Far-Right's showing in Austria's election is worrying
By Edward Lucas
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 30/09/2008
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From the outside, it looks at best distasteful; at worst, downright sinister. Three Austrians out of 10 voted for far-Right parties in Sunday's parliamentary election.
Heinz-Christian Strache
Heinz Christian Strache, head of the right-wing Freedom Party, was accused of xenophobia during the election campaign
Nobody with a sense of history can fail to hear echoes of jackboots on pavements, and catch the whiff of burning synagogues.
Jörg Haider, leader of the Freedom Party, has described the SS as patriots and downplays the Holocaust. Heinz-Christian Strache, the thuggish leader of the populist Alliance for Austria's Future, has associated with neo-Nazis in the past, and ran an unprecedentedly virulent campaign against immigrants and foreigners.
From inside Austria, it looks worrying, too, but for different reasons. Sunday's vote does not mean that Austria is ripe for fascism, but that the old model of politics created after the war in much of Europe is broken, with nothing ready to take its place....
...In Austria, the People's Party may dump the Social Democrats and go into government with either or both of the far-Right parties.
The hope behind such deals is that power sanitises radical forces. The hard choices of office may tame them, or expose divisions. This has happened in Austria whenever Haider's party has held power. The danger is that it legitimises extremism: does one really want Stalinists, or those who have a soft spot for Hitler, getting a sniff of real power?
What is really worrying is not that some bull-necked populist gets a turn at running Austria's transport ministry. It is that Europe's political system is so weak, after years of unparalleled prosperity.
What will happen when the financial tsunami that has broken over Wall Street and the City hits continental Europe's wobbly banks, taking jobs and perhaps even savings with it? Nobody is ready for that - least of all the Continent's discredited and complacent political leaders.
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