Re: Weekly Worker on the Austrian elections

["ÁÎ×Ó¹â HenryC.K.Liu ¹ù¤l¥ú" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My understand of European politics is limited and dependent on the
untrustworthy Western media.
This report coinsides with my hunch that the internalization of facism within
capitalistic democracy has made it imperative for the neo-liberals to
grandstand against extreme facism, particularly as a political institution.

My view is that the re-emergence of facist political parties and governments
represent an opportunity, and a return to reality, for hitherto eclipsed
communist movements and parties.
Perhaps the CIA will now see the demonization of communism as as
simplistically desirable as it had been during the Cold War.


Henry



David Welch wrote:

> ===========================================
> Weekly Worker 322 Thursday February 10 2000
> ===========================================
>
> Our anti-fascism and theirs
>
> "Far right takes power in Austria." "Europe in turmoil over far right pact
> in Austria." "Austria in crisis".
>
> These headlines are all references of course to Jrg Haider's Freedom
> Party, which has entered into a coalition with the conservative People's
> Party. Slightly unexpectedly, the FP secured the majority of cabinet posts
> (six out of 10). In another coup for the FP, Haider managed to get his
> private secretary and close political confidante, Susanne Riess-Passer, in
> as vice-chancellor. Haider himself will remain governor of the southern
> province of Carinthia, biding his time.
>
> The response of Austria's fellow European Union governments has been loud
> and disapproving, with Haider's FP becoming the target of politically
> correct (though historically incorrect) anti-fascist self-righteousness.
> The European parliament has threatened that Austria's EU membership could
> be suspended if the Vienna government "veers from European standards of
> democracy and human rights", as the official communiqu put it.
>
> The US government recalled its ambassador from Austria for "consultations"
> - Israel did likewise, only more militantly. There have been innumerable
> calls for sanctions and boycotts from a wide range of quarters. Belgium
> has asked its skiers to refrain from visiting Austria. On Tuesday (the
> unelected) Prince Charles announced that he would be postponing an
> official visit planned for May to the 'Britain now' trade fair in Vienna
> as a protest at the inclusion of the FP in the government.
>
> For communists this avalanche of humbug and hypocrisy is quite nauseous.
> However, it is also very informative. The reaction of the liberal and
> liberal-left press to Haider's rise is integral to official anti-fascism
> which seeks to restrict democracy in the name of democracy. We are led to
> believe that the politics of inconsistent democracy will avert the
> 'fascist threat' - just as a state ban on the British National Party will
> also promote democracy, at least according to those who subscribe to
> 'hardline' politically correct anti-racism.
>
> Thus an editorial in The Guardian paternalistically ticked off "the
> Austrian electorate ... for tolerating and encouraging Mr Haider's rise"
> and offered the following piece of constitutional advice: "President
> Klestil can yet head off this calamity, even if the politicians cannot.
> Under article 29 of the 1920 constitution, he can annul last October's
> results and call a fresh election. Over 70% of Austrians did not support
> the FP last time round. And those who did, now more fully aware perhaps of
> the awful consequences for their country if Mr Haider advances, should
> also be given the chance to think again, and think very hard" (my
> emphasis, February 1). The Green Party in Austria has also called for new
> elections.
>
> The Observer added a new twist to the liberal-authoritarian argument of
> the Green Party and The Guardian: "The post-war liberal consensus, led by
> philosophers like Karl Popper and Isaiah Berlin, was that Hitler's
> election can and should have been contested. [Haider] and his
> party fall beyond the pale. It may be that Haider is strengthened by the
> EU's reaction and Austria eventually leaves the EU. So be it. Austrians
> may choose to be led by neo-Nazi racists, but the rest of us do not have
> to connive in their choice" (February 6).
>
> One of the most significant aspects of the 'Haider crisis' is the
> considerable light it throws on official ideology - that is, the state
> promotion of anti-racism, anti-fascism and anti-Nazism. As we have pointed
> out before in the Weekly Worker, especially over the Macpherson inquiry
> into the Stephen Lawrence murder, the ruling class and the bourgeois media
> are rearticulating their ideology and belief-systems. The British
> establishment has successfully appropriated anti-racism - draining it in
> the process of much of its democratic content. So much so indeed, that
> official anti-racism is now a powerful ideological weapon which the
> bourgeoisie uses to divide the working class, as did the racism of old. It
> turns us all into ethnic supplicants before the state - which decides
> who gets the politically correct blessings (and hence a sop hand-out) and
> who does not. The same essential point can be made about official
> anti-fascism/Nazism, as the chorus of outrage over Austria demonstrates.
>
> What a contrast to the 1920 and 30s. Then the danger to bourgeois rule
> came from the working class organised in mass socialist and communist
> parties. Wide sections of the ruling class looked towards and promoted
> fascist movements in Europe as saviours from Bolshevism - which meant they
> did not think twice about appealing to racist and anti-semitic bigotry.
> Big capital in Italy and Germany were hand-in-glove with fascism as
> counterrevolution. In Poland the nationalist socialist Joseph Pilsudski
> carried through an anti-communist fascist coup in 1926. Protected from
> outside intervention, Franco smashed the Spanish revolution. Action
> Franaise - along with a young Franois Mitterand - was ready to do the same
> in France. Everywhere the bourgeoisie was up to its neck in fascism.
>
> Hence, the Vatican's current abhorrence of Haider sits very uneasily with
> its past. The deeply anti-semitic Pius XII made a whole series of
> pro-Mussolini/Hitler pronouncements - the 'killers of Christ' were at last
> going to get their just deserts.
>
> A certain Winston Churchill - and many others in the British ruling class
> - also expressed approval during the 1920s and 30s of Mussolini's and
> Hitler's crusade to save Europe from communism. Edward VIII and his
> partner Mrs Wallace Simpson were 'Nazi monarchs' in waiting.
> Lord Halifax admired Hitler and his SS methods. So did Lord Rothermere and
> his Daily Mail - it actively promoted Sir Oswald Mosley's New Party and
> after that the British Union of Fascists. The US of course was afflicted
> by a virulent institutional racism/eugenicism and anti-communism, which,
> with a greater working class challenge, would surely have spawned a mass
> fascist movement. Randolph Hurst - of 'Citizen Kane' fame - was set to
> bankroll bloody counterrevolution.
>
> In the aftermath of World War II and the holocaust the bourgeoisie had to
> reinvent itself as noble fighters against fascism and Nazism. The myth was
> born of Britain fighting World War II, not to save the British empire, but
> to defeat the Nazi threat to democracy. Across the whole of Europe we are
> still living with that lie in its various national versions.
>
> One thing remains exactly the same though - the politics of national
> chauvinism. The vile anti-immigrant rhetoric of the FP differs in no
> substantial way from the mainstream message - and practice - of the
> People's Party, or the Social Democrats for that matter, as Haider likes
> to point out. In turn, the current tough talk emanating from Jack Straw
> about 'bogus' or 'illegal' asylum-seekers/refugees is not a million miles
> away in tone, to put it mildly, from Haider's more open chauvinist rants.
>
> It is apparent that many of those who voted FP are a mixture of former
> Social Democratic Party (SP) supporters and/or young workers, disgusted by
> the cosy corruption and patronage which has characterised the 'red'
> (social democrats) and 'black' (conservatives) Austrian state since 1955.
> No doubt the FP will soon become equally discredited, once Haider and his
> colleagues have got their noses in the trough. Instead of demonising those
> who voted for Haider, implying that the SP and PP are perfectly
> acceptable, socialists and communists in Austria - as in Britain - must
> break with bourgeois ideology, left and right, and fight for independent
> working class politics.