Sir, - Your coverage of the situation in Austria is sketchy and over-simplified and all of the non-Austrian letter writers (judging by the names) are horribly ignorant. It must be admitted that the coverage of Ireland in the papers here is just as bad. Each country - Irish and Austrian - portrays the other as somehow barbaric and backward-looking. The protest by 14 members of the EU against the new coalition here is in danger of going badly wrong because some of its proponents are playing to poorly informed home audiences. If all European politics is home politics, then all European news needs to be treated as carefully as home news.
The run-of the-mill analysis seems to be that we have a neo-Nazi party in government, and if we get them out of government everything will be hunky dory again. That is wrong. Vaguely Nazi-related sentiments (not by any means actual neo-Nazism) are endemic here at a low level throughout the political spectrum. This is partly because of the circumstances in which the present state was set up. There was a desperate need to establish a stable political entity in the face of the developing Cold War, and some unpleasant attitudes got frozen in. It is no coincidence that in the years since the Cold War ended, these issues have come back to life.
They can be dealt with, and are being dealt with. There is a gradual and often agonising re-evaluation of the past going on. Blanket condemnation from the outside will not help. In the past few days, colleagues of mine have received the first abusive emails from the US (in response to requests for scientific reprints!). There is an opportunity for the EU to develop a better, more constructively critical approach; and to be seen within Austria to be doing so. - Yours, etc.,
Ben Hemmens, Karl-Franzens-Universitaet, Graz, Austria.