An Austrian Jewish leader is convinced that Heinz-Christian Strache, (pictured right) head of the Austrian extreme-right Freedom Party, “is more dangerous” than his predecessor Joerg Haider. **
The Freedom Party saw its vote-share surge by 7.1 percent to 18.1 in Sunday’s early parliament elections, while the other extreme-right party led by Joerg Haider, the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZOe), saw its score more than double to 9.8 percent.
“There is no doubt Strache is more dangerous than Haider,” Raimund Fastenbauer, director general of Vienna’s Jewish Community, said.
“Strache wants the banning of the use of Nazi’s symbols and Nazi’s ideas to be lifted. Such attitude speaks for itself”, he said.
He added: “Not all people who vote for him are neo-Nazis, but the hard core of his party has extreme right-wing backgrounds. He gives people with a neo-Nazi past high positions within the party.”
In the 1999 elections, the Freedom Party — then led by Haider — won 27 per cent of the vote and was included one year later in a coalition government formed by the People’s Party, leading to months of European Union sanctions over statements seen as anti-Semitic or sympathetic to the policies of Adolf Hitler.
The heads of government of fourteen EU members decided to cease cooperation with the Austrian government, as it was felt in many countries that the “cordon sanitaire” against coalitions with parties considered as right-wing extremists, which had mostly held in Western Europe since 1945, had been breached.
Israel then recalled it’s ambassador from Vienna.
After Sunday’s election, observers said that if one of the extreme-right parties is brought in to a government coalition, it could prompt punitive measures from other European Union members. **
** All EU bureaucratic nuances aside, this would be akin to a foreign government withdrawing it’s ambassador from the US because it did not like the way the American citizens voted. –Ed.