Haider is hardly Hitler

So what's so bad about Haider's party? Well, for one, it's been described as the first far-right party to hold power in Europe since 1945. The last far-right party to hold power, of course, was the infamous German National Socialists. After they killed over 10 million Jews, Gypsies, communists, homosexuals, disabled people, and others in concentration camps, it became quite clear that we should be willing to do almost anything to ensure that such a far-right party never again takes power in Europe.

However, if we are to describe both the Nazis and the Austrian Freedom Party as "far-right," then we need to consider just what "far-right" means. What did Haider actually do that makes him so bad? Apparently, when he was governor of Carinthia (an Austrian state) in the early 1990s, he made a few comments indicating that he did not hate all aspects of the Third Reich. Forced out of office, Haider later returned on an anti-immigation platform.

Now, Haider recently apologized for his earlier comments about Nazis, and he even gave a nice speech about how he thought that Austria's Social Democrats (the previous left-leaning governing party) hadn't done enough to address the nation's role in the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities. Haider's got at least one thing right: he is 100 percent correct that the "mainstream" Austrian parties largely ignored their responsibility for the Third Reich.

As for Haider's objectionable qualities, there are really two separate issues here: Haider's inflammatory Nazi comments from 10 years ago and the Freedom Party's "far-right" stances on the issues. We'll start with the Nazi comments. In prasing the character of SS officers and Hitler's employment policies, Haider probably intended no real evil. Though little alarm bells go off inside our heads whenever anyone says something about the Nazis, these quotes have been taken somewhat out of context. Haider seems sincere when he says he regrets saying them. Though I would still campaign against Haider before I would vote for him, none of this makes him a second Hitler. Need I remind you that such prominent Americans as Charles Lindbergh and Joseph Kennedy were known to be symphathic towards the Third Reich during the pre-war Nazi years?

Now for the "far-right" thing—the Freedom Party's platform is based largely on its being anti-immigrant. This is an important issue to Austrians because they're members of the EU, and the EU's internal borders are open. If the EU expands east, people from the poorer former communist states might move to Austria to enjoy its higher standard of living. For this reason, the Freedom Party originally did not support EU expansion. That's really not so bad. It's rightist by European standards, but it's fairly mainstream by our own. Imagine an American politician supporting limits on immigration from poorer bordering countries!

Haider, in fact, had his own comments for American critics: "I would say we don't accept or we wouldn't accept to build up two-meter-high walls between Mexico and the USA." Point well taken. He's certainly no worse than Pat Buchanan or, for that matter, much of the Republican Congressional leadership. Buchanan may seem like a national joke to us, but a significant number of Americans support his politics. If, despite the efforts of moderate and liberal Americans, Buchanan's supporters were to gain some significant office in our federal government, how would we feel if Canada withdrew its ambassador?

Haider's party is hardly a positive force in Austria. But Austria is still a democracy, and democracies still have a right to elect whomever they want to office. Despite the press reports, Haider is not a Nazi, and it's offensive when people loosely throw around the "Nazi" label—it weakens its impact when the term is used accurately. If a leader we don't like takes power in a democracy, we just have to deal with it. The only time that other countries are justified in taking action is when such a leader, once in power, removes the democratic institutions from the government—as happened in Germany in 1933.

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