The European Spectator: Haider Realities
Rocca, Francis X.
THE EUROPEAN SPECTATOR by Francis X. Rocca Haider Realities T he highlight of the fall z000 collection from the Italian couture house Gattinoni, on show recently in Milan, was a skirt featuring...
...briefly recalled its ambassador, then decided to continue normal relations...
...There will be no clear way for it to do so...
...and particular member states...
...Even thornier is the case of E.U...
...Although it is becoming old news, the Haider controversy remains significant, not only for Europe but also for the U.S., as an early episode in the growing conflict between globalism and nationalism —a conflict that the dynamics and very structure of the E.U...
...Both parties are anti-immigration and anti-European Union...
...Asked what would happen if Italy elects a center-right coalition that includes "neo-fascists" — something that provoked little international outcry when it first happened in r994—German Chancellor Schroder recently said that "Europe would have the duty to intervene...
...It was 14 elected national governments, acting in concert, who signed the declaration threatening Austria with bilateral sanctions...
...Already there are signs of this, for instance the anti-World Trade Organization riots in Seattle last December...
...candidate Hungary...
...Of course there is uncertainty and anxiety about the future —there always is...
...are emerging at a time of prosperity and stability...
...Last year Oskar Lafontaine was forced to leave the German government after the currency markets showed their disapproval, in the form of a devalued euro, for his socialist program as finance minister...
...That the current Italian government includes actual Communists, unreconstructed and unrepentant, apparently does not call for European intervention...
...With the single currency, all participating nations have handed over monetary policy to a central bank that is concerned with keeping down inflation rather than unemployment...
...and that Chirac's conservative party has paid a heavy political price to keep down and keep clear of the anti-immigration National Front in France...
...policies tend to promote the efficiencies that favor international capitalism, and not only with regard to tariffs...
...As Martin Feldstein warned a few years ago in a Foreign Affairs essay on the euro and war, "The American experience with the secession of the South may contain some lessons about the danger of a treaty or constitution that has no exits...
...The E.C.'s president Romano Prodi has distanced himself from the diplomatic sanctions, and downplayed the danger posed by Haider and his party...
...The nation-state, though a relatively recent institution, meets what is—for better and worse —a basic human longing...
...The presence of right-wing nationalist parties in government is a real possibility in E.U...
...Their motivation was certainly not to defend more open immigration, since, as the Wall Street Journal Europe noted, France and Germany jointly announced their decision to restrict immigration the day after the collective warning to Austria...
...It would be optimistic to assume that all the E.U.'s internal disputes can be handled through diplomatic or bureaucratic means...
...In the meantime, alarmism over the likes of Haider is precisely the wrong way to prevent a reprise of the war he so offensively recalls...
...candidate Turkey, which recently forbade European politicians to visit a jailed Kurdish separatist, and banned a history book that used the word "Kurdistan...
...The Kosovo war has shown that European nations will use force to prevent the oppression of ethnic minorities, at least when the culprit is a small country with little international clout...
...as a guarantee of European peace and freedom, which it now proudly claims as its transcendent raison d'être...
...To many in this age of economic globalization, national identity seems at best sentimental, at worst a metaphor for racism, and in any case practically obsolete...
...In the matter of ethnic minorities alone, the eastern countries whose admission Haider opposes promise to cause far greater problems than Austria has done...
...This led to the amusing spectacle of the ex-Communist Prime Minister D'Alema vouching for the democratic character of the party of Alessandra Mussolini...
...cannot return to its original, limited form as a trading bloc of rich nations...
...The perceived danger from which nationalism now offers itself as a defense is not military or economic but cultural, as the global intelligence analysts at Stratfor.com point out...
...Their biggest gains came last October, when Haider's party won 27.2 percent of the vote, making it the second largest in Austria...
...are bound to aggravate...
...N ationalism will continue to pro-yoke conflicts between the E.U...
...But since he does not hold a ministry and has quit as party leader, and since the coalition's program runs within the broad mainstream of European politics, Austria's rehabilitation is already quietly underway...
...This could change if leftists start to see nation-states, rather than international organizations, as the best vehicles for their agenda...
...These governments are in direct, home-turf competition with right-wing nationalists, who are gaining popularity to varying degrees all over Europe...
...The Belgians took the initiative, soon followed by the Germans and even more enthusiastically by French President Chirac...
...An important difference between the right-wing nationalists of today's Europe and the terrifying precedents they inevitably Globalism and nationalism collide over Austria...
...42 April 2000 • The American Spectator evoke is that Haider et al...
...The U.S...
...Catherine Deneuve and Claudia Cardinale turned down invitations to the Vienna Opera Ball...
...The current climate is nothing like this, least of all in such rich and orderly countries as Switzerland and Austria...
...Interestingly, the coalition government to which Haider's party belongs is not averse to international organizations when it comes to NATO, which it favors joining after 45 years of Austrian neutrality...
...And the isolation with which the rest of the European Union had threatened Austria if Haider's anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO) joined a coalition government turned out to mean little more than refused handshakes, missed photo opportunities, and pointed speeches on human rights...
...The E.U...
...The FPO will have to prove itself responsible in government before Haider can hope to become chancellor, which remains his undisguised FRANCIS X. ROCCA, former managing editor of TAS, is a writer in Vicenza, Italy...
...What had started as an unprecedented diplomatic demarche by 4 European countries had, in less than a month, come down to a series of fashion statements...
...Such interference in a sovereign country's political process, although less direct, is much more effective than anything that has been tried on Austria...
...That same month in neighboring Switzerland, the People's Party also came in second with 22.6 percent of the vote...
...The best we can hope for is that it happens peacefully...
...The E.U...
...Which is only logical, since E.U...
...Defense of national identity is typically the province of the right wing because, as far back as the French Revolution, and especially since the socialism of the nineteenth century, the left has defined itself as internationalist...
...Czechs and Slovaks also have Haideresque attitudes" to gypsies, notes Alexandra Ashboume of the Center for European Reform, and these attitudes will come under scrutiny when those nations join the Union...
...is a notoriously unaccountable organization, and it is not only among so-called Eurosceptics that "Brussels" has become a byword for arrogant meddling in the affairs of nations and localities...
...The Belgian government withdrew subsidies for teenagers taking ski vacations in the Austrian Alps...
...Human-rights violations will be all the harder to ignore when they occur within the expanded Union...
...Suppose a country feels disadvantaged by the European Central Bank's interest rates or the Common Agricultural Policy, and being powerless to change them, decides it wants to leave...
...The E.U...
...goal...
...In Denmark, which has a growing nationalist party of its own, backlash from the Haider controversy could delay a referendum on joining the European Monetary Union until 2002...
...In Spain, the opposition Socialists and Communists are the voicers of doubt about the E.U...
...Refusing admission to poorer and less stable nations in the east would thus mean a fatal loss of credibility...
...But in the Haider case, it is important to note that it was not the European Commission —the Union's executive branch in Brussels—that made the move to isolate Austria...
...The Eurocrats themselves now speak with concern about the "democratic deficit" and the need for more "subsidiarity...
...has a stake in this question because for the foreseeable future it is committed to Europe's security...
...An increasing number of Europeans feel their national identity threatened by immigrants and by supranational bodies, above all the E.U., which are supplanting their sovereign governments...
...Haider will surely return to the international headlines the next time he makes another pro-Nazi remark, something he seems compelled to do periodically to reassure supporters of his fearless pride in the nation's past (no matter that he always apologizes immediately afterwards...
...Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists now speak blithely of the imminent disappearance of distinct European languages and social customs, let alone national governments...
...Recall that the Balkans were supposed to be a European problem too...
...Yet for others not personally invested in the economic transformation of the Continent, it is hard to believe that ancient traditions of patriotism will simply end once high-speed Internet hook-ups become widely available...
...As Tony Judt has argued, too many people have invested too much hope in the illusion of the E.U...
...But Hitler and Mussolini arose in the demoralized aftermath of World War I, in a humiliated Germany and a disappointed (though nominally victorious) Italy, amid civil strife and economic chaos, hyperinflation and general strikes, political assassination and bloody street fights between blackshirts and socialists...
...The Swiss People's Party even opposes its country's joining the United Nations...
...depends make stopping bilateral relations untenable for more than a short time, as Peter Ludlow has pointed out in the Financial Times...
...has taken the first steps toward a common defense authority, but there are no plans for it to replace NATO...
...The 4 governments that threatened Austria with "no business as usual" overreacted and overreached, and in the end proved nothing but their own lack of leadership and political acumen...
...As an example of international reaction to the new Austrian government, the skirt was only slightly more theatrical than the norm...
...There was never any question of suspending Austria's voting rights on the European Commission, which according to the relevant treaty would have required "a serious and persistent breach of...liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law...
...Barring the moderation of its leaders' ambitions, or the collapse of nationalist sentiment across the Continent, this suggests that the Union must eventually fall apart...
...Along with Haider's visage, the garment featured a swastika and the word "NO" in big red letters...
...Less dramatic questions than those of race could also lead to violence...
...THE EUROPEAN SPECTATOR by Francis X. Rocca Haider Realities T he highlight of the fall z000 collection from the Italian couture house Gattinoni, on show recently in Milan, was a skirt featuring the face of the Austrian politician Jorg Haider...
...It seems more relevant that Belgium's center-left government has been menaced by a growing nationalist party with an immigration policy resembling Haider's...
...L'i4 The American Spectator • April 2000 43...
...that Germany's opposition center-right has been collapsing in the wake of financial scandals, raising fears that Haider's ideological allies could gain there too...
...The formal and informal diplomatic contacts on which the E.U...
...The U.S...
...Yet as the organization grows, internal friction will grow more likely, on both economic and cultural grounds...
...It follows that this sense of threat should be keener, and the response more extreme, in smaller countries...
Vol. 33 • April 2000 • No. 3
