Haider and Austria
Street fighting erupts against new rightist regime
By John
Catalinotto
Thousands of people have been marching in the streets of
Vienna and other Austrian cities since Feb. 4, battling police
with unusual militancy. They are protesting the new regime in
which an openly anti-immigrant, ultra-right electoral party
with Nazi roots has been brought into the government.
Many around the world are asking if this development in
Austria will mean an upsurge of neo-Nazi attacks on the working
class, especially immigrants and minorities.
Political activists and revolutionaries are also asking if
the new government's expected anti-worker offensive will arouse
mass protest from labor unionists. And can these protests go
beyond the limitations of the Social Democrats and become
clearly anti-capitalist?
On Feb. 4, Austrian President Thomas Klestil swore in a
coalition government of the conservative People's Party and the
ultra-right Freedom Party. Each party had won 52 parliamentary
seats in the fall election. Together their 104 votes make up a
majority of the 189 members of the Austrian parliament.
Sharply breaking with Austrian tradition, this is the first
time since the 1970s that the Social Democrats are not the
backbone of the regime. The Social Democrats have been the
leading party in a "grand coalition" with the Peoples Party
since 1986. It was called the "red-black" coalition after the
two parties' colors.
But even more important, this is the first time the
so-called Freedom Party will be part of the government since
the racist demagogue Joerg Haider took over its presidency and
associated it with Austria's Nazi past. This is now called the
"blue-black" government, since the Freedom Party's color is
blue. Haider himself does not have a post in the new
government.
The new regime aroused diplomatic protest from Western
European capitals and Washington, with threats to cut tourism
to Austria. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said
Haider's actions were "unacceptable."
The anti-immigrant policies of most of these imperialist
governments and their recent genocidal wars against Iraq and
Yugoslavia, however, disqualify them as honest opponents of
Haider.
The mass revulsion to the regime, however, is honest. On the
first day some 4,000 people gathered to protest at the
parliament building, where they battled police. Police reports
claimed 40 cops and 13 protesters were injured and "several
police vehicles damaged."
Even after Social Democratic leaders criticized this
militancy and tried to call off the protests, thousands
gathered at parliament on Feb. 5 and then marched, first to FP
headquarters and then the march swelled as it went through
immigrant communities. Some marches grew as large as 20,000
strong.
There have also been anti-Haider protests in Paris and
Berlin.
Conditions in Austria
Austria is no longer the center of an empire, as it was
before World War I. Its 7.8 million people enjoy high living
standards. Unemployment is lower there than in most of the
European Union.
Austria was a legally neutral capitalist state bordering on
and competing with the socialist camp during the Cold War. As a
result, the Social-Democratic-led governments had to concede
many social benefits, including job security, health care and
retirement income, to Austria's workers.
But since the counter-revolution in Eastern Europe, the
Austrian capitalists have begun chipping away workers' social
benefits. This accelerated as the Austrian regime cut
government expenses to satisfy the European Union's rules for
joining the single European currency, the Euro.
At the same time, the regime moved toward militarizing and
participating in the planned European Defense Force and in
NATO--a taboo under the Austrian Constitution. A popular War
Crimes Tribunal in early December condemned regime members for
aiding and abetting NATO's war against Yugoslavia.
Most Austrian workers belong to unions. The union leadership
has close ties to the Social Democratic establishment. Instead
of fighting the social-service cuts and militarism, this
leadership went along with them.
Now Austrians feel less secure economically. They consider
both the politicians and the labor leaders as parasites
interested only in their own personal advancement.
Haider's roots
In the absence of a strong left-wing opposition, many are
susceptible to Haider's program of scapegoating immigrants.
Haid er poses as an anti-establishment populist. He won over 40
percent of the vote to become governor of Carinthia, and the
Freedom Party won an unprecedented 27 percent in last fall's
national election.
Haider's parents were active Nazis in Nazi-led Austria.
Haider himself has prais ed Hitler's employment policies,
called SS officers "good men" and described Nazi concentration
camps as "punishment" camps. But when these statements hurt his
political opportunities, he publicly apologized.
Some 9 percent of Austria's population are immigrants. About
46 percent of them are from the former Yugoslavia and another
19 percent from Turkey. (Feb. 5 Christian Science Monitor) Like
immigrants in the United States, they tend to do the hardest
jobs--although in Austria most will at least be in labor
unions. Also as in the United States, they are the target of
xenophobic and racist attack.
Haider blames immigrants for Austria's problems. He calls
Yugoslavs "burglars" and demands that the "over-foreignization"
of Austria be stopped. He sounds like a California racist
pushing an "English-only" referendum, or maybe like a more
successful Patrick Buchanan.
Under this pressure from the right, the
Social-Democratic-led coalition has already cut legal
immigration from 15,000 to 8,000 people per year.
The Revolutionary Communist League, which is active in the
anti-Haider demonstrations, points out that Haider's Freedom
Party is not fascist in the classical sense. The FP is an
electoral party, not a mass reactionary movement born out of
social crisis. Unlike Hitler's Nazis, the FP has not trained
reactionary gangs to physically combat the workers and
immigrants.
The FP-PP coalition wants to put on an express track the
same "neoliberal" policies the Social Democrat-led coalition
was carrying out slowly.
According to an anti-Haider leaflet distributed by the
Movement for Social Liberation, the new regime plans to raise
co-payments for medical procedures to 20 percent, cut pensions,
especially to injured workers, and increase taxes on cigarettes
and gasoline. It aims to reduce wages--as in the United
States--and subsidize the capitalists instead.
The capitalists of course like this part. But if the FP
program also arouses militant opposition from the workers,
bourgeois enthusiasm for the coalition could be
short-lived.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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