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Preface Debunking the Haider Myth "A politician is a creature of circumstances." -,-Benjamin Disraeli "Neither Dante nor Gentile. A little bit more Macchiavelli." -Armando Plebe on the culture of the Right, 1977 "Theres no business like show business"-and politics is obviously part of it all. There is no more fitting proof of that thesis than the career of]6rg Haider. In terms of political power, Haider is governor of a scenic, but remote, Austrian state the size of Delaware. In terms of publicity, though, he has finally arrived as a global superstar. During one week in February, 2000, he managed to get his picture on the covers of Time and Newsweek and landed numerous appearances on German and U.S. talk shows. In his line of business , you cannot go much further than that. "He reaches parts other beers cannot reach." Much of that exposure was unfavorable, of course. Haider was presented as the villain of the pieces. In itself that makes the discrepancy between his actual power and his media presence no less surprising, though. Part of the explanation may be that Haider was riding the coattails of a fellow Austrian, Adolf Hitler, ideologically, as some of his detractors claim: he certainly rode them in terms of publicity When asked the reason a change of government in "a faraway country of which we know little" has created such an inordinate amount of excitement, the routine answer has been that it is the country Hitler came from. Austrians, many of whom have never entirely come to terms with the loss of "great power" status after World War I, watched that spectacle with horror and fascination, but not without a trace of half-conscious, grim satisfaction to be at the center of attention once more. Amid all the hand-wringing about the irreparable damage done to Austria's "image" abroad, observers could hardly fail to notice that the part of a plucky little fellow who stood up to the big bullies was quite an appealing one. xiii xiv PREFACE One of the more perceptive comments published in the Austrian press about the whole brouhaha came from a philosopher, Rudolf Burger, who concluded that, like it or not, politics is a "linguistic phenomenon" in which power consists of naming things. That comports well with what has been called the "linguistic tum" in the social sciences. The thesis is indeed a fashionable one, even among historians: reality does not exist, and what "really" happened does not matter. All we have are different images of the past, images that are colored by our prejudices but apparently unrelated to any quaint notion about "facts." Politically, for all intents and purposes, the only thing that matters is what people believe, or can be made to believe, has happened. Burger's case is hard to argue against. Nietzsche is supposed to have said the life of a great man ought to be conveyed in three telling anecdotes. Late twentieth-century media have improved upon his suggestion : It is now three sound bites. Haider's life is a good example: Everybody who has heard anything about him has heard about his "praise" for Hitlers employment policy and for Waffen-SS veterans; you may then go on to choose a third quote almost at random. Yet this book is not primarily about the media bubble that has briefly made a household name of a provincial politician, but rather about the politics of the country where he operates. It is about debunking the Haider myth. It is old fashioned in its search for wie es eigentlich gewesen ist, for what actually happened. It cannot aspire to be more than a provisional history Most of the relevant documents are still under lock and key, and one doubts whether in an age of the ubiquitous mobile phone, minutes of meetings and politicians' letters will throw much light on events even if they do survive. There is a saying variously attributed to some of the sages of our profession that any history concerning events after 1848 is bound to turn into journalism. One shudders to think what they would say about the following pages. Some of the more interesting and novel details have obviously had to come from the sort of celebrated gossip known as "oral history" Clearly, little of that information is entirely disinterested . Yet it would be counterproductive not to follow the leads proffered and to discard them altogether. It will be made clear in the text or in the...

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