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Haider’s Austria
October 19, 2008
It was quite a turn-out at Jörg Haider’s memorial service in Klagenfurt on Saturday. About 25,000 people were there. Among them was Muammer Gaddafi’s son, an old friend of the late Austrian politician. So, too, was Alfred Gusenbauer, Austria’s Social Democratic chancellor, whose presence reminded us all - if we needed reminding - that Haider, to Austrians, was never the polecat that he was to the rest of the world.
Much ink has been spilt on explanations of Haider’s popularity among Austrians. Perhaps it was because his mother and father, like many Austrians before 1945, were devoted Nazis. Perhaps it was because Haider likened the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia after the Second World War to the Nazi extermination of Europe’s Jews.
Perhaps it was because of his hostility to the Slovenian minority in his native province of Carinthia. Perhaps it was because of his campaigns against immigrants in Austria. Or perhaps it was because of his spirited attacks on the European Union.
Especially important, though, was Haider’s assault on the hallowed Austrian spoils system known as “Proporz”. Proporz infested every corner of public life in Austria’s post-war democracy. Every government ministry, every state sector job, every minor post and every perk was allocated to activists and supporters of the Social Democrats and the conservative People’s Party on a proportional basis. It was an intricate, bureaucratically managed patronage system that the great novelist Robert Musil would have recognised as typical of his countrymen’s genius.
When Haider and his far-right Freedom Party denounced Proporz, many Austrians embraced him as an anti-establishment outsider with the potential to destroy a system from which they had not benefited. When he said Proporz had caused the two mainstream parties to lose touch with the people, many Austrians agreed wholeheartedly.
At Saturday’s memorial service, Gusenbauer described Haider as “a man who could leave no one cold, whether in a positive or a negative sense”. There was not a word about how patronage politics, as practised by the Social Democrats and the People’s Party, had contributed to Haider’s rise.
Herbert Gottweis, a political science professor at the University of Vienna, got it absolutely right about Haider. “He simply said what many people in Austria think.”
Finally free
Posted by: hus sain | October 19th, 2008 at 2:25 pm | Report this commenthe goes to Valhalla
It should be added to this article that Haider’s own party proved to be little better than the others once they reached government power - the stream of inept ministers and embarrassing crony appointments from 2000 until 2002 was rather worse than anything we had seen before.
Like most populists, Haider was great at highlighting problems with the status quo, but not so great at producing better solutions.
Posted by: Thomas Themel | October 20th, 2008 at 11:14 am | Report this commentAccording to Tony Barber, especially important in Jörg Haider’s popularity among Austrians was his “assault on the hallowed Austrian spoils system known as ‘Proporz’”.
Are there any opinion surveys or other evidence to support that contention?
Was Haider against the system as such or against what he may have seen as his party’s under-representation in it?
Posted by: Edward S | October 20th, 2008 at 11:38 am | Report this comment“Perhaps it was because his mother and father, like many Austrians before 1945, were devoted Nazis”
This reads like speculation. All Austrians were devoted Nazis? I am not Austrian, but hasn’t Austria been cleared of this outrageous claim (by the UN). How can you make such a broad claim without any evidence (at least a single link to a historical document)?
Posted by: Enzo | October 20th, 2008 at 2:40 pm | Report this comment“Perhaps it was because his mother and father, like many Austrians before 1945, were devoted Nazis”
Posted by: Robert | October 20th, 2008 at 5:43 pm | Report this commentI’m a Belgian, so we were occupied for five years.
As far as I know the Austrians behaved wel and never left a scar.
As far as I know they did their work in the German war-machine, but the “Edelweiss soldiers” were certainly not all nazi’s.
As for Haider : you might look and listen to the report on “The Economist” and I don’t think that is an extreme right tabloid paper.
Greetz from Antwerp
Why not leave him rest in peace. He played an important role in breaking up old ingrained structures and giving Austrian politics fresh impetus…that´s what counts, not his - of course unsuitable - remarks…
Posted by: heide | October 20th, 2008 at 9:59 pm | Report this commentRobert (see above), ask the Dutch and especially the Dutch Jewish community about Arthur Seyss-Inquart.
Posted by: Edward S | October 21st, 2008 at 11:48 am | Report this commentWas Haider anti-immigrant or pro Austrian?
Is it anti-immigrant when a first generation small business owner hires immigrants who he trains for three months and then once officially on the payroll they don’t show for work and file for unemployment benefits? And yes, he the small business owner has to pay for much of that expense. And now he has no one to send into the field (plumbing, electric work, etc)
Might that be an example why Haider was anti-immigrant. Not against the person or culture but against the exterme social safety net which many immigrants can take advantage of. A system created in Austria after the second world war.
Maybe anti-immigrant but maybe for a reason? And Not because he held Nazi sympathies?
Posted by: AustroAmerican | October 26th, 2008 at 2:52 am | Report this commentIn England, the home country of the FT, there is legislation outlawing discrimination on a raft of issues. The only reason why it does not cover “Proporz” is that the Victorians banned this in the UK nearly a century before it was invented in Austria. [It is regrettable that Blair found a loophole so that he could employ scores of Labour Party activists on the government payroll, but that is insignificant.]
Posted by: John | October 27th, 2008 at 9:24 pm | Report this commentHaider railed against government corruption and thereby won a lot of support.
What the chattering classes SHOULD want is a charismatic centre or centre-left politician who denounces the corruption in the centralised government and its “Proporz” system.
Sadly, the corruption stems from centre-left and, to a lesser extent, centre politicians, so the only chance is for someone to start a new, clean, centre-left party (if that is not too much of an oxymoron)