Despite neo-Nazis’ rise, Austria devoted to rights
STEFAN PEHRINGER
Confronted with the headline on Shannon Gormley’s Oct. 24 column, How Austria managed to elect neoNazis, an ambassador would likely react with an angry protest. I will take a different approach and simply set the record straight on a few facts.
“Austria elected neo-Nazis” comes not even a year after Austrian voters were praised for electing, with a clear majority, a candidate of the Green Party, rather than a representative of the “far-right,” to be their president. So what? Have Austrians turned, within barely a year, from true democrats to abhorrent Nazis?
“When a country doesn’t face its past, it’s easier for thugs to control its future” rightly states a problem, but the analysis reaches the wrong conclusions. Why is that?
It seems peculiar that the author mulls over the allocation of the historic responsibility of Germany and Austria respectively for National Socialism and genocide; up to the point that Hitler may have been Austrian but only made his “career” in Germany.
All this is unnecessary. The National Socialist regime’s genocide is — because of its deliberateness — the worst crime in human history. Austria shares in that responsibility.
That Austria has failed to deal with its past is inaccurate. I witnessed the transformation of the 1980s and ’90s, when, during the debate over thenpresident Kurt Waldheim’s wartime past, it became clear Austria could no longer hold onto the myth of “the first victim of National Socialism.”
In 1991, Chancellor Franz Vranitzky acknowledged Austria’s shared responsibility and asked the victims and their descendants for forgiveness. That Austria was erased from the map in 1938 and many Austrians were victims, persecuted because of their ethnicity or as political opponents, must not obscure that too many of our compatriots were prominently involved in the crimes of the regime.
This reorientation has become the guiding principle of Austrian policy in the last quarter-century. Belatedly, a hand was extended to Holocaust survivors. Compensation was paid to the victims and their descendants, as well as to former slave labourers.
Not to forget: Hundreds of young Austrians performed their volunteer Memorial Service all across the world in institutions that commemorate the Holocaust. It is untrue that Austria never lived up to its responsibility.
So, if the voters of the Freedom Party of Austria — as I am convinced — are no “Nazis,” how can the party be so successful in elections?
Besides disaffection with the interaction of the traditional pillars of the Austrian political system, the Conservatives and the Social Democrats, the reasons lie — as in large parts of Western Europe and the United States — in fears of economic decline, mass immigration and loss of identity. These gained even more momentum during the refugee and migration crisis of 2015-2016: On some days, as many illegal border crossings occurred in Austria as in Canada in all of 2017 so far.
The reasons lie in these fears and not in the party’s history. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz may be right in accusing the Freedom Party and other European right-wing parties of “philosemitism” as they present themselves as guardians of the Jewish communities of Europe against the rise of (political) Islam, which they see as their true adversary.
The Freedom Party is in the mainstream of EU-skeptical and antiimmigration European parties. The question of how to deal with them arises in every member state. A perfect recipe — either exclusion or engagement — has yet to be found.
Austria has, for more than 70 years, been an established democracy, committed to human rights. The global community should be confident that Austria will remain clearly committed to these principles. Stefan Pehringer is Austrian ambassador to Canada and was diplomatic adviser to former (Social Democratic) chancellor Werner Faymann.