Austria's far-right presidential candidate has been painted as a closet Nazi, writes DEREK SCALLY
ONCE UPON A time, the late Jörg Haider set the standard for Austrian extremists: shiny suits, orange permatan and objectionable views on immigrants, Jews and Hitler. But when Austrian voters choose a new president this weekend, the only real challenger to 71-year-old incumbent Heinz Fischer is a 51-year-old who, with her earnest gaze and cropped grey hair, appears to be channeling Joan Baez.
Polls show Barbara Rosenkranz is likely to attract only about a fifth of the vote, yet the candidate for the extreme right Freedom Party (FPÖ) has dominated the campaign with a decade-old call to loosen Austria’s post-war “prohibition law”, which forbids Holocaust denial, Nazi activities and historical revision of Austria’s Third Reich past.
“I think the current prohibition law is overreaching, imprecise, prone to abuse and not in accordance with freedom of speech provisions in our constitution,” she said in 1997. Coming from a far-right populist, it has been seen as a nod to extremist elements of Austrian society. Add a husband with neo-Nazi leanings and 10 children with Germanic names such as “Sonnhild” and “Alwine”, and the Austrian media have delighted in painting the FPÖ politician as a single-issue “closet Nazi”.
Under ambush, Rosenkranz did herself no favours when, asked if she doubted the existence of gas chambers at Nazi concentration camps, she said: “My knowledge of history is that of a person who visited Austrian schools between 1964 and 1976.” That was a time when it was common for Austrian history lessons to stop at 1918.
Mid-campaign, Rosenkranz called a press conference to disassociate herself from all Nazi war crimes, but it was too late: the powerful Krone tabloid, read by 40 per cent of Austrians, stopped backing her campaign.
“I think she has been misrepresented by the media just because she’s against immigration,” said supporter Julia Bernhard at an FPÖ rally.
Dozens of well-attended protests have been held against Rosenkranz’s candidacy. At one candlelit vigil before the Hofburg presidential residence, protesters laid out the names of 65,000 Austrian Jews who perished in the Holocaust. “I think it’s a scandal for Austria that someone who spreads lies about the Holocaust should want to represent our country,” said protester Markus Knopp.
Social Democrat president Heinz Fischer is a shoo-in for a second term after the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) failed to field a candidate. And where does this leave Austria’s extreme right? A decade ago the Freedom Party prompted a diplomatic freeze with its EU neighbours when it took office following a big election win. Then, party leader Jörg Haider ran an effective campaign critical of immigrants, the EU and the two established parties. Analysts see the Rosenkranz campaign as a lost opportunity for the FPÖ to woo conservative voters and repeat its 1999 election success.
“Haider never ran a single-issue campaign, he always chose several themes to appeal to a broad voter base,” said political analyst Dr Thomas Hofer. “With just one topic, Rosenkranz has cut a defensive figure in the last days, as if she will be relieved when this is all over.” FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache, a permatanned Haider protege, has learned two valuable lessions ahead of regional elections in the autumn.
Some 25 years after former Nazi officer Kurt Waldheim was elected president, it’s clear that sensitivity about Austria’s past runs as deep as ever. But, even for Austrian extremists, tapping into latent Nazi sympathies is no longer enough to get elected.
