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In the news: Haider out!

November 26, 2002 ~ 12:17 p.m.

How could I let this piece of news slip by without commenting?

J�rg Haider, leader of Austria�s Freedom Party (now, I ask you, just how soi disant can a name get?), called it quits after a resounding annihilation in the country�s recent general elections, collecting a meager 10 percent of the vote. Haider�s rivals, the conservative People�s Party captured 42 percent, while the Left-wing opposition Social Democrats received nearly 37 percent.

Haider was no Pim Fortuyn, the charismatic center-Right Dutch politician murdered last May, for whom the case for tolerance could be defended despite Fortuyn�s anti-immigrant stance. Instead, the leader of the �Freedom� Party was a snarling pit bull, a Jean Marie Le Pen-type crackpot, who idolized the Nazis and once famously referred to those who comprised the SS as �men of character.� He also promised to enact �proper employment practices,� much in the manner that his hero � Adolf Hitler � did.

Now, it�s really no surprise that a man like J�rg Haider could win in a nation like Austria, for it is the bad-boy of Europe. Austrians, big-mouthed, anti-Semitic xenophobes that they are, would appear tailor-made for a man of Haider�s racism. But, in the past few years, Austrians had been misled by the Freedom Party, promised lower taxes, a weakening of union power and an end to favoritism in government. All of these points are staples of moderate, unthreatening conservatism. To this end, Haider had even elected on putting a moderate (insofar as anyone in a party such as this could be called moderate) spokeswoman in place to represent the party. Haider remained a prominent force in the background, spinning the knobs. The middle-of-the-road turned out to be a monster that Haider was horrified to see he�d created, and he turned on his spokeswoman, regained front-office recognition and dragged the Freedom Party back into the snake-pit of nastiness from which it had originally emerged.

And the Haider familiar to all began to re-assert himself. According to an AP news story, �He [Haider] mocked the head of Vienna's Jewish community earlier this year and accused a rival of playing to the American �East Coast� � a code-phrase for U.S. Jews.�

Maybe Austrians aren�t such rednecks after all in their hands-down rejection of his filth. An Austria led by the People�s Party could very likely continue with the conservative reforms already put into place by the lesser-evil elements of the �Freedom� Party.

I am just glad that the world has seen the backside of J�rg Haider (although he has not quit politics altogether, retaining the governorship of the province of Carinthia and Freedom Party membership). But as Haider exits stage right from Austrian political prominence, I just want to say this much to the man:

Schnell, schnell!

� M.E.M.

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