), ORF Interview mit Frank Stronach YouTube date 27.09.2012 about his current campaign:

This is a campaign biography from the TeamStronach YouTube channel, Frank Stronach: Biographie 27.09.2012:

That video includes a tribute from, gulp, Bill Clinton. (?!?)

Tags: austria, austrian politics, frank stronach, österreich, österreichische politik

Austrian Socialist Chancellor proposes Herbert Hooverish idea for the country's Constitution

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann is head of the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) and head of government in a Grand Coalition with the conservative, Christian Democratic People's Party (ÖVP).

Now that Austria is coming under pressure from the bond speculators as part of the collapse of the euro currency, Faymann is proposing a foolish, Herbert Hooverish idea of writing a maximum debt limit into the Austrian Constitution. This is one more symptom of the kind of corruption of policy and economic thinking that the dominance of neoliberal economic thinking has produced. Writing a particular economic doctrine of this specificity into the national constitution is just a bad idea, like the concept of a balanced budget to the US Constitution. It could lock Austria into overly rigid policies in a future (or even not-so-future) economic crisis. It could be an powerful temptation to the kind of disguising the actual level of debt that both Greece and Italy did, both with significant help from Goldman Sachs.

So far, Faymann isn't proposing ruinous cuts to the budget. Austria's current employment rate is high. And, fortunately, some in both the SPÖ and the ÖVP are dubious about this proposal. Hopefully dubious enough that it fails.

This is a video in German of him defending his proposal, Bundeskanzler Werner Faymann zur Schuldenbremse YouTube date 22.11.2011.



I commented on his YouTube and Facebook message, "Es wäre einfach töricht, solche eine spezifische ökonomische Doktrin in die Verfassung zu verankern!" (It would be simply foolish to anchor such a specific economic doctrine in the Constitution!)

Tags: austria, austrian politics, österreich, österreichische politik, werner faymann

EU elections in Germany and Austria

European Union Parliamentary elections were held Sunday throughout the EU. Based on the early results I've seen, here is status of the results in Germany and Austria.

Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) together with its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) won the most votes with 38%. But that was a significant decline from the previous one in 2004. The Green Party and the Left Party together effectively matched the vote for the junior governing party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) with a combined 21%. In local elections that also took place the same day, the Greens for the first time came out as the leading party in Stuttgart. The Greens also won 22% in Mainz, a record for them in that city, which put them just behind the votes for the CDU and the SPD.

This election continues a weakening of the SPD's support. It's still has the second largest representation in Parliament after the CDU/CSU. But it's not unthinkable that the Greens could overtake them soon, though they would have to double their vote to achieve that. It's hard to say how some kind of Green/Left Party merger would fare, because the "postcommunist" Left Party still leaves doubts about how far they've come from orthodox Communist ideas of 20 years ago.

Austria: The Christian Democratic ÖVP pulled 30% with the Social Democrats (SPÖ) winning a disappointing 24%, down from their 33% in 2004; the ÖVP was also at 33% in 2004. The far-right FPÖ won 13%, which they considered a disappointment, and the Greens won just under 10%. An electoral headed by a former journalist, Hans Peter Martin, was the biggest surprise, pulling almost 18%, higher than the established parties the Greens and the FPÖ.

As usual, the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ) won under 1%. The KPÖ's main historical distinction was their business acumen at laundering money from the East German Communist Party back in the day.

Tags: austria, austrian politics, deutschland, german politics, germany, österreich

Helmut Zilk's dark side?

The Austrian weekly Profil is reporting that Helmut Zilk, the popular Social Democratic mayor of Vienna 1984-1994 who passed away in 2008, worked as a paid informant for the Czechoslovakian spy agency from 1965 to 1968: Helmut Zilk, Spion: Zilk war jahrelang Informant des CSSR-Geheimdienstes von Herbert Lackner 21.03.09. See also "Helmut Zilk war ein Ostspion": Eine Prager Zeitung besudelt den verstorbenen Wiener Bürgermeister Oe24.at 15.03.09.

Tags: austrian politics, helmut zilk, österreich

Austrian state (provincial) elections

Austrian Social Democratic Business Director Laura Rudas: says her party held its own in Salzburg but is in real trouble in Carinthia

There were elections in the Austrian states of Kärnten (Carinthia) and Salzburg on Sunday. The results were surprising.

Sources from Der Standard (Vienna)01.03.2009:

Erdrutschsieg für BZÖ, Debakel für SPÖ, FPÖ nicht im Landtag

Landtagwahl Kärnten 2009

SPÖ trotz Verlusten vor ÖVP, starker Zugewinn für FPÖ

Landtagwahl Salzburg

A bit of background. The two main parties in Austria since the Second World War have been the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) and the People's Party (ÖVP), the latter being the Christian Democratic Party. The leading third party has been the Freedom Party (FPÖ), which was once considered a liberal party in the European sense of "liberal", as represented by the Liberal International (LI). The FPÖ got kicked out of the LI after the leadership was assumed by Jörg Haider in 1986, who took the party in a much more rightwing direction.

Haider gained international notoriety as the most successful practitioner of what was often called "yuppie fascism". Although I think Haider would have liked to have been a new Mussolini or Engelbert Dollfuss or Kurt Schuschnigg, it's not that all the party base understood the party in that sense.

And Haider himself seems to have been less of an aspiring Mussolini than a rightwing narcissist who especially enjoyed seeing himself on TV. He split from his FPÖ in 2005 and founded a new political vehicle for himself the Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ), the Austrian Alliance for the Future.

Haider died last fall in an auto crash after getting drunk at a gay bar in Klagenfurt, the capital city of Carinthia. Haider had not been openly gay and was married to a woman and had children. As controversial as Haider was, it's surprising that his gay or bisexual practices hadn't become a topic of public polemics. Because he didn't seem to have worked terribly hard at keeping it a secret.

The BZÖ and the FPÖ have competed for far-right, xenophobic vote since then. Haider, who continued as governor (Landeshauptmann) for Carinthia, gave the BZÖ more of a middle-brow, yuppie-fascist imprint, while FPÖ used more down-and-dirty demagoguery.

What was very surprising in Sunday's election was how strongly the BZÖ performed. Given how Americans are tempted to process political events in Austria and Germany, I should emphasize that this does not mean that a new Nazi movement is in full swing. Austria would have a long way to go before it even reached the levels of anti-democratic practice that were standard under Dick Cheney and George Bush.

As of this writing, Der Standard is reporting the following results for the Carinthian election, with 4.0% required to get representation in the Landtag (state parliament): BZÖ, 46%; SPÖ, 29%; ÖVP, 17%; Greens, 5%; and, FPÖ, just under 4%. This is a huge increase in the vote for the BZÖ and a huge defeat for the FPÖ. The Social Democrats lost nearly 10% of their voters compared to the 2004 elections; the Christian Democrats gained almost 5% over 2004 but still came in third. The only likely coalitions that I could see coming out of those numbers would be an "orange-black" (BZÖ/ÖVP) government, or a "red-black-green" (SPÖ/ÖVP/Green) version.

In Salzburg, also according to Der Standard as of this writing, the SPÖ remains the largest party at 40% though with a 6% decline from 2004; ÖVP, 36%; FPÖ, 13%; Greens, 7%; and, BZÖ, under 4%. Probably only a Grand Coalition (SPÖ/ÖVP) could be formed from those results. The most notable thing about the voting trends is the movement of some voters from the SPÖ and ÖVP to FPÖ and BZÖ. I haven't seen the detailed breakdowns, but that can also mean that voters shifted from the Greens to the SPÖ and from the SPÖ to the ÖVP, and others from the ÖVP to the FPÖ and BZÖ. But the two rightwing parties, FPÖ and BZÖ, do sometimes directly pull previous Social Democratic voters.

Tags: austrian politics

Austrian far-right leader Jörg Haider dies

Kurt and Jörg'l: Austrian rightwing "populist" Jörg Haider visiting with then-Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, 1991.

Jörg Haider (1958-2008) caused quite a stir in Austria and beyond in the 1990s with his friendly references to the Third Reich and the SS, but in the end he turned out to be mainly an egotistical clown who liked seeing himself of television. Waldheim was actually around during the Third Reich and was happy to give Haider's "brown" clowning a boost at the time.

Haider was killed on Friday night 10/10/08 early Saturday morning 10/11/08 in a car accident. He lost control of his car and had an accident that totalled his car. He suffered severe head and chest injuries and died on the spot. (Landeshauptmann und BZÖ-Chef Jörg Haider tödlich verunglückt Der Standard 11.10.2008)

I plan to post more on current negotiations for a new government coalition. Here I'll just note that Haider was currently leader of the Bundis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ) party, which together with his former part the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ). Haider was currently serving as Landeshauptmann (governor) of the Austrian state Carinthia (Kärnten).

It's hard to guess what this means for the political future in Austria. In the short run, I would be surprised if it changes much. The social democratic (SPÖ) and conservative (ÖVP) are likely to negotiate a new coalition government between themselves. Columnist Hans Rauscher thinks it could increase the power of the far right. With Haider's narcissistic leadership style out of the way, the FPÖ and BZÖ could unite into one party. The BZÖ began in 2005 as a split-off party from the FPÖ. (Hans Rauscher über Jörg Haiders Tod Der Standard 11.10.2008)

If the other parliamentary parties (SPÖ, ÖVP, Greens) play it right, I think the result is more likely to be a reduction in the combined support for the far-right parties. Without Haider's star power, the FPÖ and BZÖ are likely to merge. Without Haider's undoubted star power, the far right has lost one of its strongest vote-getting resources. And the fact that there were two far-right parties in this year's election probably made it easier for some protest voters to select one of the two parties because they could tell themselves that this party is not as bad as the other far-right party.

The two parties did have different political brand identification. The BZÖ has cultivated more a Chamber of Commerce image. The FPÖ promotes more of a, well, beer-drinking thug image.

The BZÖ featured this memorial picture of their fallen leader at their Web site:


Tags: austrian politics, jörg haider

Austria's recent election and the implications

Werner Faymann, leader of Austria's Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokratische Partei Österreichs, SPÖ), which led in the election results on Sunday

As promised - or as threatened, depending on your perspective - I'm posting more on the Austrian election of this past Sunday, which resulted in the previous five parties in Parliament all returning, with the two far-right parties gaining while the conservative party and the two left parties lost votes compared to their previous experience.

I won't try in this post to go into detail on the particular methods of parliamentary government. But normally in parliamentary systems, either one party has to get a majority - like the Spanish Socialists in their last two elections - or they have to form a coalition, like the current Grand Coalition in Germany of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD). A party in Austria has to get 4% of the votes nationwide to win any seats in parliament (with a technical exception I won't go into here). Parliamentary seats are allocated to parties based on the proportion of the votes of the parties who met the 4% hurdle.

To form a government, a party or coalition needs a majority of votes in the lower house of parliament, the upper house being elected by state (provincial) legislatures similar to the way US Senators were elected before the 20th century.

The parliamentary parties are as follows. The SPÖ (Socialdemokratische Partei Österreichs) is the social-democratic party, dating back to the 19th century when it was founded by Viktor Adler (who, for trivia fans, lived in the same house in Vienna's 9th district where Sigmund Frued later lived). The social-democrats were the leading advocates of democracy in the Habsburg Empire, and led the democratic revolution of 1918. Parties have long been identified by colors in Europe, a habit the US only picked up after the 2000 election. The SPÖ are the "reds", though they aren't advocating anything like the massive nationalizations currently being pursued by the American "red" Republicans.

The ÖVP (People's Party, Österreichische Volkspartei) is the Christian Democratic Party. In European terms, they are the conservative party. It's better to not even try to compare them with American Republicans. The ÖVP is still thought of as the Catholic party, but the degree of religiosity now required even of Democrats and the level of church-party collaboration seen with the Republicans and the backroom barons of the Christian Right is unheard-of in the ÖVP. Not even close. Party color: black.

Viktor Adler: his soul goes marching on, too, fortunately for Austria

The FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs) is what in European terms would be called a rightwing-liberal party. That concept just doesn't compute at all in American politics. To describe them in a more general way, we could say they are xenophobic and populist-demagogic. Party color: blue. (Definitely not like the American "blues"!) The BZÖ (Bündnis Zukunft Österreichs, Alliance for Austria's Future) is also a rightwing-liberal party. It's a split-off from the FPÖ, and is essentially the personal vehicle for Jörg Haider, governor (Landeshauptmann) of the state of Carinthia. Haider achieve international notoriety in the 1990s as a Mussolini-wannabe with a "yuppie-fascist" style. But basically he's a narcissistic clown who mainly likes to see himself on TV. Party color: orange. Both the FPÖ and BZÖ could be compared to George Wallace's movement of 1968.
Then there's the Green Party, which has become a real force in Austrian politics in the last 10 years. The state of Upper Austria has been ruled since 2003 by a black-green coalition (ÖVP and Greens). Arnold Schwaryenegger's home city of Graz just got a black-green coalition this year, with Green vice-mayor who's openly lesbian. The ÖVP mayor had campaigned against the decadence of homosexuality. He's says he's learning a lot in the new coalition.

The basic problem in Austrian national politics is that the two biggest parties, SPÖ and ÖVP, have been in a Grand Coalition (red-black or black-red) for most of the last 20 years. AS Germany is now experiencing, having the two biggest opposing parties in a coalition together is tough to manage, even though it would seem to be the embodiment of the "bipartisanship" that the American practitioners or High Broderism seem to think is the be-all and end-all of political virtue.

Aside from administrative difficulties, though, it means that neither of the two largest parties can play the role of loyal opposition. What's been happening in Austria is that the FPÖ and BZÖ have been able to be the opposition against the SPÖ-led Grand Coalition that just fell apart, prompting last Sunday's election. If the SPÖ or the ÖVP could form a coaltion with one or more of the other parties, then the other large party could act as the opposition, which would reduce the protest votes going to the FPÖ and BZÖ.

The Greens should have been able to also benefit from protest votes. But their vote percentage actually went down slightly. I think a lot in this case has to do with their current leader Alexander Van der Bellen. He's an obviously intelligent man, but he's scarcely a rabble-rouser. He comes across on TV like a tired old professor.

The breakdown of seats in the new Austrian Nationalrat (lower house of parliament) should break down close to the popular vote results as of this writing, which might change slightly if absentee votes still remain to be counted: SPÖ, 30%; ÖVP, 26%; FPÖ, 18%; BZÖ, 11%; Greens, 10%. Those results were historic lows for the SPÖ and ÖVP.

Since the SPÖ has the largest percentage, President Heinz Fischer (SPÖ) will ask the SPÖ to form a new government. Party leader Werner Feymann initially indicated after the election that he would attempt to make a new Grand Coalition with the ÖVP, which I think is a terrible idea. They just had a Grand Coalition fall apart, albeit with different leaders at the head of the parties than now, and the two coalition parties were hammered in the election results.

The immediate problem is that the SPÖ and ÖVP consider the FPÖ and BZÖ to be such stinkers that neither wants to be in a coalition with them. The SPÖ would need the Greens and the FPÖ to form a majority coalition without the ÖVP. But FPÖ leader H. C. Strache is kind of a thuggish guy. During the election campaign, some photos were published of him participating in military training with weapons with a militia-tzype rightwing group in the woods. As a result, federal prosecutors are currently reviewing whether he should be charged with "NS-Wiederbetätigung", which roughly means "attempting to revive the Nazi Party". That is illegal in Austria. Austria's independence treaty with the US, Britain, France and the Soviet Union actually requires it to ban the Nazi Party.

Now, I can make judgments about Austrian politics without having to rely on the current state of the US practice of democracy. But I do think Americans need to keep some sense of perspective. Strache, the leader of Austria's third biggest party, was screwing around with dumbass rightwingers playing with their guns in the woods when he was 20. Having avoided shooting himself in the foot, his mentality hasn't evolved much beyond that.

But Jesus God, look at what we have in the United States. The President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State are criminals. War criminals for the invasion of Iraq and the torture policy. Remember how the happy gang, including that famous honorable "moderate" Colin Powell, sat around designing in gruesome detail the torture of particular individuals? They have politicized justice in a blatant way. They openly broke the law on surveillance, and got the "opposition"-dominated Congress to give retroactive approval to it. They administered the Iraq contracts is a way so mind-boggling corrupt it would have made the 19th-century robber barons blush. The Republicans are carrying out blatant voter-suprresion activities on a massive scale, using approaches straight out of the Southern segregationist playbook. The Supreme Court overrode the results of the 2000 election to install Dick Cheney and George Bush in power. And the President has claimed and put into proactice the right, so far tolerated by out sad version of a Congress, and only partially challenged by the Republican-dominated courts to disobey any law he chooses, and even to violate the explicit provisions of the Constitution as long as he claims his actions are justified on grounds of "national security". And what isn't involved with national security in our Cheneyized national security state of today?

I really view our current American government as a semi-democracy. We literally would not qualify for membership in the European Union, because we don't meet their minimal requirements for democractic practices and the rule of law.

Getting back to the much smaller problems of Austrian democracy, the ÖVP could theoretically form a government with the Greens and the FPÖ, or with the FPÖ and the BZÖ. But having the FPÖ and the BZÖ in the same coalition would be virtually impossible as a practical matter because of the leading personalities involved, apart from the democratic deficits of the parties.

My preferred outcome of the Austrian government negotiations would be a red-green minority government. That's a real possibility. It would give the reds and Greens a chance to put through some constructive programs and then run on them in the next election. And it would allow the ÖVP to act as the leading opposition party and take protest votes from the FPÖ and BZÖ.

If only our democractic deficits in America were as modest as Austria's ...

Tags: austria, austrian politics, österreich, österreichische politik

"Rechtsruck" (shift to the right) in Austria

If it was good enough for George...

Austria's banks aren't making international news in the current world financial meltdown. Yet. Actually, Austrian banks have been pursuing profits in recent years the old-fashioned way: providing regular banking services to people who need them. In particular, they have expanded their regular commercial and retail banking businesses into eastern European countries like Rumania. Austria, despite being a small country, benefits greatly from its historical business ties to eastern Europe going backt to the days of the Habsburg's Austro-Hungarian Empire.

It happens that I'm visiting in Austria at the time it is making international news. Austria and Mississippi have one thing in common when it comes to making world or national-US news. It usually only happens when there is a natural disaster or a political one. (An exception was the good news that a Democrat won a previously Republican Congressional seat in a special election earlier this year.)

Reuters/Yahoo! News provides the colorful headline, Far right surges in Austria vote, instability looms 09/29/08. Back in 1999-2000, the last time an Austrian election generated these sorts of headlines, I was a hardliner in terms of preferring to see a strong diplomatic response from the US and other EU countries.

It turned out that the other EU countries' decision to not invite Austrian diplomats to the normal rounds of dinners and parties for a couple of weeks was strong enough. More importantly, Austria's then-President Thomas Klestil used his authority as the elected President to reject a couple of proposed cabinet ministers who were particularly obnoxious in their uncertain devotion to the Austrian Constitution and the rule of law.

More to follow in a later post on the particulars of the Austrian election, more than probably most American readers care to know. Short version: the "far right" parties in Austria are less radical in their ideologies and more devoted to the rule of law than the Cheney-Bush administration - seriously. Two of the five parties in Parliament are "far right" for real. Our Republicans really are more so.

But one aspect of this election genuinely surprised me. Obviously I haven't been following the Austrian news as closely as I would like to, because I hadn't heard this before last week. In the national parliamentary elections held this past Sunday, 16-year-olds were able to vote for the first time. No, that's not a typo, that's 16, one-six.

Now, my circle of Austrian and German acquaintances is not especially conservative. But everyone older than teenaged that I've heard talk about this so far is shocked at the thought that 16-year-olds can vote!

I'm shocked, too. Shocked, I tell you, shocked! I mean, how can anyone expect mere 16-year-olds to exercise the mature, sensible political judgment that adults like Rush Limbaugh, Shaun Hannity and Bill O'Reilly exhibit on a daily basis? I mean, what 16-year old could make an analysis, or even understand an analysis, like one of our leading columnists, Maureen Dowd, displays in the New York Times twice weekly? (Zeus knows, I sure don't understand it.)

Now that I think about it a bit, I think that no one under 30 should be allowed to vote. And, hey, requiring voters to own at least $100,000 in property would be a good idea, too. Because why should people who don't have a financial stake in their country and communities be allowed to vote? It's well known that the richer you are, the more sound your judgment is. That's why investment bankers, hedge fund managers and mortgage lenders are the most prudent, sensible, responsible people you can find.

And who was it anyway that came up with this notion that women should be able to vote? Come to think of it, Austria recognized women's right to vote (1918) before the United States did, too. It was just after the socialists took over in a revolution. So there you see what a commie subversive idea that whole thing was.

I mean, if "one family, one vote" was good enough for George and Martha Washington, why isn't it good enough for us? Everybody knows that women get all impulsive because of, you know, hormones and stuff. But take a sober wealthy CEO white guy like Dick Cheney, or a sturdy-jawed manly-man like John McCain, who could imagine them ever making impulsive or reckless decisions?

So far, though, none of my Austrian friends and relatives that I make these arguments to seem to be convinced. I don't get it. I guess it's true what they say: In Austria, the clocks really do tick differently.

Tags: austria, austrian politics, österreich, österreichische politik

Life in the Cheney-Bush era

Denver, Colorado, USA 2008:



Graz, Austria 2006:

Following is the account I originally gave in a Blue Voice post of 09/07/06 about a political rally I had attended in Austria; Austrians I know didn't seem to understand why it struck me as so different than national political campaigns in the US:

I did see an actual political event in Graz, the capital of Styria and the hometown of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger's image was nowhere to be seen in the downtown tourist areas, by the way. And I looked for it. I didn't even see a tourist postcard with his picture on it. Nothing. Not one reference. Which is fine by me.

Last Saturday, the Austrian conservative party (the ÖVP) had its kickoff rally to formally open it's election campaign. The national elections are a month away. Since the the ÖVP is the leading party in the current ruling coalition and has been since early 2000, the Austrian Chancellor, Wolfgang Schüssel, was the featured speaker. Probably not what most tourists look for, I'll admit. But I thought it was pretty cool to be able to see it, even though the ÖVP's policies are distinctly un-cool.

He brought along with him the ÖVP members of his cabinet, including the one that is thought to be a glamorous figure on TV, Karl-Heinz Grasser, the Finance Minister. He is widely thought by female voters to be attractive - including my wife, who got just a few feet from the stage. I suppose he's kind of cute. But after watching him in a TV debate Wednesday night, I've started to refer to him as Herr Minister Yuppietwit.

Also appearing was the Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, the Defense Minister, the Economics Minister and the Interior Minister (more-or-less the Attorney General in American terms).

The most amazing thing about it to me probably didn't seem unusual to most people there. It was that here was the head of government, appearing in a partisan rally along with some of the most senior members of his government. And, unlike the strictly controlled partisan appearances of Dear Leader Bush, the rally was completely open to the public.

Even an unsympathetic foreigner like me could attend. And the place wasn't crawling with uniformed security personnel or burly guys in dark suits and sunglasses. No sharpshooters visible on the rooftops.

Perhaps most unusual of all in comparison to Dear Leader's approach, there was a protester in the crowd who occasionally shouted out something negative. He was standing about thirty yards from the stage when the Chancellor was speaking. There were two security guards who were standing discreetly to either side of him. But they didn't try to drag him out of the crowd or arrest him or beat him up or anything even when he shouted out dissent against the Chancellor. The head of government was actually allowed to hear one of his voters shouting out criticism!

An amazing thing for those of us who have become acclimatized to the way today's Republican Party handles things.

The speeches themselves weren't especially notable, except again for an American, who couldn't help but notice that the horrible, awful menace to Western Civilization from The Terrorists was not a central theme of the speeches. There was much more talk about health care and employment issues. The Foreign Minister used her few minutes to promote Europe, i.e., supporting the European Union. Chancellor Schüssel and Herr Minister Yuppietwit focused more on stock conservative bromides, like how if we just cut taxes for the wealthy and restrict the opportunities of kids from working-class families to go to college, everything will get better.

There was also quite a bit of patriotic hype about how great Austria is. Though by American standards of over-the-top patriotic and nationalistic rhetoric, it was pretty tame.

In America in 2008, by contrast, a 60-year-old librarian holding a sign that says McCain=Bush is given a ticket and threatened with arrest. The Southern segregationist style of politics is alive and well and being practiced by the Republican Party, even under the leadership of that great Maverick and War Hero McCain.

And what was her actual sin here? Insulting McCain by comparing him to our Dear Leader Bush, Scourge of the Heathen and Liberator of Peoples? Or insulting Dear Leader by comparing him to the War Hero and Great American and Bold Maverick, John "100 Years War" McCain?

Tags: austria, austrian politics, authoritarianism, graz

The annexation of Austria, 1938 (1)

Kurt von Schuschnigg, dictator 1934-38 in Austria's clerical-fascist regime

It's 2008, so that means various 10-year-period specials in the news. 1968, of course, is an obvious one. Later this year - I really dread this one - we'll be observing 70 years after the Munich Conference. Flaky applications of the "lessons of Munich" to the Iraq War are inevitable. And this month, there is the following anniversary.

Despite the persisting impression in the United States from that Austria somehow has not sufficiently come to grips with the history of the Third Reich, the 70th anniversary of the annexation (Anschluss) of Austria by Hitler Germany has provided the occasion for yet more articles on that very history. The Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstands (DöW) currently features an online exhibit on the events of 1938 in German and English.

Vienna's Der Standard has been running a number of articles about the annexation, such as Der Heldenplatz bleibt mit uns by Hans Rauscher 29.02.2008. The title is, "The Heldenplatz remains with us", a reference to Hitler's triumphant public speech in the Heldenplatz declaring Mission Accomplished over the annexation of Austria.

Rauscher quotes former Social Democratic Chancellor Bruno Kreisky saying that probably only a third of Austrians supported the Nazi regime, and writes:

Richtig. Es waren aber genug, um in einer bestimmten historischen Konstellation den Staat in die Gewalt der Nazis und Hitler-Deutschlands zu kippen. Der "Anschluss" 1938 ist - auch - eine Fallstudie, wie eine entschlossene radikale Minderheit die ganze Macht erobern kann, wenn das Umfeld stimmt. Der unglückselige Kurt Schuschnigg gab, als er fünf vor zwölf endlich auf die Idee kam, das Volk über den Anschluss abstimmen zu lassen, eine durchaus realistische Einschätzung ab: 25 Prozent wären ausgesprochen gegen den Anschluss an Deutschland, 25 Prozent ausgesprochen dafür und der große Rest schaue "wie der Hase läuft". Schuschnigg war bereits zu schwach, um die Beobachter des Hasenlaufs auf seine Seite ziehen zu können. Hitler hat ihm die Volksabstimmung ganz einfach verboten.

[Correct. But it was enough in a particular historical situation to plummet the state into the violence of the Nazis and Hitler Germany. The "annexation" of 1938 is - also - a case study in how a committed radical minority can seize total power if the conditions are right. The luckless Kurt Schuschnigg [Austrian "Standesstaat" dictator 1934-38] when he at five before twelve finally came up with the idea of having the people vote on annexation, gave a thoroughly realistic evaluation: 25% were expressly against the annexation to Germany, 25% expressly against the large remainder were waiting to see which way the wind would blow [literally, "how the rabbit runs"]. Schuschnigg was already too weak to be able to pull the observers of the rabbit's running onto his side. Hitler very simply vorbade him to hold the referendum.]

This paragraph needs more conceptual translation into American English than linguistic.

Engelburt Dollfuss established what he called a Standestaat (corporate state) dictatorship in 1933, in which he substituted his direct rule as Chancellor for parliamentary democracy. Dolfuss' Standestaat was based on the Italian Fascist model with a heavy influence by the Catholic Church hierarchy included, and the term "clerical-fascist" that is often applied to it is descriptive. Dollfuss was murdered in the failed Nazi coup attempt launched from Germany in 1934. Kurt von Schuschnigg became Chancellor and the head of the Fatherland Front, the Catholic conservative party which Dollfuss had declared to be the party of the whole Austrian people.

A couple of linguistic comments: I'm surprised and a little amused to see Rauscher's article refer to him as "Kurt Schuschnigg", not as Kurt von Schuschnigg. That's a bit of an anachronism; Austria banned the use of aristocratic names like "von So-And-So" after the Second World War. Also, the "five before twelve" reference is to Schuschnigg's desperate decision, after Hitler had made it painfully clear to him that he intended to take over Austria, to hold a referendum to discourage the annexation effort.

Germany had reached a formal agreement with Schuschnigg's regime in July 1936, declaring that the German Reich recognized the "full sovereignty" of Austria. But in January, Hitler summoned the Chancellor of sovereign Austria to meet him in his "Eagle's Nest" in Obersalzburg. When the summit took place in February, Hitler showed Schuschnigg his hospitality with accusations such as, "Austria has never done anything that was useful to the German Reich. Its entire history is an unbroken betrayal of the German people."

Although Schuschnigg capitulated to Hitler's demands to legalize the Austrian NSDAP (Nazis) and to appoint the pro-Nazi Seyss-Inquart as Interior [National Police] and Security Minister, he still tried to hold off annexation by scheduling a national referendum in Austria on the issue for March 13. It would be a yes-or-no vote on the question, "for a free and German, independent and social, for a Christian and our own Austria."

If the wording seemed a bit polemical, that was par for the course for this kind of "referendum". Hitler liked to hold fake referenda, too, which regularly showed near-unanimous support for whatever the dictator's preferred position was. A friend showed me a copy of a ballot from one of those referenda. "Yes" was printed in large bold letters; "No" was shown in much smaller print.

Seyss-Inquart and admirers

Schuschnigg's proposed referendum was not planned to be any more democratic than those in neighboring Germany, though Hitler realized that the inevitable "Yes" vote for Austrian independence would nevertheless complicate his plans. The name of the individual voter would be written right on his ballot. The ballots would be cast in the office of the Fatherland Front Party. No one under 24 was allowed to vote, since younger voters were suspected of being more sympathetic to annexation and to the NSDAP than older ones.

By March 11, Schuschnigg knew that the German army was mobilizing on the border and agreed to capitulate without resistance. Schuschnigg resigned immediately that day, but Austria President Wilhelm Miklas still refused Germany's demand to appoint Seyss-Inquart as Chancellor. The plan was to have Seyss-Inquart as Chancellor formally invite German troops into Austria. But Miklas nevertheless ordered Austrian troops not to resist a German invasion and ordered the entire government dismissed. The Germans basically then just pretended that Seyss-Inquart had taken over the government, got an assurance over the telephone that Seyss-Inquart had approved the German entry into Austria and proceeded to march in the following morning, March 12.

By March 13, Seyss-Inquart formally agreed to the absorption of Austria into the German Reich, signing a "law on the reunification of Austria with the German Empire". The following day, a Monday, Hitler himself arrived in Vienna to the sound of church bells ringing, a welcome ordered by Vienna's Archbishop, Cardinal Innitzer.

Hitler scheduled a new referendum in both Germany and Austria on the annexation question for April 10. The result was 99.08% in favor in Germany, 99.75% in favor in Austria.

I don't know if there was any meaningful way to measure actual Austrian sympathy for the NSDAP and/or annexation. The April 10 referendum was certainly no such measure. Nor was the Schuschnigg comment that Rauscher quotes.

It's also worth remembering that, even though it was clear that annexation to Germany meant Nazi government in Austria, that sympathy for annexation (however it might be measured) wasn't quite identical to support for the NSDAP. As Josephy Redlick wrote in "German Austria and Nazi Germany," Foreign Affairs Oct 1936:

In 1919 the peacemakers [the Allied Powers] laid down a veto against the union of the German Reich with small but purely German Austria. This veto went against the desire of seemingly strong currents of popular opinion in both countries. Consequently, during the first decade after the World War the problem of the "Anschluss" of the old Austrian "hereditary lands "with the German national empire preoccupied the cabinets both of the Great Powers and of the new Succession States. It became, in fact, a crucial problem in Central European politics. The transformation of Germany into the National Socialist "Third Empire" [Third Reich] and Hitler's tremendous propaganda for the outright annexation of Austria changed the situation, but it did not diminish the importance of the Austrian question in European politics. (my emphasis)

I did a double-take at the comment that Austria was "purely German", since Vienna had long been a mixing point ("melting pot" is probably not the right metaphor) for people from all over the former Hapsburg Empire. The notion that it was "purely" ethnic German is just plain silly.

But the notion that Austrians mostly saw themselves as rightfully part of the same nation as Germany is correct. Austria's elected government had formally requested a merger with Germany in 1919, a combination that would have offered Austria a more immediately hopeful future economically. And it was viewed by Austrian democrats as a way to more firmly anchor the new democratic system. But the Allies, who carved up postwar Europe with an eye to ethnic unification, decided that they would not allow any such German and Austrian unification.

The rest of Rauscher's piece doesn't seem to make use of such questionable authority for factual assertions. He gives a quick but reasonable sketch of how the two big parties, the People's Party (Christian Democrats,ÖVP) and the Social Democrats (SPÖ), worked to persuade former Nazi supporters to back their own parties' democratic programs. The Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei sterreichs, FPÖ) was notably more intransigent about adopting a critical view of the National Socialist period. And under the leadershipf Jörg Haider beginning in 1986, the FP indulged itself in symbolism and suggestions that the Nazi times weren't so bad.

But despite the persistence of a hard core of neonazi types in Austria, any danger of some mass sympathy for a new Nazi-type regime is small. Rauscher refers in the paragraph below to the 27% vote in 1999 for Haider's party. That was a vote for a party whose leadership at the time was rightwing. And despite Haider's own seeming "brown" sympathies, not all of his party's voters were in symapthy with Haider's more obnoxious ideas. I'm not suggesting a vote for his party in 1999 was a good idea. It wasn't. I'm saying that at worst, it was a vote for a party which was too tolerant of anti-democratic sympathies among the party's activists. Which is bad enough.

German troops cross the Austrian border unopposed, March 1938

Rauscher's summary here of how Austrians have framed the historical memory of the Third Reich period is reasonable:

Die psychologisch-politische "Bewältigung" des Vorganges verlief nach 1945 in mehreren Phasen. Unmittelbar nach Kriegsende und noch zwei Jahrzehnte danach dominierte die "Opfertheorie". Immerhin hatten uns die Alliierten 1943 als "erstes Opfer" Hitlers anerkannt. Der Satz von der "Verantwortung" Österreichs fiel unter den Tisch.

[The psychological-political "processing" of the previous experiences developed after 1945 in various phases. Directly after the war's end and still two decades after that, the "victim theory" dominated. Immerhin the Allies had recognized us as the "first victim" of Hitler. The sentence about the "responsibility" of Austria fell under the table.]

The reference here is the the decision of the United Nations alliance in the Second World War to treat "Austria" as a country "occupied" by Germany which would be "liberated", as opposed to Germany itself, which would be "conquered" by the Allies. The difference was not just rhetorical, but a substantive legal and political judgment that would make a difference in how the countries would be treated during the postwar occupations.

Erst 1986, mit der Wahl Waldheims, und 1988, mit "50 Jahren Anschluss", entstand eine breite, zum Teil überaus wütend geführte Debatte, in der endlich der Anteil der Österreicher am "Anschluss" und an den Verbrechen des Nationalsozialismus thematisiert wurde. Symbolische Folge dessen waren die entsprechenden feierlichen Erklärungen von Kanzler Vranitzky und Bundespräsident Klestil (in Israel). Die praktische Auswirkung war eine Regelung für Zwangsarbeiter und für Arisierungen, durchgezogen von Schüssel, der Österreich nicht noch mehr zum internationalen Paria machen wollte (gleichzeitig aber auf der "Opfertheorie" beharrte).

[It was first in 1986, with the election of Waldheim, and 1988, with "50 years annexation anniversary", that a wide debate developed, in part a very angry one, in which the participation of Austrians with the "annexation" and with the crimes of National Socialism was finally engaged. Symbolic results of it included the decidedly celebratory declarations [of Austrian responsbility] by Chancellor [Franz] Vranitsky and President [Thomas] Klestil (in Israel). The practical consequence was a compensation for forced laborers and for "Arianization", put through by [People's Party Chancellor Wolfgang] Schüssel, which allowed Austria to no longer be held as an international pariah (but at the same time insisted on the "victim theory").]

In regard to that last comment, there are legal as well as political and patriotic reasons that the Austrian government would insist on the formal historical status which the Allies recognized in 1943 of Austria haveing been a country forceably occupied by Germany. Which, for all the complications involved, it was.

Es gab einen Einstellungswandel in der Bevölkerung: Die Österreicher erkennen sich nun als eigene Nation; die noch vor 30 Jahren erschreckend hohen antisemitischen Einstellungen gingen stark zurück; die Stimmung ist mehrheitlich Politik-kritisch, aber nicht antidemokratisch. Schließlich: Die bedrohlichen 27 Prozent von 1999 für die Haider-Partei kommen nicht so bald wieder.

[There was a shift of opinion among the public: Austrians recognize themselves now as their own nation; frightfully intense anti-Semitic attitudes which still were present 30 years ago diminished sharply; the mood is in the majority politically critical but not anti-democratic. Finally: the threatening 27 percent [vote] of 1999 for the Haider Party will not soon return.]

In any case, the FPÖ has split, and Haider turned out to be more of a nasty clown who wants to see himself on TV than a Mussolini- or Hitler-wannabe.

Austria's strong vote in 1994 to join the European Union also anchors the democratic system in the country even more firmly than it was before. Their annexation to the EU and the euro is a long-since done deal. But any sentiment for annexation to Germany is effectively gone.

An amusing illustration of that came back during Helmut Kohl's Chancellorship in Germany. Kohl could be a bit of a doofus at times. And once when he was on holiday in Austria, he told the press that he loved to come to Austria for vacation, that when he's in Austria, he doesn't feel like he's in a foreign country at all!

Austrian Chancellor Vranitsky took pains to remind the German Chancellor that when he was in Austria, he was most certainly in a foreign country.

Tags: anschluss, austria, austrian politics, schuschnigg, second world war

Kurt Waldheim

Kurt and Jörg'l: Austrian rightwing "populist" Jörg Haider visiting with then-Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, 1991. Haider caused quite a stir in Austria and beyond in the 1990s with his friendly references to the Third Reich and the SS, but in the end he turned out to be mainly an egotistical clown who likes seeing himself of television. Waldheim was actually around during the Third Reich and was happy to give Haider's "brown" clowning a boost at the time.

Kurt Waldheim, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations (1972-1981) and President of Austria from 1986-1992, died this week. The obituary articles about him inevitably rehash the controversy over Waldheim's involvement in war crimes during his days in the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War. As Austria's current Social Democratic Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer put it this week, Waldheim's campaign for Austrian President "led to many discusstions, above all in connection with the confrontation with Austrian history and the past of our country." ("zu vielen Diskussionen" geführt" habe, "vor allem im Zusammenhang mit der Aufarbeitung der österreichischen Geschichte und der Vergangenheit unseres Landes". - apa/red, no direct link available)

I could write a lot about the whole notion of "Aufarbeitung", which is really means in this context the processing of history in terms of understanding it and confronting unpleasant aspects of it. The "unpleasant aspects" in the case of Austria often having to do with the Third Reich. Austria was annexed by Hitler Germany in 1938 by force, although the Austrian army was ordered by its own dictator not to fight. The late Simon Wiesenthal said in an interview with Der Spiegel 04.12.1995, "The marching Germans on their way to Vienna were hindered only by women with flowers in their arms."(my translation).

But Austria was officially an "occupied country" in the view of the Allies, and so it was regarded differently than Germany during the postwar occupation. Partly but not solely as a consequence of that, Austrian views of the war in histories and the popular tended to portray Austria as more of a victim of Germany and gave little emphasis to the active and often willing collaboration of Austrians during the war. Waldheim's 1986 election campaign, which I'll describe more below, was a catalyst for a more public re-examination of those issues.

First, the history. Without delving too deeply into the sources here, the following is my understanding of Waldheim's issues from his wartime days. This should be an inspiration to me to get my papers better organized. Somewhere around here are a bunch of notes I took about the old boy around 10 years ago, but I can't put my hands on them right away.

So far as anyone was ever able to determine, Waldheim was never a member of the NSDAP (Nazi Party), although his wife was. Waldheim was in a riding club prior to the Second World War that was affiliated with the Party, prompting the quip, "Oh, Waldheim wasn't a Nazi, only his horse was."

But Waldheim was in the German Army, the Wehrmacht. During the war, basically every able-bodied man was drafted, with some exceptions for those who were considered to be working in other vital positions. The Wehrmacht was dissolved after the war; today's German Army is called the Bundeswehr, Austria's the Bundesheer. The Wehrmacht was not considered a "criminal organization" in the Nuremberg Trial sense. But it was guilty of some systematic war crimes, particularly on the easter front, not least of them delivering Jews under their control to Eisatzgruppen and Order Police that the Wehrmacht officers knew would murder them. They also resorted to gruesome tortures, hostage-taking and executions in the partisan war in eastern Europe, a gruesome tendency with which Americans have unfortunately had recent reason to again familiarize ourselves.

Waldheim served for a while on the eastern front, and there was some question as to whether he had served in units that committed criminal actions there, but that was never established. However, several events in his military career which could have involved him in war crimes were established considerably more clearly.

Waldheim did serve as an intelligence officer during the Wehrmacht's partisan war in the Balkans, which was gruesome. He was implicated in rounding up Jews in Salonika, Greece, for deportation. His unit was involved in a notorious massacre at Kozara He apparently helped round up civilians in Montenegro in areas sympathetic to the partisans to be sent to camps. And he is very likely to have participated in interrogations of captured British paratroopers who were executed after the interrogations. And, as the Italian front collapsed before the Allies, Waldheim played a key role in sending members of the demobilized Italian 11th Army to slave labor camps.

From what I know of it, this last incident is the most solidly documented and that was a criminal action. But any of them could have involved Waldheim in war crimes.

There's a question here of degrees of certainty. (I served on a jury this past week so weighing of evidence is particularly on my mind!) It was never clear to me that any of these incidents were so thoroughly documented - with the likely exception of the Italian soldiers' deportation - that a prosecutor could have shown that Waldheim was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of war crimes. Having said that, though, another apa/red story that also has no direct Web link quotes Neal Sher from the Justice Department's Special Investigation Division this week saying that there would have been sufficient evidence for a war crimes prosecution against him.

But historical standards are different. And from what I know, I believe that he was actually a guilty participant in those incidents that I've mentioned.

I was about to add that I wouldn't want to have a President that had been involved in such crimes. But that would just sound bizarre coming from an American in 2007. After all, today Austria has Heinz Fischer as President and Alfred Gusenbauer as Chancellor. We have George Bush and Dick Cheney. Let's put it this way. It's perfectly legitimate for me to criticize Kurt Waldheim's action of 60+ years ago. And it's fine by me if Austrians (or pretty much anyone else for that matter) want to criticize crimes committed by our current American leaders. Because they are serious. I try to make a regular practice of criticizing them, myself.

When Waldheim ran for Austrian President in 1986 with the support of his party, the ÖVP (the People's Party, conservative Christian Democrats), the SPÖ (Social Democrats, then called the Socialist Party) supported Kurt Steyrer against him. Waldheim had a good shot at winning according to the polls, although he had also run with the ÖVP's backing in 1991 and lost. He was known as a distinguished diplomat and projected an image that Austrian at that time understandably liked the world to see. He looked like a Statesman with a capital "S", in other words. (Well, all vowels in German or capitalized, but I'm using an English saying.)

But instead of slinging their own dirt, the SPÖ alerted the World Jewish Congress (WJC) to Waldheim's questionable Army record; Elim Rosenbaum, who worked on the case for the WJC, describes this in Betrayal: The Untold Story of the Kurt Waldheim Investigation and Cover-Up (1993). This has always puzzled me. I've never understood why the SPÖ couldn't have surfaced these issues more directly. Getting the WJC, based in New York, to take the lead publicly wasn't necessarily the optimal approach. But it's what happened.

Once the WJC started surfacing issues, one thing led to another. Journalists, especially those at Profil, began actively investigating and more and more of the story came out. Waldheim denied the charges and campaigned from a posture of being the victim of slander from foreigners, Jewish foreigners at that. It's worth noting, though, that the WJC did pursue the story even though of the incidents I listed above as being likely true, only the Salonika one involved Jews.

The most famous slogan from the campaign was "Jetzt Erst Recht", which is usually translated "Now More Than Ever". In this campaign poster, it's accompanied by the slogan, "We Austrians vote for who we want."


Critics pointed out that "Jetzt Erst Recht" had been a slogan the Nazis had used in the 1930s in one of their Austrian propaganda campaigns after the country was occupied by Germany. American political junkies may recognize "Now More Than Ever" as a slogan also used by the Nixon-Agnew re-election campaign in 1972.

I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

One of the odd aspects of this campaign was that Simon Wiesenthal, the famous "Nazi-hunter" and ÖVP supporter backed Waldheim against the WJC's attacks. He eventually criticized Waldheim for not being more honest about what his actual wartime service had been.

After Waldheim was elected, the Reagan administration, which can scarcely be suspected of being part of any "Jewish conspiracy", put Waldheim on the "watch list", which effectively meant he was not allowed to travel to the US. Many other countries followed suit. Since Waldheim's big appeal was his previous stature as a distinguished diplomat, the fact that we was scarcely able to travel to other countries in his role as Austrian President was embarrassing.

Waldheim's successor, Thomas Klestil, caused a bit of a ruckus by leaving his wife while he was in office in order to divorce and marry his girlfriend. This inspired a joke: "What's the difference between Kurt Waldheim and Thomas Klestil? Waldheim isn't allowed to travel abroad, and Klestil isn't allowed to go home."

Incidentally, Klestil little family disruption was going on in the 1990s, at the same time that across the Atlantic, the American press was collapsing toward it present-day broken condition by pimping endless sex stories about Bill Clinton. Just as the brouhaha didn't much damage Clinton's popularity as President, Klestil was re-elected after his split with his wife by a large majority.

Although Klestil's background was with the ÖVP, he was so widely respected after his first term that the SPÖ didn't bother to put up a candidate against him. And Klestil distinguished himself as President, largely wiping out whatever embarassing traces Waldheim may have left on the office.

Tags: austria, austrian politics, kurt waldheim, thomas klestil