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PrintSeptember 29, 2008
European elites horrified by Austrian elections
Voters in Austria have increased their support for "far right" parties in Sunday's general election there. The left wing UK Guardian reports:
Austria was shaken by a political earthquake yesterday when the neo-fascist right emerged from a general election as a contender to be the strongest political force in the country for the first time.The combined forces of the extreme right took 29% of the vote, with Jörg Haider almost tripling the share of his breakaway Movement for Austria's Future to 11%, while his successor as Freedom party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, saw his party soar to 18%.
No doubt there are some very disagreeable views among those supporting these political parties. Austria has neo-Nazis, and did not match (West) Germany's efforts at de-Nazification.
Strache, who has been associated with neo-Nazi militants who deny the Holocaust, according to a court ruling, and who wants a new government ministry created to manage the deportation of immigrants, wound up his campaign at the weekend by calling Muslim women who wear the burqa "female ninjas".He talked of east European immigrants to Vienna as "European brothers who don't want to be Islamised", while another of his party leaders reminisced about the days when the kiosks on Vienna's squares sold sausage and wiener schnitzel, rather than "the kebab joints selling falafel and couscous, or whatever you call that stuff".
Last night Strache said he should be the new chancellor. "Today, we are the winners of election night," he said.
There is one major reason why these parties are gaining at the polls: they are responding to the very real problems caused by massive Muslim immigration to Austria (and Western Europe in general). Demography is destiny, and with native European birthrates so anemic, a future Islamic Republic of Austria is not just a right wing fantasy, but a predictable outcome, unless something dramatic is done. Phony multi-cultural policies, which discourage the assimilation of Muslims, in practice operate to stigmatize anyone who stands up for the principle that those choosing to live in a new culture must adapt.
The refusal of Western European elites to honestly confront this issue is at the root of the popularity of the "far right" parties. Those commentators who decry the rise of the right should direct their criticism at the elites whose stubborn tone-deafness is at the root of voter disgust.
It is time for mainstream European parties to become immigration reformers. Otherwise, they will forfeit further popularity and hand power to those they look down upon.
