This is the third thread on this topic in the past week or so. There was one in the Pit and an earlier one in GD. For some reason, they seem to die out quickly and be replaced by new ones.
Haider did rather more than “mention that he liked many of Hitlers ideas”. For example, he suggested that the Wafen SS were “men of honour”. He also argued that the Third Reich had an “orderly employment policy” which, in the light of Nazi use of slave-labour, has a fairly sinister resonance.
The fact that Hitler did some evil things does not, of course, mean that all his ideas were evil. If Hitler had been a vegetarian (opinions differ), that would not make all vegetarians evil. But Haider seems to be insinuating that he agrees with the evil parts of Hitler’s beliefs. I say
“insinuating” because he has carefully avoided expressing any explicit admiration for Hitler, as you would expect a competent modern politician to do. But you don’t describe the Waffen SS as “men of honour” unless you are basically an unreconstructed Nazi.
Now,
It is now, but it wasn’t originally. The original intention behind the European Common Market (as it then was) and its predecessor bodies was to prevent Europe from being torn apart in the way that it had been for 12 out of the first 50 years of the 20th century (not including other, occasional German incursions into Alsace-Lorraine). So suppressing Nazism is pretty high on the EU’s agenda and that of the Council of Europe, the body which oversees compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights, and of which all the EU States are members.
Adopting a common mind-set was not part of admission but, if you don’t agree with an organisation’s aims and objectives , you don’t join in the first place, right?
You suggest that
Not exactly. As you correctly pointed out, he actually represents a minority party in the Austrian Parliament, and has come into Government as part of a coalition with the bigger People’s Party, a centre-right party pretty similar to the Christian Democrat parties all over Europe (and the Tories
in the UK). So it’s not like the people voted for him in overwhelming numbers. He actually got about 25% of the popular vote.
This is why applying diplomatic sanctions is a valid strategy under the circumstances. It’s not an attempt to overturn the will of the Austrian people, but an attempt to get the bigger parties in the Austrian Parliament to think again about whether they could govern with a different kind of
coalition.
No. I have said this in all the other threads on this subject. The important words in the news article you quote are
In other words, each of the 14 other EU Member States has independently decided to cut diplomatic links with Austria. This is not an action by the EU against a Member State, and it would be scandalous if it were. As Elmer says, Austria is free to form whatever Government it likes and its
neighbours are free to cut diplomatic relations in response if they choose to. I am glad they did. I wish they had done so when Hitler first came to power.