The coming to power in Austria of Jorg Haider's Freedom Party (FPÖ), often referred to as national populist and sometimes even as fascistic, has created real shock waves throughout the member states of the European Union (EU) and around the world. The announcement of the formation of a coalition government led by the conservative Wolfgang Schuessel, giving the vice chancellory, five ministerial portfolios and two state secretarial posts to the FPÖ has caused quite a stir.

Washington and Tel Aviv immediately recalled their ambassadors for consultation, the Vienna Stock Exchange temporarily plummeted, its ATX Index falling below 1,100 points for the first time since February 1999, and Austria's partners within the EU announced the immediate or rapid application of diplomatic and political sanctions. While Vienna was shaken by rowdy demonstrations, at the UN - that den of thieves - secretary general, Kofi Annan claimed that:

every person with a historical conscience should be preoccupied by recent political developments in Austria.

Why all the fuss? There's no doubt that the FPÖ is a party of the extreme right, and that its boss, Haider, is a crook. As a demagogue, a rightist, and a xenophobe, he has always been ambiguous regarding his historic appreciation of the Nazi regime. Much less ambiguous is his repressive and reactionary policy concerning immigration - a policy that he unfortunately has no monopoly on - as illustrated by the recent race riots in Spain. Indeed, the open anti-immigration policies of Haider are, for the most part, the same as those practiced hypocritically and under "democratic" cover by all the other states of the EU; states that are often led by left wing governments... And that's the real problem! Because what we need to know are the real motivations behind the present "anti-fascist" campaign of the ruling class and the capitalist left supporting it.

Why now?

It is useful to know that this is not the first time the FPÖ - this "fascist menace" - has been part of an Austrian coalition government. From 1983 to 1986, the same FPÖ was quietly associated with the social democratic government of then Chancellor Bruno Kreisky.

The FPÖ was certainly much more marginal at that time (just less than 7% of the electorate), but the FPÖ Minister of Defense of 1985 had even publicly shaken the hand of an ex war criminal who had just gotten out of prison.
All this without creating any commotion. ⁽¹⁾

Other countries of the EU have also witnessed similar participation of the extreme right to power in recent years without creating any great scandal, not to mention the type of campaign going on right now. Let's take the example of Italy, where just a few years ago, in 1994, the National Alliance (AN) took part in a major way in the Silvio Berlusconi government. This party was then the electoral front led by the Italian Social Movement (MSI) of Gianfranco Fini, the historical product founded in 1946 of Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party. The NA had, as the FPÖ today, five cabinet posts and the vice premiership went to Guiseppe Tatarella of the MSI. All this was granted with the democratic blessing of the ex-Stalinists of the PDS and to the great satisfaction of the Italian and international ruling class and their boot-lickers in the UN.

In the United States, public affairs commentator, Pat Buchanan, who has recently quit the Republican Party to present his candidacy to the US Presidency under the Reform Party banner, has a political profile just as populist, rightist, and xenophobic as the Austrian Haider, or the French Le Pen. Yet, for years he had been a close collaborator of Ronald Reagan, another valiant knight of Liberty and Democracy. An ardent admirer of Joseph McCarthy's witch-hunts of the 1950's, Buchanan advocates banning abortions, mandatory prayer in schools and institutions, getting rid of welfare, and sealing off the borders to immigration... Buchanan, like Haider, specializes in outrageous attacks against blacks and latinos as well as gays and lesbians and is just as ambiguous on Hitler and fascism. Recently, Buchanan used one of his columns to propose reserving at least 75% of elite college and university placements for "whites of non-Jewish origins"! And yet, the Republican Party National Committee, one of the two iron pillars supporting American democracy has done everything in its power to keep this "fascist" in its ranks and still in the race for the nomination of that party as candidate for the presidency of the Union. Governor George W.

Bush, the present front-runner for the nomination, has also declared:

I don't want Pat Buchanan to quit the party. ⁽²⁾

What's behind this?

Contrary to what was affirmed by a radical political commentator on "Pisse-vinaigre", a Montreal radio show, the reason the international ruling class is mobilizing has nothing to do with preserving its access to precious Austrian markets. The free movement of capital and goods will not be in any more danger under Haider then under a Pinochet... And it's not mobilizing itself either by reason of a certain "conscience of history" as hypocritically invoked by Kofi Annan. ⁽³⁾

As we have seen earlier in this article, bourgeois states and their institutions historically don't make too much fuss over the openly racist or extremist orientations of some of their "statesmen". At most, some of them can occasionally be sacrificed after the fact, if that suits the present interests of the sharks they serve. But it is clear that the bourgeoisie has not experienced an epiphany in Austria. They don't give a damn about what Haider is going to do about the immigrants, what he will impose on the minorities or what he has in store for the rest of the Austrian working class. The wolf will never become a lamb.

It is most probable that this ongoing circus serves only to polish the tarnished image of democracy, that particular expression of the dictatorship of capital. ⁽⁴⁾

It's this image that is increasingly used to justify all kinds of imperialist crimes now dubbed as "humanitarian intervention". It just so happens that this bourgeois "humanism" has just thrown Serbia back 50 years after it had been subjected to massive attacks by "smart bombs" in 1999. The Haider affair is also useful in that it diverts attention from that other current massacre in the Caucasus; a massacre that is being accomplished with the tacit approval of the authorities of the EU and of the USA. When the ruling class deploys ideological campaigns in defense of its democracy, it's always to turn workers away from the real battlegrounds.

The communist left resists the attacks that workers suffer under the dictatorship of capital - whatever form it takes. For us, capitalism is the incarnation of barbarism.

We are well aware thuggery is also increasing and support all working class attempts at self-defense because we know that it is useless to appeal to the capitalist state. But we are not going to join in any anti-fascist crusade to politically defend democracy. ⁽⁵⁾

In this sense, the proletarian response to events in Austria is to scrupulously defend and extend workers' autonomy in response to the siren calls of fascism and democracy.

For, in the final analysis, with this false choice offered us, it is always capitalism that wins.

(1) La Presse, February 6, 2000.

(2) It is important to note that Mike Dolan of the Public Citizen Group, one of the main spokesmen and the co-ordinator of the official demonstrations against the Seattle Summit is a supporter of Pat Buchanan. In Switzerland too, the official demonstrations against the WTO united on a nationalist terrain, the Socialist Youth, as well as the members of parliament of the FPÖ's sister organization, the Parti populaire suisse, a party almost as strong as the FPÖ with 23% of the 1999 election vote.
The capitalist left, today, apparently so supportive of democratic anti-fascism, has a very selective memory, and often develops alliances that speak volumes.

(3) The "conscience" of this henchman of the world ruling class flippantly dismisses the tens of thousands of deaths caused by the embargo and bombing still regularly hitting Iraq - crimes to which this diplomat/executioner is closely associated with.

(4) Other expressions or forms of the dictatorship of capital are fascism and stalinism.

(5) Internationalist Communist Review, #12, 1994, p. 26.