News Analysis: Alarm All-pervasive in Austria As Rightist Party is Victorious

Alarm is all-pervasive here after the unexpected victory of Jorg Haider’s rightist Freedom Party in the Nov. 10 municipal elections after a nasty campaign that appealed to prejudice and xenophobia.

How a party whose leader recently praised Adolf Hitler could win 22.7 of the vote for the city legislature, up from 9.7 percent four years ago, has commentators baffled.

Many are comparing the political climate in Vienna now to the Kristallnacht atmosphere of 53 years ago when, during the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938, hundreds of Jewish stores and 94 synagogues were destroyed by mobs in a post-Anschluss euphoria.

They also recall that in 1932, the last free elections in Austria before the Anschluss — the Nazis’ annexation of Austria — the Nazi party made its gains mainly at the expense of conservatives.

The Freedom Party seems to have done the same.

The Austrian Peoples’ Party — the party of President Kurt Waldheim — fared worst. It received only 18.1 percent of the vote, down from 28.4 percent in 1987, and now ranks third in the town Parliament.

The Socialists, who have ruled “Red Vienna” since 1949, managed to win 47.5 percent, a significant drop from their 54.9 percent four years ago.

While the Socialists will retain control of the municipality, the elections frightened many people by exposing sinister forces just below the surface.

The economy, of course, is not good, always fertile soil for extremists. Unemployment is running at 6 percent, unusually high by Austrian standards, and Viennese workers are upset by the influx of cheap labor from Eastern European countries.

A LATTER-DAY HITLER

For the first time, a large percentage of low-skilled workers who normally vote Socialist, turned to the Freedom Party, which made no bones about its anti-immigration stand.

Haider, 41, shamelessly stirred emotions over liberal immigration policies. To many, he is a latter-day Hitler, perceived as a political genius, leading his extremist splinter party to 13 electoral victories in five years.

Haider has benefited from the mistakes and complacency of the traditional parties and the changing behavior of Austrian voters.

The World War II generation desperately wanted stability after 1945 and chose either the Social Democrats or Christian conservatives.

But the younger generation, which grew up in prosperity, seeks something new. They want to break with the traditions of their fathers.

The younger voters are mainly people free of ideological baggage. Their voting decisions are usually spontaneous, made without reflection.

Haider, one of their generation, is skilled in playing on the most primitive emotions. He calls the Socialists and conservatives the “old parties” and offers himself as the solution to the problems they supposedly brought on the country.

Having never had the task of governing, Haider has no record to defend but can point to the blunders of the ruling bureaucracy.

“While the Socialists and conservatives become ever more hazy in their desire to please everybody, the Freedom Party harvests the fruits of their foolish behavior,” says political scientist Anton Pelinka.

The political vacuum was created both by the Socialists, who forgot they were the workers’ party, and by the conservatives, who weakened their identity as the Catholic party, Pelinka said.

Meanwhile, Haider’s blatant neo-Nazi remarks did not frighten off his young supporters. When he praised Hitler’s labor policies before the regional parliament in the southern Austrian region of Carinthia, he lost his seat but his popularity did not suffer.

Several years ago, pollsters predicted the Freedom Party would peak with 20 percent of the popular vote. It exceeded that in Vienna last week and stands as the most successful party of the right in all of Europe.