Fascists In Austria, Fascists On Fox News, Fascist In The Oval Office

I have a recollection from a history class that after World War I, the Treaty of Versailles prohibited the unification of Germany and Austria-- Anschluss. Unification was one of the goals Hitler laid out in Mein Kampf. In 1934 Austria's fascist Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss was assassinated by pro-Anschluss Austrian Nazis in a failed coup. His successor, Kurt Schuschnigg, was also a fascist and also resisted the idea of unification with Germany claiming Austrians were racially superior to the Germans. He had local Nazis rounded up and put in concentration camps. Hitler went crazy and made a series of demands that increasingly exterminated Austrian independence until in March of 1934-- to prevent a plebiscite-- Hitler invaded Austria, breaking the Treaty of Versailles. The Austrians greeted the German troops with wild enthusiasm, flowers and Nazi salutes. Hitler toured the country the next day announced Anschluss. Although there was some rumblings of disapproval from Britain, Italy and France, it was just hot air. Mexico's protests were louder. Austria's Jews were immediately targeted with the aggressive approval of Austria's non-Jews. The following month there was a plebiscite to approve the unification and it passed with 99.7% of the vote and Austria became the German province of Ostmark. In London, The Times likened the union as the same as Scotland having joined England 300 years earlier. Austrians generally became enthusiastic Nazis and in many cases, even more so than the Germans, contributing, aside from Hitler himself, lots of Nazi leaders including monsters like SS General Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Jewish extermination chief Alois Brunner, Nazi operative Otto Skorzeny, and, of course, Adolf Eichmann.

In the early 1970's-- probably '72 or '73-- I got stuck in Innsbruck for about 5-6 months. World War II was long over but the people there came across as a real bunch Nazis, especially the older ones. It was pretty horrible and I would escape to Munich, across the border with Germany or through the Brenner Pass into Italy and to Venice whenever I could. I guess because Vienna was so cosmopolitan and sophisticated it came across as far less of a Nazi bastion that little Innsburuck in Tyrol.

Yesterday, Austria elected a neo-Nazi chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, although U.S. media, or at least those bothering to report on it at all, refer to him and his facsist People's Party as "center right." The People's Party is more known as a cesspool of corruption rather than a cesspool of fascism, but Austrian voters-- overwhelmingly Nazis themselves-- are always happy to embrace both. Kurz's freedom party increased it's share of the vote from 2017 from 31.5% to 38.4% yesterday. The center-left Social Democrats went down from 26.9% to 21.5% and Kurz's junior partner in the coalition government, the even further right Freedom Party did pretty badly-- down to 17.3% from 26.0%, probably because it had worked with the Social Democrats to bring down the People's Party previous government after a video-taped corruption scandal exploded.

The Greens share of the vote went from 3.8% to an impressive 12.4%, making it a major player in Austrian politics. The pro-EU party (NEOs) increased their share of the vote from 5.3% to 7.8%. These are the estimated number of seats in the 183-Parliament each of the main parties will hold:

• People's Party- 73
• Social Democrats- 41
• Freedom Party- 32
• Greens- 23
• NEOs- 14

So, since we're talking about fascists... strange how Trump seems to be working so hard to fracture Fox News! He was certainly storming away on Twitter about Fox over the weekend. He really got into the exchange between Ed Henry and Mark Levin yesterday. Martin Pengelly of The Guardian had the best report I saw, Trump jumps shark with retweets attacking Fox News host. He started by making the point about Señor Trumapnzee's well-known fear of sharks. "Trump," he wrote, "may be the great white hope of the Republican party, but his dislike of sharks is well known. It seemed odd, then, that in a Sunday feeding frenzy of retweets attacking a Fox News pundit, the president gave voice to a bot that seeks to satirise his rampant galeophobia.

Trump appeared to have been watching TV at the White House, before leaving for a second straight day at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia.

On Fox & Friends, host Ed Henry had asked radio host Mark Levin if he thought the president did anything “illegal” in the 25 July phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy which is at the heart of impeachment proceedings.

True to form, Levin reacted angrily. This seemed to please the president, who retweeted more than 20 tweets about the exchange.

One referred to another Fox News anchor whose coverage of the Ukraine scandal has stoked turmoil at the network: “Can we face off Levin and worlds [sic] worst anchor Chris Wallace?”

Others included: “Mark Levin ripped Ed Henry a new one” and “Mark Levin sure put that lying shit head Ed Henry in his place didn’t he?”

In less vulgar fashion, the president also relayed a message from @TBASharks.

The account is a bot, full title Trump But About Sharks, which explains its mission thus: “Trump apparently hates sharks, so this bot does some word replacement on his tweets to make them about sharks.”

The message retweeted by the president therefore read: “RT @BulldawgDerek @foxandfriends A Sunday Morning; Amen Mark Levin, Preach Brother! You shut down Ed Henry and the Pro Shark Media with the fac[ts].”

The original tweet, which Trump also retweeted, referred to “the fake news,” a common target for Trump if not usually including hosts of Fox & Friends.

Trump’s fear and dislike of sharks is well established. In 2013, two years before he emerged Jaws-like from the depths to savage the body politic, he tweeted: “Sharks are last on my list-- other than perhaps the losers and haters of the world!”

In 2018, the adult film maker and actor Stormy Daniels revealed that during the brief affair she claims to have had with Trump in 2006-- which he denies-- he enthused about a TV special about a shipwreck.

“It was like the worst shark attack in history,” said Daniels. “He is obsessed with sharks. Terrified of sharks.

“He was like, “I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die.’ He was like riveted. He was like obsessed.

“It’s so strange, I know.”

Alan Grayson, after reading Trump's deranged threats to stoke up a civil war, had a comment, addressed to Trump: "Note to Donald Trump: nobody gives a damn about you, you self-indulgent fool, and nobody is going to war for you, even though you do exhibit a slaveowner mentality that this country hasn’t seen much in the past 150 years." I thought it would be a good way to end the evening.

Tonight We'll Get A Good Idea Of How Successful Putin Has Been In Doing To The EU What He Did To The U.S.

Señor Trumpanzee with Italian would-be Mussolini, Matteo Salvini

In Europe, voting for the EU Parliament ends today. But Holland and the U.K. went first-- on Thursday-- and unofficial Dutch results show a gargantuan loss for Geert Wilders, the far right hate-monger who was leading in the polls. This is how it looks right now for the the Dutch delegation (26 seats):

• Labour- 18%
• VVD (mainstream conservatives)- 14%
• Forum for Democracy (neo-fascists)- 11%
• Freedom Party (Wilders' far right Trumpist/Islamaphobic party)- 4%

Turnout was up in Holland to around 37% but North Ireland, where there are 3 seats, shows over 45% voting. Votes there won't be counted until Monday, although the rest of the U.K. should have election results tonight. Here's how the U.K.'s seats are apportioned:

• Southeast England- 10
• London- 8
• Northwest England- 8
• West Midlands- 7
• East England- 7
• Southwest England- 6
• Scotland- 6
• Yorkshire & Humber- 6
• East Midlands- 5
• Wales- 4
• Northeast England- 3
• Northern Ireland- 3

This is how the British parties participating in the election stand on Brexit:

Brexit Party- leave
UKIP- leave
Conservative Party- leave but almost as confused as Labour
Lib Dems- favors remain but wants a new Brexit vote
Labour- complete confusion though most members want a new referendum
Green Party- remain with new referendum
Change UK- new referendum

Der Spiegel published an exhaustive look at the elections: The Right-Wing Populist Plan to Destroy Europe. The German magazine's point is that dramatic exposure of the far right's catastrophic Russian bribery scandal in Austria hasn't stopped the pan-European neo-fascists from battling on towards their goal of destroying the European Union from within its own institutions. Despite Geert Wilder's setback on Thursday, the elections ending today are likely to help them move along towards their goal.

Last Saturday European fascist leaders met in Milan, summoned by the would-be Mussolini, Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini. 11 neo-Nazi parties were represented, including Marine Le Pen from France, Geert Wilders, Jörg Meuthen from the Alternative for Germany party, as well as fascists from Bulgaria, Slovakia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Estonia.

Together, they performed what is by now well-known work, one with some surreal features: Full of bluster, the self-proclaimed "true Europeans" campaigned for entry into a parliament they despise. And they asked the people to give them the power to hollow out a European Union that has been painstakingly built over decades. All of it to the tune of Nessun dorma, along with Puccini's Turandot, its aria ending in fierce chanting: "Vanish, oh night! Set, stars! Set, stars! At dawn I will win! I'll win! I will win!" Vincerò!





On the stage in Milan, not a word was said about the drama unfolding in Vienna, as Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), stepped down from his position as vice chancellor following the leak of a video demonstrating the depth of his corruptibility-- a scandal that also threatened to take down the entire Austrian government. And yet, in Milan they all pretended that nothing had happened. Even as they all knew: Quite a lot had happened.

This time around, it's not about some low-level party official sending Hitler pictures via WhatsApp on the Führer's birthday in provincial Austria. This time it goes right to the top level of the Austrian government, casting light on the worrying state of the Austrian political scene. The videos raise fundamental questions about whether the populists are fit for power. And whether they can be entrusted with government business. And whether Strache and his protégé Johann Gudenus should be regarded as isolated cases or as symbolic figures of a fast and loose relationship between right-wing populists and donations from foreign donors, rule of law and the truth.





Most Austrians, with the exception, perhaps, of FPÖ supporters, were likely to have been deeply shocked by the disregard to the country's constitution shown in the recordings, and many Europeans were astonished by the crooked behavior displayed by the second in command of a government of an EU member state. If the scenes in the Ibiza videos had been part of a TV crime show, people probably would have dismissed them as having been exaggerated and overdone.

..."IbizaGate" feeds into the well-founded suspicions that those thumping their chests as über-patriots in their countries have little problem with conniving with foreign powers, obtaining financing from dubious donors or even being pulled like puppets on a string when it comes to policy. The Strache scandal is undoubtedly detrimental to the original narrative offered by the right-wing populists-- namely that the parties are the lone forces defending the good people against "old parties" and other corrupt elites. But as Strache has now shown, it's the right-wing populists themselves who are in fact the corrupt elite.

Strache's German counterparts from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) have recognized the dangers of such discussions, but they don't want to admit it. Meuthen, one of the party's leaders, has been in damage control mode since last Saturday, describing the Strache Video as a "singular matter" reflecting abominable behavior, but also as a domestic issue relevant only to Austria.

...The Strache circus is of course also a problem for right-wing populists outside of Austria, because the issues raised by the video are a problem for them all across Europe. For months the AfD itself has been tangled up in several party donation scandals involving Alice Weidel, the party's floor leader in German parliament, as well as its leading candidates heading into this weekend's European elections, Meuthen and Guido Reil. Weidel is under scrutiny over a dubious election campaign donation of around 130,000 euros. In Meuthen's case, he is being scrutinized over 90,000 euros from dubious sources used to finance his campaign in a state election in Baden-Württemberg. And there are questions surrounding the nearly 45,000 euros used in a state election campaign in North Rhine-Westphalia for Reil, a member of the AfD's national board.

[Note: UK neo-Nazi, Nigel Farage is in the midst of a scandal showing that he's financed by Putin and devoted to Trump.]

No less troubling is the fact that the Ibiza video once again sheds light on the close contacts many right-wing populists in Europe have with Russia, a problem for which the AfD has also been in the headlines. In April, Der Spiegel, ZDF, La Repubblica and the BBC reported on the activities and connections of Markus Frohnmaier, a member of German parliament with the AfD. A document circulated inside the Russian presidential administration at the time of the Bundestag election campaign describing the politician as potentially becoming "a deputy under absolute control" of Russia.

The BND, Germany's foreign intelligence agency, and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the country's domestic intelligence apparatus, are currently detecting a change in the Kremlin's strategy. Rather than relying solely on its own media and channels for campaigning and aiming to steer the agenda, it is now focusing much more on individuals, a small group of parliamentarians were recently told in a classified meeting. They were informed that the people selected by Moscow included somewhere between a half-dozen and a dozen members of the Bundestag. One is Markus Frohnmaier. When contacted for comment, he responded: "I do not allow myself to be used by the Russian government for its purposes and would always refuse to accept attempts of this kind. The reporting about me is nothing more than a campaign."

Senior AfD politician Alexander Gauland is also a frequent guest in Russia, but he rejects any criticism because he claims to be following the foreign policy footsteps of Bismarck, who believed in strong German-Russian relations. Marcus Pretzell, at the time a member of the AfD and current member of the European Parliament, visited the Russian-occupied Crimea as "Guest of Honor" in 2016 and thought it petty when he was later questioned about who paid for the trip.

Similar episodes can be found all across Europe. When Marine Le Pen's Front National, now known as Rassemblement National, convened a party conference in Lyon in November 2014, the guest list was similar to that of Salvini's rally in Milan and delegates from Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party also attended. That same year, Le Pen's party had received two loans from Russian banks amounting to 11 million euros to help finance its election campaigns.

Two years later, the French right-wing populists asked Moscow for another 3 million euro loan, but it is unclear whether it was ever granted. There are, though, indications that Marine Le Pen may have promised not to criticize Russia's annexation of the Crimea and to promote Moscow's interests in exchange for the money. The suspicion, which Le Pen denies, is supported by mobile text messages from a well-known and high-ranking Kremlin official, who wrote among other things: "Marine Le Pen has not disappointed our expectations." And: "We will have to thank the French in one way or another."

In Great Britain, the National Crime Agency is investigating suspicions that Brexit leader Nigel Farage received money from Russia through indirect channels. Many consider it probable that the Kremlin sought to manipulate the Brexit vote to destabilize the European Union.

There is a greater amount of urgency surrounding these questions in the aftermath of the Strache-Ibiza video. Are economic interests at stake when Matteo Salvini's Lega party repeatedly advocates an end to the EU's "useless, or even harmful" sanctions against Russia? Do the Greek far-right parties get money for their frequently expressed conviction that there is a "natural alliance" between Greeks and Russians? How does Russia's president exploit the image he enjoys as being one of the last guardians of true values among European groups of both extremes? A leader who seeks to prevent what he describes as a weakened, immoral, decadent EU from prevailing?

"There is conspiracy of all the radical right-wing nationalists everywhere, apparently with the help of the Kremlin, or of oligarchs round the Kremlin, to disrupt this union," Guy Verhofstadt, a prominent Belgian member of European Parliament, told the Times of London on Wednesday. The German newspaper Die Welt this week quoted former French President François Hollande as saying that whoever votes for populists in Europe is "giving their vote to Trump and Putin."

That may sound preposterous, but it has long since become apparent in the European Council, where European heads of state and government still establish the broad parameters of EU policy. Coalition governments that include populist parties are often more open to influence from abroad than others. Once example is Middle East policy. Countries like Hungary have begun diverging from the European stance to serve American interests. Because Hungary stood in the way, the EU was not able to condemn the Trump administration's decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as a diplomatic mistake in December 2017. Budapest essentially became Donald Trump's advocate in Brussels.

The unanimity requirement for important decisions in the European Council thus gives populists veto power. And their partners abroad are quick to praise them for services rendered. Twelve days ago, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was showered with praise by the U.S. president himself during a visit to the White House. Orbán, Trump said, does a "tremendous job" and is "highly respected all over Europe."

That, of course, is far from the truth. In many countries, respect for Orbán is a thing of the past, and when it comes to domestic policy and the judiciary, his government is seen as having betrayed European values. Externally, Hungary has become a gateway for all those wishing to divide the EU. And the number of these open gateways is growing: Russia and the U.S. are not alone in their desire to weaken the EU block. China has also incorporated the EU, the world's largest internal market, into its geopolitical considerations and is searching for access.

The EU isn't equipped to stand up to such adversaries. It does have a couple of instruments it can use to punish intractable member states, but it hardly ever uses them. EU countries worried about being punished in the future regularly block their deployment. The dream of outgoing European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that the EU might one day become a global political player seem illusory.

By chance, Juncker was in Vienna this week for a visit that had long been planned. He had apparently decided that he would remain silent about the Strache scandal-- but couldn't ultimately resist. "The idea that one country is put on a silver platter so that others can help themselves," he said, "does not reflect my idea of patriotism."

Jean Asselborn, Juncker's compatriot who is the foreign minister of Luxembourg, expressed deep discomfort. "The European right wing is unified by its desire to bring the free press and the judiciary under its control wherever they have power," he says. "That is true of Hungary and Poland, and that is shown by Strache's comments in the video."

The dangers presented by populists to European unity is significant, says Asselborn. "If European citizens continue placing their trust in these people, there is a risk that we could end up landing where we were back in the 1930s," he says.

The Austrian scandal was also of interest to Angela Merkel. On the Saturday Salvini's party in Milan and the political earthquake in Vienna were taking place, the German chancellor was standing in a basketball arena in Zagreb fulminating against the populists. "Nationalism is the enemy of the European project," she said from the stage. In the press conference that had preceded her speech, she said, "We are faced with populist currents that want to destroy a values-based Europe." Apparently referring to Strache, Merkel added: "That includes putting politicians up for sale. We must decisively stand up to all of that."

But the populists are currently finding success with their assault on the political establishment. They have representatives in parliaments across the continent, and established parties in almost every country in Europe are worried about their advance. In Sweden, the xenophobic Sweden Democrats received 17.5 percent of the vote in last year's elections, a result recently matched by the True Finns, whose overt nationalism fueled their success. The Conservative People's Party of Estonia, which has dedicated itself to the defense of the Estonian ethnicity, jumped from 8.1 percent support to 17.8 percent in March elections.

The numbers show that the populists are generally still far from securing a majority on a national or European level-- Poland and Hungary notwithstanding. But in places like Italy and Austria, they are becoming more than just convenient partners for parties in need of parliamentary majorities and in France, they could become the largest party in the country. In many European nations, it has become increasingly difficult to put together stabile governments made up of moderate political parties.

The communication strategies adopted by the right-wing populists are simply far better than the rather old-fashioned methods of the established parties. It is impossible to ignore the parallels to the 1930s, when the Nazis discovered the power of film and the possibilities presented by television-- as exemplified by the broadcast of the 1936 Olympic Games. The populists and extremists of today were much quicker to understand the opportunities inherent in the digital world than their political rivals, many of whom remain stuck in analog antiquity. Populists still use traditional media outlets, but are increasingly circumventing them.

The Germans may still be playing catch-up, but in Italy, France and Austria, the populists have learned to take full advantage of what the new media world has to offer. They may like to complain that they are being treated unfairly by the "leftist media" and libeled by the "fake news," but in truth, other channels have long since become more important for them.

Matteo Salvini reaches 3.7 million people directly via Facebook, the kind of follower numbers otherwise only seen with pop stars. It helps explain why he always seems to be the center of attention. The traditional political reports seen on Italian public broadcasters or in critical newspapers merely serve to round out his brand. As strange as it might sound, Salvini is one of the largest mass-media outlets in Italy, which works to his tremendous advantage. It means that he can present himself and his worldview free from pesky critical questions.

Austria's fallen Vice Chancellor Strache has 779,000 Facebook followers in a country with a population of not even 9 million. Like Salvini, he and his team are adept at using emotion, both positive and negative. Mother's Day and children's birthdays are celebrated with pretty pictures, hearts and kisses - the idyllic world the FPÖ professes to protect. Then he posts stories about ungrateful asylum seekers, sex criminals and unwanted migrants, often with his own indignant commentary. Strache's posts aren't just read and liked, they are also shared and commented on thousands of times, increasing their value.

Marine Le Pen similarly has 1.5 million followers on Facebook. Victor Orbán has 657,000. Some might argue that these numbers are something of a counterfeit currency and that their appearance in an article such as this represent the downfall of political analysis, but it is almost impossible to overrate their value. In this day and age, for politicians and others in positions of power, large follower counts mean message control, the ability to disseminate one's own messages without the inconvenience of a filter.

The more people follow a politician on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram, the less dependent that politician is on the reporting of independent media and the fewer critical questions from journalists he or she needs to answer. Of course, it's not all hearts and kisses on their social media accounts-- they are badgered and taunted, and not all of their followers are fans. But anger and controversy serve to jack up the click numbers-- and in the new currency of digital attention, clicks are good, no matter where they come from.

It has become something of a parallel reality. Manfred Weber, the lead candidate in the European elections for the center-right European People's Party, doesn't even have 60,000 followers on Facebook. Weber presumably prefers devoting himself to projects he believes are more important than improving his internet presence. But it is doubtful that today's politicians can afford the luxury of such an approach. What has been true for the media for the last several years is now true for politicians as well: If you're not present in the digital world, you soon won't be present at all. Low name recognition translates to diminished election prospects, not to mention a weakened ability to attract younger voters or those voters who tend to stay away from politics.

Clever politicians like Salvini or Strache are perfectly suited to an era in which voters prefer watching videos than reading essays. But the current wave of populism aimed at the European Union and its Brussels headquarters is more than just a game being played by self-obsessed demagogues online media. The current form of populism, whose actors pose as the uncorrupted in a sea of corruption, has many roots: real problems and unrealistic expectations; broad fears of eroding financial security; feelings of being left behind. That is where populism derives its strength. And the anger that comes with it is perhaps best studied in the Eastern European countries that joined the EU a decade and a half ago.

These European elections are falling on a European anniversary that is being largely ignored. Fifteen years ago, the EU incorporated an entire group of Eastern European countries, enabling the peaceful unification of the continent-- an historical godsend that led to a Nobel Peace Prize for Brussels. Today, however, this same EU has a terrible-- catastrophic even-- image within the right-wing governments in these countries.

Bannon with a bunch of European neo-Nazis in Budapest

In many parts of Eastern Europe, the EU is seen as a conspiracy of overpaid, traitorous bureaucrats. Like the communists before them, it is said, the EU technocrats are intent on reeducating the Eastern Europeans. They see the EU as trying to tame nation, tradition and religion. The women are to have fewer children, gays and lesbians are to be allowed to get married and adopt, and Muslims from Africa and the Middle East are to be permitted to settle wherever they want. And the blame, in this view, lies entirely with Brussels.

That is the message delivered by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice party in Poland, and by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz Party. The governments in Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia also include similar figures. EU-skeptics have become established everywhere in the region.

And yet, contradictions abound. No halfway influential party in Eastern Europe wants to leave the EU. Despite the success of the Kaczynskis and the Orbáns, the EU enjoys tremendous support from the Baltics to the Balkans, including 90 percent support in Poland. The governments clearly have no mandate to escort their countries out of the EU. Indeed, surveys indicate that people there have more trust in the EU than in their own elites.

There is an economic explanation. Between 2004 and 2020, 356 billion euros will have flowed into the 10 accession countries from the European Structural and Investment Funds alone. Struggling state economies have transformed into regions of significant growth. The EU brought in investors, financed road construction, built universities and developed data networks. City halls and hospitals were renovated with EU money. And Brussels also helped reform the public administration and the judiciary - and strengthen civil society.

The EU triggered a wave of modernization in Eastern Europe that took three decades longer to unfold in the west. Prosperity, of course, is not equally divided. Statistically, however, the standard of living has risen significantly in all the accession countries. Eastern European societies have also become freer and more mobile in the last 20 years. There is no "objective" reason to be opposed to the EU in Warsaw, Budapest or Ljubljana.

There are, however, subjective, less concrete reasons. Karel Schwarzenberg, who spent several years serving as Czech foreign minister and is a passionate supporter of the EU, argues that people know what the EU has done for them, but don't feel at home in it. He says that all too often, Eastern Europeans have been delivered the message that they are second-class members of the bloc-- poorer and still backwards, and that they should become real Europeans, real democrats before they speak up. A comparison can be drawn to the feeling former East Germans often have in reunified Germany.

It is a feeling not just experienced by politicians from Eastern Europe sent to Brussels, but by millions of Poles, Hungarians, Czechs and Slovaks in their day-to-day lives. Around 20 million people have at least temporarily left their Eastern European homelands to work in the West. Instead of getting to know the continent as student travelers or vacationers as many in the West were privileged enough to do, an entire generation of Eastern Europeans have experienced Western Europe as cleaning ladies, itinerant farmworkers and manual laborers. As domestic help for the wealthy of the West.

The resulting feelings of inferiority have fueled right-wing populists. The decades in which Eastern Europeans wanted nothing more than to emulate the West are over and a phenomenon has developed that the Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev describes by saying: "Imitation engenders resentment." That resentment, he says, is directed at the erstwhile role models. It is stoked by the populists, who transform feelings of inferiority into aggression directed against the Brussels elite and the "servants" of the EU in their own capitals.

In places like Warsaw and Budapest, people have begun to feel like they have already experienced the best of what the EU has to offer. Now everything coming from Brussels is a threat to their own culture and lifestyle: environmental requirements, gay rights, migrant quotas, all kinds of duties and obligations, the arduous negotiations that are the hallmark of democracy.

The 2015 refugee crisis plunged half of Europe into temporary chaos, but more than anything, it gouged out a chasm between West and East. The demand primarily from Western European countries - or, to be more precise, from Germany - that all countries must help when it comes to distributing the refugees triggered the release of dissatisfactions that had been developing for quite some time. People in the east felt like they had survived the collapse of communism, lost jobs and got jobs, changed themselves, changed everything, and still hadn't caught up to the West. And now they were supposed to look after people even weaker than them?

In Brussels, such a point of view is seen as petulance and leads to a loss of influence. Exaggerated nationalism and unilateralism aren't welcome in the EU. They are a dead end. Poland and Hungary, in particular, sideline themselves in negotiations, frequently avoid complicated issues and tend to pound testily on the table rather than patiently pursuing their own interests and trying to listen to and understand the interests of others.

This leads to a dangerous cycle: countries driven by nationalism achieve less and less in Brussels, which leads to increasing alienation from the EU back home. Blame for a lack of success is pinned on anonymous powers in Brussels, the technocrats, the immovable and corrupt elites, thus paving the way for the empty yet pithy slogans of the populists.

The disruptive potential of the right-wing fringe in European Parliament has long been limited to mere spluttering expostulations from the plenary floor-- and their occasional misuse of EU money for their own benefit. Instead of using parliament for serious policy work, they saw it as a stage from which they could send messages back home-- a stage adeptly used by Farage, Salvini, Le Pen and others of their ilk. For some time, they were content to mock Europe's legislative body, but that is now changing. Le Pen has undergone perhaps the most profound metamorphosis, and for her opponents, that should be rather unsettling.

For a long time, her focus was on "Frexit," on leading France out of the common currency. She saw anything European as evil and abhorrent. These days, though, she ends her campaign speeches with the battle cry: "Long live the real Europe! Long live France!"

The chant "vive l'Europe" is, despite the qualification represented by the word "real," a 180-degree reversal. Until this year, Le Pen had consistently campaigned on the promise of freeing her country from the yoke of the common currency. It is a promise that, most recently, failed to generate its desired result in 2017, when she performed so badly in a now legendary televised debate on EU issues with the ultimate election winner Emmanuel Macron that it seemed like her political career may have come to an end.

In the parliamentary elections that followed, her Front National party didn't even win enough votes to form its own parliamentary group, a failure that Le Pen interpreted as the result of widespread fear in France of leaving the eurozone. As a result, since fall 2017, she has been an ardent supporter of the "real Europe," a message that proved divisive in her party. But she was determined. She no longer wanted to frighten people away with "Frexit"-- and now she appears to really believe that an alliance with her new friends in Italy, Poland, Austria, Germany and elsewhere represents a plausible path to power for the right-wing movement.

That's not particularly realistic. Thus far, every attempt at a broad, right-wing alliance in Europe has failed miserably, with the Front National itself having been part of many of those failures. The new concept for a European Alliance for People and Nations is also unlikely to go anywhere and conflict seems unavoidable.

The AfD in Germany and Lega in Italy are roughly as far away from each other on economic and finance policy as the liberals from the FDP and the far-left Left Party are in Germany. There are also deep, seemingly unbridgeable ideological rifts between Le Pen's party and the PiS in Poland and Fidesz in Hungary when it comes to society, family and women. As such, the planned right-wing "super fraction" is nothing more than a typical populist mélange of braggadocio and canniness. Likely the most important motivation for cooperation is the prospect of forming a large fraction that would automatically become more visible in European Parliament. It would also be handed more responsibilities, receive more speaking time and, most importantly, get more money.

Fascism Is On The March In Europe-- Elections Tomorrow In Austria And Italy

Tomorrow Italy votes on a package of complex referendums that are extremely difficult for voters without post-graduate degrees to understand. But rejection could be another devastating blow the EU. The BBC tried sorting out what it means and why it's important. The reforms Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is trying to impose on his fractious country are tied up in the referendum and he says he'll step down if they lose-- the 3rd domino after Brexit and Trump in "he onward march of the right-wing (neo-fascist) populists. Italy's been there before-- and it worked out badly for them. Unfortunately by making the referendum about himself, Renzi has put the country in unnecessary danger with plenty of voters looking at the referendum as nothing but an opportunity to punish a government they have beefs with.

Renzi has had strong support from global leaders... The concern is that if Renzi goes, Italy's politicians will squabble, the country's fragile economy will suffer, borrowing costs will spike and once again Europe will be facing a crisis in the eurozone.

Waiting in the wings are anti-establishment parties like the Five Star movement which is promising that if it eventually wins power, it will offer a referendum on retaining the euro. The very idea of another vote sends shivers down the spines of Europe's leaders.

Five Star's leader, the former comedian Beppe Grillo, has spoken of an "era going up in flames." It is a similar sentiment to that expressed by Nigel Farage, UKIP's former leader, who declared after Mr Trump's victory that the "democratic revolution" is only just beginning.

If polls retain any credibility after this year of political shocks then a No vote is expected on Sunday. The financial markets, caught out by both Brexit and Trump, have already factored in a Renzi defeat.

There is no doubt that Italy needs reforming. The tangle of bureaucracy and judicial delays snares investment projects, reforms get diluted or blocked in the two houses of parliament and the Senate, with its 315 members, needs shrinking.

But there are legitimate concerns that Renzi's plan will lead to a centralising of power. The winning party will gain a premium of seats, ensuring an absolute majority. Five Star campaigners argue that the "reforms serve to give more power to those who are already in power."

...The risk is that a No vote and a Renzi resignation would tip Italy into an early election. And that might give the Five Star movement and the anti-establishment Northern League an opportunity of success at the polls.

The prospect of two Eurosceptic parties gaining ground in the eurozone's third-biggest economy might well rattle the markets.

Government ministers will tell you that unemployment is inching down, that the deficit is falling and that labour markets have become more flexible. But the economy is 12% smaller than when the financial crisis began in 2008.

Italy's banks remain weak. The problem of non-performing loans has not been sorted out and the country's debt-to-GDP ratio, at 133%, is second only to Greece's.

The Italian vote is not about Europe or the EU but it will be interpreted as an indicator of the strength of the anti-establishment winds blowing through Europe in the aftermath of Mr Trump's unexpected victory.

Obama has been very supportive of Renzi's referendum and made a big deal about a recent trip to DC which played well in Italian media back home. Trump's not on the same side-- to put it mildly. Meanwhile European socialists met in Prague today to figure out how to deal with the rise of neo-fascism-- they call it populism-- in the western democracies. Jeremy Corbyn had his hands full, admitting "that populists have been successfully identifying many of the problems faced by people across the country, but their solution-- to attack minorities-- was not the answer... It's clear that there is a problem of the alarming rise and acceleration of the populist right all across this continent. Be it UKIP in my country, Donald Trump and the language he used in the presidential election in the United States, or what's happening in Hungary with Jobbik or Marine Le Pen in France, with her National Front. Politics has been shaken across the world. We know why the populist right is gaining ground and it's increasingly hard to get our message heard. It's up to us to give a real political alternative."

The European left-- much like the old and clueless out-of-touch Democrats in DC-- is grappling to effectively frame an alternative explanation for the problems they face and come up with solutions, that include increasing social justice and inclusion. Corbyn should sound familiar on this side of the Atlantic:

"The gap between rich and poor is widening. Living standards are stagnating or falling. People feel left behind by the forces unleashed by globalisation. They feel powerless in the face of deregulated corporate power.

"We have to deal with those issues and we have to deal with them quickly and seriously.

"The populist right do identify many of the problems but their toxic solution is actually a dead end. It's about attacking minorities rather than facing the real issues that many communities face.

"So, unless progressive parties across Europe are prepared to break from the political establishment of the past, which has sought to manage the change of globalisation, then we are going to have problems."

Mr Corbyn went on: "We have to offer a different economic message. It's about convincing the long-term unemployed that the reason there is no work for them is not because of migrants, it's because of an economic programme of deindustrialisation and insecurity.

"We have to make clear that our public services are being run down because of austerity and often very predatory privatisation.

"We cannot and must not abandon socialist principles, because many tell us that is the only way to achieve power.

"We have to put forward a very clear economic message-- one of social justice and inclusion."

Polls show that tomorrow's presidential vote in Austria could well go to the neo-fascist candidate Norbert Hofer, an anti-immigrant gun nut, said it be backed surreptitiously by Putin. Polls show him leading Alexander Van der Bellen, the Green Party-backed independent by double digits. The two mainstream parties were eliminated in the first round. His Freedom Party (FPÖ) was founded by Nazi SS officers in 1956.

[A] win for Mr Hofer would also be a blow to Europe’s political mainstream. It would mark a grim milestone: the continent’s first democratically elected far-right head of state since 1945. It would also present a headache. In the past its neighbours isolated and upbraided Austria for its flirtations with nationalist extremism: like when in 1986 it elected as president Kurt Waldheim, whose wartime Wehrmacht unit had been involved in war crimes; and when, on the formation of the 2000 coalition, other EU member states imposed sanctions. Now, with authoritarian populists on the march in much of the continent (take Viktor Orbán across the border in Hungary), it would be harder to single the country out.

Europe would also be subject to such an election result’s global significance. Mr Hofer may represent an old party, but his political style is somewhat new and part of a bigger trend. Like Donald Trump in America, the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and Marine Le Pen in France, the FPÖ leadership has sanded off the most overtly racist edges of traditional far-right politics and blended flag-waving, anti-migrant social policies, a redistributionist economic credo and the language and style of anti-establishment insurgence. So notwithstanding the distinctive aspects of Austria’s election, it is the latest test of this formula’s ability to create electoral upsets; perhaps even another omen of a strong showing by Ms Le Pen next spring. These phenomena may have their differences but they are also intertwined: each populist success in one country emboldening, enlightening and maybe even detoxifying counterparts in others. Once Austria was ostracised. Now others are Austrianising.

UPDATE: Good News From Österreich

Despite polls showing neo-fascist Norbert Hofer 10 points ahead, savvy Austrian voters elected independent Green-backed Alexander Van der Bellen president today. There is general rejoicing all over Europe as this is seen to be a set-back for the Putin-backed neo-Nazi revival that has been gaining strength everywhere across the continent (not to mention Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania). Estimates show Van der Bellen besting the Nazi 53-46%. During the campaign, Van der Bellen's comment on Trump's victory was that "his campaign style, the sexist attacks were unacceptable. As regards content he has raised concerns-- let's give him several months."

Austrian Voters Narrowly Decide Not To Revisit Their Country's Nazi Past By Electing Their Version Of Trump

DWT readers weren't taken by surprise by the near win this weekend-- counting 700,000 absentee ballots flipped the final outcome today-- that would have put a neo-Nazi in Austria's presidential race. Sunday it looked as though Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer won 51.9% of the vote in a run-off with an independent backed by the Green Party, Alexander Van der Bellen, the two corrupt mainstream p[arty candidates having been eliminated in April. But after the absentee ballots were counted, the final result was 50.3% for Van der Bellen and 49.7% for Hofer. Voters were sick of the tweedle-dee/tweedle-dum politics of the right of center People's Party and the slightly left of center Social Democrats-- and their corrupt, inept Grand Coalition-- and almost opted for a far right extremist. Instead of comparing him to Hitler though, the European press is calling Hofer Austria's Donald Trump. Exit polls showed that van der Bellen won 81% of voters with college educations and Hofer won 86% of the Austrian working class. In the end, just 31,000 voters, out of 4.6 million votes cast, separated the two candidates.

The Nazis have no intention of giving up. Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the Freedom party, wrote on his Facebook page: "This is just the beginning. The start of a new era in our democracy, towards more direct democracy and binding referenda." The Guardian reported that during "the election, Viennese coffee houses set aside separate areas for supporters of the rival candidates over fears of clashes.

During his campaign, Hofer has been compared to Donald Trump for his anti-immigration stance, carried a 9mm glock with him everywhere he goes, and has claimed increases in gun ownership in Austria are linked to immigration.

...Hofer's key message is one of immigration control. Last year, roughly 90,000 migrants settled in Austria, a number Hofer sees as far too high. He has promised to try and curb further migration from outside of Europe and has also reportedly vowed to carry out the deportation of Muslims.

Hofer has also advocated repatriating the Italian territory of South Tyrol, which was once part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Hofer proposed the idea in a speech in 2015 and has since said that one way of achieving this could be to give people in the area dual Italian and Austrian nationality.

Hofer is a huge advocate for guns, carrying a 9mm Glock pistol around with him on the campaign trail.

He has said that he understands the increase in gun ownership in Austria, "given current uncertainties," and says that gun ownership is a "natural consequence" of immigration. It is reported that Hofer has previously posted images on social media of him at a firing range with his family. Business Insider was unable to find these pictures.

Hofer has been described by some commentators as the "Austrian Donald Trump" for his strong stance on immigration, populist politics, and promises to put "Austria First," a slogan that it has been suggested, draws inspiration from Trump's famous "Make America Great Again" battle cry.

  ...It has been suggested that Hofer would be the first far-right head of state in Europe since the end of World War II. While this is not strictly true because of Spain's Francisco Franco, who ruled the country as a fascist dictator until 1975, Hofer is by far the most right-wing politician to be elected to office in many decades.

Austria's presidency is a ceremonial role, and the most important power held by the president is the ability to dissolve Austria's parliament. But Hofer has already said he would try to extend his powers.

He vowed that once elected, he will go to Brussels to attend European Union meetings, something that is generally reserved for Austria's chancellor, currently Christian Kern. Hofer said he would also refuse to sign the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership deal, as he believes it would infringe on Austria's sovereignty.

...One of the biggest concerns in some circles about Hofer's potential election is that it could help to galvanise other far-right parties across Europe. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's Front National is expected to reach the second round of next year's presidential election, while in Germany, Alternative for Deutschland-- an anti-Islamic party-- has also experienced a gain in popularity. The Netherlands has also seen a rise in the popularity of the Party of Freedom, which now tops the polls. The party is headed by Geert Wilders, who was banned from entering the UK for his role in creating anti-Islamic film Fitna.

Are Europeans Getting Ready To Overthrow The Status Quo?

The U.S. isn't the only country in the world where voters are frustrated by a rigged system enforcing the political and economic status quo. While timid and unimaginative Democrats seem to be backing away from Bernie's political revolution and embracing the craven and corrupt centrist their party establishment insists on and while Republicans grapple with the nightmare of Trump's incoherent, ego-driven negativity, voters in other countries are also sniffing around the edges in search of fixing something they know doesn't work for them.

Sunday's presidential election in Austria eliminated the candidtes from the two main centrist parties-- the right-of-center People's Party and the ever so slightly left-of-center Social Democrats-- which have been governing the country in a "Grand Coalition" since 2013, in favor of the far right neo-Nazi Freedom Party and an independent backed by the Green Party. Incomplete counts showed the neo-Nazis way ahead and suggest they will face the Greens in the May runoff:

• Norbert Hofer (Freedom Party)- 36%
• Alexander Van der Bellen (independent/Greens)- 21%
• Imgard Griss (independent)- 18.5%
• Rudolph Hundstorter (Social Democrats)- 11%
• Andreas Kohl (People's Party)- 11%
• Richard Lugner (a wealthy Trump-like clown)- 2%

The BBC somehow came to the conclusion that "the clear victory of the far-right candidate reflects widespread discontent with the status quo, as well as concerns about immigration and the economy." The Guardian was a little more analytic in their reporting on the election results.

Having a president in the Habsburg dynasty’s former palace in Vienna not from either of the two main parties could shake up the traditionally staid and consensus-driven world of Austrian politics.

“This is the beginning of a new political era,” the Freedom party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, said after what constituted the best result at federal level for the former party of the late Joerg Haider, calling it “historic.”

The Oesterreich tabloid described Hofer’s victory as a “tsunami that has turned our political landscape upside down.”

Hofer is a “a kind, nice, protest politician who wraps the FPOe’s [Freedom party’s] brutal declarations against refugees in soft language.”

[Social Democrat Chancellor Werner] Faymann said on Sunday the result was a “clear warning to the government that we have to work together more strongly”. He said, however, that his party would not make any personnel changes-- including with regard to his own position.

...The rise of fringe politicians has been mirrored across Europe, including in Spain, Britain and Germany, and also in the US with the populist messages of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Front, who hopes to become president next year, tweeted her congratulations to the Freedom party for its “magnificent result”. “Bravo to the Austrian people,” she said.

Last year, Austria received 90,000 asylum requests, the second highest in Europe on a per capita basis, and Faymann’s government has taken a firmer line on immigration in recent weeks. But this has not stopped support for the Freedom party surging. Recent opinion polls put the party in first place with more than 30% of voter intentions ahead of the next scheduled general elections in 2018.

You probably recall that the French far right Front National made big gains in February and you probably don't recall that last month Slovakia saw it's racist, anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi party, the People's Party-- Our Slovakia, take it's first-ever seats in Parliament. Led by Marian Kotleba, the governor of central Slovakia, the uniformed rightists campaigned against the Roma (gypsy) minority and against immigrants fleeing wars in the Middle East. (The left-leaning ruling party is also virulently anti-immigrant and socially conservative as well.)

If Greece Sells Mykonos Or Lesbos and Austria Sells A Couple Of Alps, How Soon Before We Sell Off The Rest Of Yosemite?

Yesterday Ken did two posts about the "austerity" movement, by which the very rich hope to even further entrench and enhance their positions in society-- "Austerity": the price we've gotta pay to keep the World's Greediest rollin' in dough and then one poking around one of the loudest public voices of the movement, David Brooks, the NY Times columnist paid to be a mouthpiece for that class which bought the entire "free" press, vowing to never allow themselves to be victimized and held up for public opprobrium by muckrakers again.

How could he have possibly missed this story about how Austria had decided to start selling off its Alps so that the rich could get even richer.

Austria has postponed the sale of two Alpine peaks after a public outcry that underscored the lofty challenges faced by cash-strapped governments that attempt to sell treasured national assets to raise funds.

The Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft, or BIG, Austria’s federal real estate company, proposed divesting two peaks in eastern Tyrol for a minimum of €121,000, but public opprobrium put a brake on the sale.

The agency received an avalanche of calls from irate Austrians, while a series of political figures spoke out against the privatisation of the pair of craggy peaks.

The sale process was temporarily suspended on Tuesday pending further evaluation, with a future sale now likely to be restricted to “Austrian institutions."

“Tyrol is not Greece,” a satisfied Günther Platter, governor of Tyrol, told an Austrian newspaper, adding that the proposed sale had been a “Schnapsidee”, or “crackpot idea."

The comparison stems from a headline last year in Bild, the German paper, urging Greece to sell off some of its most treasured tourist attractions instead of relying on a European Union bail-out.

“Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks! And sell the Acropolis too!” the paper proclaimed. George Papandreou, Greece’s prime minister, has insisted the country will not sell these assets as it pushes ahead with a €50bn privatisation programme.

The Austrian affair echoes a similar climbdown by the British government, which in February was forced to abandon a sale of state-owned forests.

In Spain, plans to privatise the popular state lottery as part of a planned multibillion-euro sale of public assets have so far raised few objections.

Like most EU countries, Austria is running a budget deficit, but its debt is rated triple A-- the highest level-- by the credit agencies and the country has no trouble financing itself in the markets.

Laugh, but in our country, where conservatives always opposed the whole concept of publicly owned parks and fought the establishment of the national park system, the masters of the universe now feel the time is right to sell them off or, as David Brooks will one day soon urge, privatize them. And they have just the politicians in their pockets to do it for them, shills to great wealth like John Kasich in Ohio, Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Rick Snyder in Michigan, Rick Scott in Florida and, more tragically, even financially hard-pressed "progressives" in progressive states who have been taking the likes of David Brooks seriously. Yesterday, in a plea for donations, Truthout e-mailed subscribers an ominous missive:

A growing number of politicians are doing their best to take the "public" out of everything in American life, including libraries, schools, government workers, environmental protection-- even parks and parking meters.

And the movement is fast succeeding at creating an environment where only privileged students have access to higher education, by cutting subsidies to state and community colleges to such an extent that tuition is no longer affordable for many young Americans and their families.

When fewer and fewer of America's young people can afford to attend public college, we know that the US is headed toward a third-rate future.

Why Is The Political Right Filled With So Many Klemmschwesteren?

Austrian neo-Nazi Jörg Haider was buried like Princess Diana

I guess the point of the new stories about crazy and wild gay sex involving Republican religionist bigwig Ted Haggard is that... right wing closet queens don't just strike once? Did someone think Haggard's drug-drenched affair with a male prostitute was his only foray into a lifestyle as different from those practised by proper little fundies as it is from the types practised by gay men and women who want society to recognize their marriage bonds? "Rev." Haggard was also having sex with young men in his congregation. Surprised? By forcing homosexuals into a closet of self-denial and self-hatred, society creates demented sociopaths like Haggard. But if you think American right-wingers are the only seriously unbalanced closet cases on earth... think again.

After the death of Austrian neo-Nazi Jörg Haider in October, DWT reported first on the apparent accident, then on the likelihood that the "accident" was arranged by Israeli agents... and that Haider was a closet case, just like so many right-wing political and religionist figures are-- from Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Lindsey Graham, Ted Haggard, and Mitch McConnell to Roy Cohen, David Dreier and Patrick McHenry.

A hard-hitting feature in the new issue of Out makes the case that as repulsive as Haider's racist and xenophobic right-wing politics were, at least he was unlike American wingnuts in that he didn't attack gays from inside his closet.

“He was buried like Princess Diana and everyone was crying and everything,” says Marco Schreuder, a member of Vienna’s city council and one of the country’s few out elected officials.

It was a bizarre few days, Schreuder recalls, made ugly by the tone of the news stories about Haider’s private demimonde.

“Newspapers didn’t want to say ‘gay’ bar. More like ‘scene’ bar or ‘trendy’ bar,” Schreuder says. “There was this homophobic tone…. You know, ‘Should a governor do something like that?’?”

...Yet being outed as gay could have ruined Jörg Haider’s political life, as Haider surely understood. Like former New Jersey governor James McGreevey, Haider relied on hetero bona fides (wife, children, bungee jumping, mountain climbing) to deflect inconvenient questions. Like why Haider’s closest aides (Stefan Petzner was merely the latest) seemed always to have a Y chromosome and be height-weight proportional.

Schreuder says that while Haider took calculated political risks by praising Nazi employment policies and inciting hatred of immigrants, he was conspicuously quiet about gay issues. Even through the worst days of the AIDS crisis, critics admit, Haider never gay-baited or demonized people with AIDS. This effectively preempted public conjecture on his sexuality: The hypocrisy charge wouldn’t stick.

Instead, speculating on Haider’s sexuality was a harmless parlor game for those in the know. “Everyone knew someone who slept with him,” says Hannes, a patron at Willendorf, a gay café in Vienna, who gives only his first name. He then stops to correct himself: “No. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who said they slept with him.”

Schreuder says he has no doubt Haider was a klemmschwester (literally, an “uptight sister”).

“Obviously, he liked handsome young men,” says longtime gay activist Kurt Krickler.

Krickler, who has a prickly salt-and-pepper beard and gets around Vienna on a muscular blue BMW motorcycle with the vanity plate W GAY 6, says his Homosexuelle Initiative debated the ethics of outing Haider for many years -- famous person, atrocious political views. The group always came down against it: “He’s not a positive role model, so there was no point in outing him,” Krickler says. Nevertheless, Krickler kept a dossier ready, including talking points and a list of likely paramours.

Krickler ticks off the names of several young men in Haider’s circle. In 1994, Haider made Karl-Heinz Grasser, a 25-year-old with dimples like David Duchovny’s, deputy governor of Carinthia. “He had no qualifications whatsoever,” Krickler says. “Everybody was wondering about it. And I think, of course, it was because they fucked or he gave him a blow job. I mean, that’s just my assumption.”

Then there was Franz Koloini, “der schöne Franz” (“handsome Franz”), the waiter who became Haider’s personal secretary at age 22.

Krickler rifles through old editions of Lambda Nachrichten, the gay magazine he edits, to produce a picture of Haider running a marathon side-by-side with an earlier secretary, the baby-faced Gerald Mikscha. The accompanying quote, from a mainstream Austrian magazine, notes that “political observers can scarcely remember a time when Haider was seen without his secretary.” Another photo shows Mikscha and Haider on vacation, sitting on a pier together, boat masts bobbing in the background.

“It was obvious as of ’86 [the year Haider took control of the Freedom Party] that all these young men surrounding Haider -- this was not just political enthusiasm, this was something else,” Krickler says. Haider’s circle was so strikingly different from anything else in politics, the mainstream media dubbed it die buberlpartie (“the boys’ party”).

Although those who used to spend time at the home of North Carolina Republican Patrick McHenry say it is also a buberlpartie, the GOP is unlikely to arrive where Carinthia Governor Haider had gotten to by the time he died. Still a whacked out racist, right-wing loon and vicious xenophobe, "he directed state money to support a four-day 'Pink Wave' gay party on the shores of a Carinthian lake. And last summer he allowed himself to be photographed in a disco, gleefully boozing with dozens of teenage males who were too young to be drinking... Unlike Sen. Larry Craig or Rep. Mark Foley, Jörg Haider didn’t resort to public bathrooms or icky instant messages. Comely young men swarmed to him like ants to a picnic. The son of unrepentant Nazi party members, Haider knew how to play on old fascist themes of masculine youth and vigor."




UPDATE: HYPOCRISY BIG TIME

Turns out Haggard's church elders weren't as surprised as they claimed to be when he was finally outed as a drug user and employer of male prostitutes. They had been paying hush money to young male church goers who Haggard had had sex with previously!