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-4THE PART I THE YEARS IN W I L D ERN E S S, ROBIN HOOD AND THE BLUE-COLLAR VOTE (1991-1993) "There are people who don't love their fellow human beings-and I just hate people like that." -Tom Lehrer, "National Brotherhood Week" (1965) "PROPER EMPLOYMENT POLICIES": HAIDER'S FALL FROM GRACE We live in an era of sound bites. Haider, as the leader of a small party in danger of being overlooked, has always kept that in mind. Generally, those rules of the media game have helped him-despite, or maybe even because of, the hostility of most journalists. But every now and then he has been guilty of seriously overshooting his target. Some of his sound bites have gained a life of their own, none more so than his notorious "praise" of Nazi employment policies, which led one u.S. anchorman to describe Haider as an "admirer of Adolph Hitler." Let us look a little bit closer at the context of what is probably the most well-known "fact" about Haider's career. Routine meetings of the Carinthian legislature are not usually the center of media attention. Nor was the agenda of its meeting on June 13, 1991, particularly hair-raising. The agenda was unemployment in general and ways to fight it. In particular, Governor Haider defended a bylaw that made it more difficult for the unemployed to refuse the work they were offered if they wanted to draw benefits. That comported well with a conservative coalition wanting to prune the 'excesses of the welfare state. Socialist trade unionists were predictably opposed. One of their number, Erwin Paska, first proposed to make it more difficult for foreigners to accept jobs in Austria; another, 71 72 THE Y FA R SIN THE WI L DE R N E S S, PAR T I Gunther Hausenblas,interrupted Haider and charged he had seen it all before-in the Third Reich, that is. Haider shot back from the hip and challenged Hausenblas in a curiously roundabout fashion: "No, that did not exist in the Third Reich because, in fact, in the Third Reich, they pursued a proper employment policy-something your government in Vienna these days is unable to manage. One has got to say that once." When catcalls continued, Haider added, "Apparently during the Third Reich people got on so well that your party has still been led by enthusiastic members of the Hitler Youth after almost forty years"-a reference to former Governor Leopold Wagner, who had described himself as such during his first campaign for governor in 1974.1 Reports are unanimous that the exchange in the legislature was not followed by any spontaneous outrage. It was only several minutes later that Socialists demanded an interruption of the session. At the end of it, Haider stepped forward and made conciliatory noises: "I think it's easiest for me to assuage the conflict that has started by making it clear that I did not intend to rate the employment policy of the Third Reich as more positive compared with that of the Austrian government. I ask you to take note of that." In the meantime Haider's political opponents had spotted an opportunity to create some serious mischief for Carinthia's blue-and-black coalition. The Socialists refused to accept Haider's apology Ominously, Georg Wurmitzer, the chief whip of his coalition partner, also started to make threatening noises. The historical and ideological background of Haider's remarks will be dealt with in a later chapter. What needs to be emphasized now is that Haider's gaffe (probably the single most oftenquoted sentence he ever uttered) happened at a particularly sensitive moment, a few hours before the opening of the Socialist Party conference and one week before the GVP was due to vote for a new leader at theirs. Carinthian Socialists wanted to embarrass, not help, the GVP by pointing to the wickedness of its coalition partner. But Vranitzky persuaded them to raise the stakes. They should still table a motion of no confidence against Haider but promise to elect Christoph Zernatto, the Carinthian GVP leader, in his stead. That day Zernatto claimed to regard that as an "unethical offer." His own proposal was that Haider should step down as an atonement; the GVP would then continue the coalition and vote for another FPG candidate.2 Once it had become clear his opponents were trying to get political mileage out of his statement, Haider fell back...

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