Nazi salutes for leader with pop star style 

By Robin Gedye in Vienna

JÖRG Haider's bodyguards were still climbing the steps to the stage when he cleared them in a bound,
rotated, waved and grabbed the microphone in a single, fluid, practised movement. 

A cheer swelled, the crowd applauded and a handful of arms in the front ranks rose in a pretty fair
approximation of the Nazi salute.

His sun-bed tan, his ski-teacher charm and looks, his open smile and his adulatory audience would
indicate a pop star, but Mr Haider, 45, leader of the far-right Freedom party, set the agenda for
yesterday's bitterly contested election.

His policies are feared by 60 per cent of Austrians and yet his rise to the chancellery and even the
presidency of Austria is considered highly probable, although his party did not do as well as expected in
yesterday's poll. Mr Haider has succeeded in winning mass support where Jean-Marie Le Pen and
Franz Schönhuber, far-Right leaders in France and Germany, have failed.

The talk in Brussels, according to the popular magazine Profil, is that "the sparks flying from Haider's
anvil in Austria could leap to Germany in the post-Kohl era".

It is not hard to see the appeal of this political chameleon who dazzles with his demagoguery, milks the
prejudices of the ordinary man with bar-room wisdom and outsmarts mainstream politicians in
television debates with slick sound-bites.

Clean-scrubbed blond teenagers in blue uniforms and pale-blue baseball caps inscribed "Jörg" moved
through the audiences at his political rallies.

He would arrive, two bodyguards at his heels, glad-handing eager passers-by. A smile and a pat on the
back for the policemen patrolling his rallies was enough to ensure their help in silencing hecklers.

Haider, young, dynamic, good-looking, healthy, relaxed and modern, would look down from the stage on
the pale, the old, the poor and the unemployed from whom he draws his greatest support.

"Haider is a fascist thinker seeking a political revolution"

His attacks on privilege and official corruption won loud applause. Forgotten at election time were his
plans for a stronger police force and a Third Republic under an all-powerful Chancellor-President.

"Haider is a fascist thinker seeking a political revolution," said Andreas Kohl, leader of the conservative
People's Party parliamentary faction. He is against political parties and a social partnership. Like
Haider, fascists and National Socialists used to say, 'There is one Führer and nothing may come
between him and the people'."

Despite his advocacy of Nazi employment policies, the Nazi credentials of his parents - his father fled
to Germany in 1934 to join the Nazi party and his mother was an activist - and his general evasiveness
on race, Mr Haider's appeal has moved from the public bar to the drawing room.

People who insist they are socialists or anti-Haider, can understand his obsessions with immigrants,
official corruption and law and order.

His greatest achievement has been in translating the rhetoric of the soap box to the grand political
stage. 

Mr Haider points to a recent Financial Times article as an example of his acceptance into polite
society. One of his publicity photos shows him with a copy of the Daily Telegraph.

Daily Telegraph, 18-12-95