Our Life and Times
March 2000

Neo-fascists join Austrian government

by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes

In a shocking betrayal of even the minimal standards of bourgeois democracy, the conservative Austrian Peoples Party has brought the neo-fascist so-called Freedom Party (FPO) into the government, sparking worldwide protests. Anti-fascist demonstrations involving tens of thousands have taken place in Paris, Amsterdam and other cities. At the level of bourgeois politics, the European Union and Israel have begun a partial diplomatic boycott.

Inside Austria itself, labor and left groups have held several large demonstrations, while smaller ones involving thousands occur almost daily in Vienna. One on Feb. 19 drew over 200,000 workers and youth onto the streets of Vienna, including many delegations from abroad. Among the posters were ones connecting Joerg Haider and Slobodan Milosevic. The large turnout led many immigrants to express the idea that they no longer felt so alone and would be more confident about speaking out and joining demonstrations against Haider.

Repeatedly, Austria has shown itself a society that has yet to acknowledge its history of complicity with Nazism. In 1986, Austrians elected Kurt Waldheim president, even after his role as a Nazi officer in massacres of resistance fighters in Greece and Yugoslavia was revealed.

The anti-immigrant and racist FPO has claimed that Austria is today a victim again, this time of what it blatantly refers to as "overforeignization" [Ueberfremdung]. Telegenic FPO leader Joerg Haider regularly attacks people of color, but he has also referred to Poles as "car thieves," people from the Balkans as "burglary experts," and Russians as "experts in blackmail and mugging." At the same time, Haider has praised Nazi veterans as well as Hitler's labor policies.

This racist demagogue has not yet formed a muscular cadre-type organization complete with violent fascist skinheads to attack opponents, as, for example, has France's National Front. But Haider is clearing the pathway for such a development by making neo-fascist ideology part of the "normal" political process. His Feb. 28 resignation as FPO leader will not change this.

Even before the FPO joined the government, Austria was hardly tolerant toward immigrants. Unlike those in many other European countries, immigrants in Austria do not have any voting rights, not even within labor unions. Last year, Amnesty International and anti-racist activists protested the police murder of Marcus Omofuma, a Nigerian asylum seeker forcibly expelled from Austria last May. When Omofuma made verbal protests as they were putting him on a flight out of the country, police bound and gagged him with tape. He suffocated to death during that flight.

Today in Austria, long-fought gains by labor and women are now endangered. The government ministry dealing with women's issues is to be transformed into one dealing with the family. The conservative-FPO coalition also advocates Thatcherite policies toward labor. Most dangerous of all is its plan to increase police repression of immigrants and minorities, as part of a supposed crackdown on crime, which is in fact minimal.

At the very moment that the FPO was joining the Austrian government, racist mobs attacked immigrant workers in Spain's Costa del Sol region for three days running before police intervened. New agribusiness enterprises in the region employ thousands of low-wage immigrant workers. In response to the attacks, the immigrant-based Moroccan Workers Association called a week-long strike, resulting in massive losses to agribusiness. The growers had to agree to improve worker housing and to pay for all damaged property. Workers Association leader Abdel Hamid Bayuki also criticized the mainstream labor movement: "We want Spanish labor unions to take up our cause. As far as Moroccan workers are concerned, the unions here seem to be in a coma."