10.02.2000

Our anti-fascism and theirs

"Far right takes power in Austria." "Europe in turmoil over far right pact in Austria." "Austria in crisis".

These headlines are all references of course to Jörg Haider's Freedom Party, which has entered into a coalition with the conservative People's Party. Slightly unexpectedly, the FP secured the majority of cabinet posts (six out of 10). In another coup for the FP, Haider managed to get his private secretary and close political confidante, Susanne Riess-Passer, in as vice-chancellor. Haider himself will remain governor of the southern province of Carinthia, biding his time.

The response of Austria's fellow European Union governments has been loud and disapproving, with Haider's FP becoming the target of politically correct (though historically incorrect) anti-fascist self-righteousness. The European parliament has threatened that Austria's EU membership could be suspended if the Vienna government "veers from European standards of democracy and human rights", as the official communiqu"š put it.

The US government recalled its ambassador from Austria for "consultations" - Israel did likewise, only more militantly. There have been innumerable calls for sanctions and boycotts from a wide range of quarters. Belgium has asked its skiers to refrain from visiting Austria. On Tuesday (the unelected) Prince Charles announced that he would be postponing an official visit planned for May to the 'Britain now' trade fair in Vienna as a protest at the inclusion of the FP in the government.

For communists this avalanche of humbug and hypocrisy is quite nauseous. However, it is also very informative. The reaction of the liberal and liberal-left press to Haider's rise is integral to official anti-fascism which seeks to restrict democracy in the name of democracy. We are led to believe that the politics of inconsistent democracy will avert the 'fascist threat' - just as a state ban on the British National Party will also promote democracy, at least according to those who subscribe to 'hardline' politically correct anti-racism.

Thus an editorial in The Guardian paternalistically ticked off "the Austrian electorate ... for tolerating and encouraging Mr Haider's rise" and offered the following piece of constitutional advice: "President Klestil can yet head off this calamity, even if the politicians cannot. Under article 29 of the 1920 constitution, he can annul last October's results and call a fresh election. Over 70% of Austrians did not support the FP last time round. And those who did, now more fully aware perhaps of the awful consequences for their country if Mr Haider advances, should also be given the chance to think again, and think very hard" (my emphasis, February 1). The Green Party in Austria has also called for new elections.

The Observer added a new twist to the liberal-authoritarian argument of the Green Party and The Guardian: "The post-war liberal consensus, led by philosophers like Karl Popper and Isaiah Berlin, was that Hitler's election can and should have been contested. [Haider] and his party fall beyond the pale. It may be that Haider is strengthened by the EU's reaction and Austria eventually leaves the EU. So be it. Austrians may choose to be led by neo-Nazi racists, but the rest of us do not have to connive in their choice" (February 6).

One of the most significant aspects of the 'Haider crisis' is the considerable light it throws on official ideology - that is, the state promotion of anti-racism, anti-fascism and anti-Nazism. As we have pointed out before in the Weekly Worker, especially over the Macpherson inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence murder, the ruling class and the bourgeois media are rearticulating their ideology and belief-systems. The British establishment has successfully appropriated anti-racism - draining it in the process of much of its democratic content. So much so indeed, that official anti-racism is now a powerful ideological weapon which the bourgeoisie uses to divide the working class, as did the racism of old. It turns us all into ethnic supplicants before the state - which decides who gets the politically correct blessings (and hence a sop hand-out) and who does not. The same essential point can be made about official anti-fascism/Nazism, as the chorus of outrage over Austria demonstrates.

What a contrast to the 1920 and 30s. Then the danger to bourgeois rule came from the working class organised in mass socialist and communist parties. Wide sections of the ruling class looked towards and promoted fascist movements in Europe as saviours from Bolshevism - which meant they did not think twice about appealing to racist and anti-semitic bigotry. Big capital in Italy and Germany were hand-in-glove with fascism as counterrevolution. In Poland the nationalist socialist Joseph Pilsudski carried through an anti-communist fascist coup in 1926. Protected from outside intervention, Franco smashed the Spanish revolution. Action Franà§aise - along with a young Franà§ois Mitterand - was ready to do the same in France. Everywhere the bourgeoisie was up to its neck in fascism.

Hence, the Vatican's current abhorrence of Haider sits very uneasily with its past. The deeply anti-semitic Pius XII made a whole series of pro-Mussolini/Hitler pronouncements - the 'killers of Christ' were at last going to get their just deserts.

A certain Winston Churchill - and many others in the British ruling class - also expressed approval during the 1920s and 30s of Mussolini's and Hitler's crusade to save Europe from communism. Edward VIII and his partner Mrs Wallace Simpson were 'Nazi monarchs' in waiting. Lord Halifax admired Hitler and his SS methods. So did Lord Rothermere and his Daily Mail - it actively promoted Sir Oswald Mosley's New Party and after that the British Union of Fascists. The US of course was afflicted by a virulent institutional racism/eugenicism and anti-communism, which, with a greater working class challenge, would surely have spawned a mass fascist movement. Randolph Hurst - of 'Citizen Kane' fame - was set to bankroll bloody counterrevolution.

In the aftermath of World War II and the holocaust the bourgeoisie had to reinvent itself as noble fighters against fascism and Nazism. The myth was born of Britain fighting World War II, not to save the British empire, but to defeat the Nazi threat to democracy. Across the whole of Europe we are still living with that lie in its various national versions.

One thing remains exactly the same though - the politics of national chauvinism. The vile anti-immigrant rhetoric of the FP differs in no substantial way from the mainstream message - and practice - of the People's Party, or the Social Democrats for that matter, as Haider likes to point out. In turn, the current tough talk emanating from Jack Straw about 'bogus' or 'illegal' asylum-seekers/refugees is not a million miles away in tone, to put it mildly, from Haider's more open chauvinist rants.

It is apparent that many of those who voted FP are a mixture of former Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) supporters and/or young workers, disgusted by the cosy corruption and patronage which has characterised the 'red' (social democrats) and 'black' (conservatives) Austrian state since 1955. No doubt the FP will soon become equally discredited, once Haider and his colleagues have got their noses in the trough. Instead of demonising those who voted for Haider, implying that the SPÖ and PP are perfectly acceptable, socialists and communists in Austria - as in Britain - must break with bourgeois ideology, left and right, and fight for independent working class politics.

Danny Hammill

Haider and SWP

If we are to believe the Socialist Workers Party, then the best way to deal with Jörg Haider's Freedom Party is to call on the British government to impose sanctions. At its Downing Street demonstration last Saturday it also demanded 'no platform for fascists'.

All this gives rise to a number of problems. Is Haider really a fascist? Has his party built street fighting gangs? Is he committed to smashing the unions and abolishing democracy? Does he fight to overcome divisions in the ruling classes by force? No, no, and no again. A rightwing populist certainly. But a fascist?

Let us look at the evidence: "It [the Freedom Party] has been funded by ex-Nazis after World War II" (Socialist Worker February 5). In fact there is not one party in Austria or Germany that was not set up with the help of ex-Nazis (except perhaps the communist parties). The main bourgeois parties in these two countries were not formed at a rank and file level by resistance fighters or people released from concentration camps. A majority of the population during the Third Reich (Austria democratically fused with Germany in 1938) were involved in the Nazi regime one way or another. Take Kurt Waldheim. In 1986 he was elected Social Democratic president of Austria. He had served as a high-ranking commander in Hitler's Wehrmacht.

One of the crasser attempts to make the Hitler-Haider connection has come from Denis Staunton in The Observer: "The most striking biographical detail about the vice-chancellor, Susanne Riess-Passer, is that she was born in Braunau, birthplace of Adolf Hitler" (February 6). Sadly, Socialist Worker is not much better: "Haider has praised the 'sound employment politics' of the Third Reich, and described the SS as 'courageous' and men of 'decent character'" (February 5).

Nobody has so far criticised the Freedom Party for its programme. It would be rather difficult to do so from an establishment point of view. Haider's programme is a rather dull, rightwing mish-mash of national chauvinism and populist promises (for example the demand for the so-called 'mother cheque', a payment for women who look after their children full time).

"If you compare our programme with the programme of Tony Blair, you will find a lot of similarities," boasted Haider (The Guardian February 8). His anti-immigration policies are shared by most of the EU's bourgeois parties. Last year the German Christian Democrats collected more than a million signatures against dual citizenship. The Social Democratic government today wields laws which herd refugees into 'container camps', often without the minimum in sanitary hygiene, and keeps new asylum-seekers locked up in special rooms at airports - until they get sent away again.

Although there is not much in his politics that distinguishes Haider from Blair, Schr"der and co, he openly dared to rock the post-World War II anti-Nazi consensus. By doing so he reminds European capitalism of its own past.

The main feeling in Austria, however, is not so much anger against Haider. Anti-Haider protests, that started with 50,000 marching in October 1999, were reduced to 12,000 last Thursday and to 2,000 at the weekend.

Hysterics do not help. We cannot defeat the extreme chauvinism of the Freedom Party by shouting, as the SWP does, 'No platform for fascists'. The Freedom Party won 27% of the vote in October 1999 - some 1.5 million people. How - practically - is 'no platform' to be implemented?

We welcome the protests in Austria. We do not, however, demand that the bourgeois state sorts out Haider. Calling on the British government to impose sanctions is utterly reactionary. The message is wrong: 'Let Tony Blair sort out 'big politics' while we fight for a wage increase'.