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FTR #179 Resurgent Fascism in Switzerland and Austria

Lis­ten: One seg­ment

As the 90s drew to a close, elec­tions in two cen­tral Euro­pean coun­tries gave evi­dence that fas­cism was alive, well and gain­ing in the “new” Europe of the EU. In Aus­tria, Jörg Haider’s inap­pro­pri­ate­ly named Free­dom Par­ty scored sig­nif­i­cant elec­toral gains, plac­ing him in a posi­tion to wield sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal influ­ence in that coun­try. (Haider’s Free­dom Par­ty was found­ed in 1949 as a vehi­cle for the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Aus­tri­an Nazis who had served under Hitler.)

Call­ing his polit­i­cal agen­da “A Con­tract with Aus­tria,” Haider explic­it­ly pat­terned his polit­i­cal pro­gram after that of Newt Gin­grich.

Rail­ing against Aus­tri­an par­tic­i­pa­tion in the EU and the “dan­gers” pre­sent­ed by immi­gra­tion from East­ern Europe, Haider has suc­cess­ful­ly played on the fears of work­ing Aus­tri­ans that they might lose their jobs. A sim­i­lar xeno­pho­bia pro­pelled Christoph Blocher to suc­cess in Swiss elec­tions. Like Haider, Blocher has tar­get­ed Swiss par­tic­i­pa­tion in the EU and “immi­grants”. Blocher has also railed against Swiss mem­ber­ship in the Unit­ed Nations and suc­cess­ful­ly exploit­ed the resent­ment of old­er Swiss cit­i­zens about recent dis­clo­sures of Swiss col­lab­o­ra­tion with Third Reich finance before, dur­ing and after World War II. It is worth not­ing that Blocher’s polit­i­cal base con­sists of the Ger­man seg­ment of the Swiss pop­u­la­tion and that the recent suc­cess of his Peo­ple’s Par­ty is seen as fur­ther dis­tanc­ing the French-speak­ing minor­i­ty. Blocher has endorsed a book that denied that the Holo­caust took place.

Much of the pro­gram focus­es on the pro­found role played in Swiss finance and busi­ness by the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. The eco­nom­ic com­po­nent of a Third Reich that lit­er­al­ly went under­ground, the Bor­mann group was described by one banker as “the most impor­tant con­cen­tra­tion of mon­ey pow­er under a sin­gle con­trol in all of world his­to­ry”.

The dis­cus­sion under­scores the crit­i­cal role that Switzer­land has played in the oper­a­tions of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. First of all, Switzer­land was one of the coun­tries in which Mar­tin Bor­mann locat­ed many of the 750 cor­po­rate fronts which served as repos­i­to­ries for all the liq­uid wealth of the Third Reich at the war’s end. Switzer­land was the loca­tion of numer­ous hold­ing com­pa­nies, which served to mask the real own­er­ship and con­trol of the Ger­man econ­o­my. A hold­ing com­pa­ny may only hold stock in oth­er com­pa­nies. (Actu­al con­trol of the Ger­man econ­o­my is main­tained through bear­er bonds, which grant own­er­ship of the cor­po­rate enti­ty in ques­tion to the bear­er of those bonds.)

Of par­tic­u­lar note is the Inter­han­del com­pa­ny, set up by I.G. Far­ben lumi­nary Her­mann Schmitz to mask own­er­ship of Far­ben assets. (I.G. Far­ben was the back­bone of the Third Reich’s econ­o­my and its suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies dom­i­nate the Ger­man econ­o­my. Far­ben’s Schmitz was very close to Bor­mann and helped set up the var­i­ous cor­po­rate fronts that com­prised the orga­ni­za­tion.)

The dis­cus­sion high­lights Switzer­land’s role as the vehi­cle for the Bor­mann group’s ongo­ing pur­chase of stock in U.S. blue chip cor­po­ra­tions and con­cludes with a look at Mar­tin Bor­man­n’s demand accounts at three key Amer­i­can com­mer­cial banks in the post-war peri­od!

Discussion

2 comments for “FTR #179 Resurgent Fascism in Switzerland and Austria”

  1. What’s old is new again in Switzer­land. Maybe. It depends on how the Swiss decide to vote in a few weeks. So what’s old may or may not be new again. But it’s def­i­nite­ly still ill-advised:

    Quartz
    It seems nuts, but the Swiss may go back to a gold stan­dard

    Writ­ten by
    Matt Phillips Novem­ber 6, 2014

    The British pound hasn’t been linked to gold since 1931. The US US snipped the cord in 1971. But the Swiss only ful­ly sev­ered ties to gold in 1999, when vot­ers approved a revamped con­sti­tu­tion.

    Now, a good chunk of them seems to want to go back.

    .On Nov. 30, Swiss vot­ers will cast bal­lots on a num­ber of issues includ­ing the “Save our Swiss Gold” ini­tia­tive launched by the right-lean­ing Swiss People’s Par­ty. The bal­lot mea­sure would instant­ly ban the Swiss Nation­al Bank from sell­ing gold. It also would require that the nation­al bank keep 20% of its assets in gold with­in five years. (It cur­rent­ly has about 8% in gold.) Oh, and it would demand that all the gold be stored in Switzer­land itself. (About 30% is parked abroad right now.)

    “It’s real­ly an attempt to return to some kind of gold stan­dard, for those who don’t trust paper mon­ey and who want gold back­ing it up,” UBS strate­gist Beat Siegen­thaler told Reuters.

    While it’s not strict­ly the same thing as a gold standard—for instance a clas­si­cal gold stan­dard stip­u­lat­ed that nation­al ban­knotes be freely con­vert­ed to gold at a fixed price—the Swiss gold ini­tia­tive is a step in that direc­tion.

    What’s the moti­va­tion, exact­ly?

    It would be one thing if we were deal­ing with a bas­ket-case cur­ren­cy and ram­pant Swiss infla­tion. But Switzerland’s cur­ren­cy prob­lem, ever since it cut ties with gold, is that the franc has been far too strong, not too weak. That’s act­ed as a drag on the Swiss economy’s high-val­ue export sec­tor. In fact, it’s been such a prob­lem that the Swiss Nation­al Bank has tak­en big—some might say risky—steps to smack down the cur­ren­cy, the effects of which would like­ly be reversed if the bank were forced to buy more gold.

    ...

    And the worst part of the pro­posed law, accord­ing to a Swiss Nation­al Bank offi­cial by the name of Jean-Pierre Dan­thine, is the pro­vi­sion that Switzer­land must nev­er, ever sell gold again. He explained in a recent speech:

    In com­bi­na­tion with the oblig­a­tion to hold at least 20% of total assets in gold, this could grad­u­al­ly lead the SNB into a sit­u­a­tion where its assets would main­ly con­sist of gold: each exten­sion of the bal­ance sheet for mon­e­tary pol­i­cy rea­sons would neces­si­tate gold pur­chas­es, but when­ev­er the bal­ance sheet need­ed to be reduced again for the same rea­sons, we would not be able to resell our gold hold­ings. This would severe­ly restrict our room for manoeu­vre.

    From a pure­ly tac­ti­cal point of view, it would be deeply sil­ly to dou­ble down right now on gold, which gained in val­ue dur­ing the finan­cial cri­sis but has since slid from its peak in 2011 at near­ly $1,900 an ounce. Com­mit­ting to buy now would essen­tial­ly be a giant bailout for spec­u­la­tors in the gold mar­kets. Bloomberg reports that, giv­en the Swiss Nation­al Bank has some $544 bil­lion in assets on its bal­ance sheet, the gold ini­tia­tive would force it to buy more than $56 bil­lion worth of phys­i­cal gold over the next five years. And if cur­rent price trends con­tin­ue, the val­ue of that gold would be falling.

    In short, the Save Our Swiss Gold ini­tia­tive doesn’t make sense eco­nom­i­cal­ly. (Luck­i­ly its chances of becom­ing law are slim—it would need to win out­right in a pop­u­lar vote, and also in the major­i­ty of can­tons that make up the Swiss Fed­er­a­tion.) But ref­er­en­da like this and the one Swiss vot­ers recent­ly passed to clamp down on immi­gra­tion real­ly aren’t about eco­nom­ics. They’re about the increas­ing­ly influ­en­tial right­ward drift of Euro­pean pol­i­tics, which threat­ens to result—especially in the case of the Save our Swiss Gold initiative—in some real­ly ter­ri­ble poli­cies.

    “In short, the Save Our Swiss Gold ini­tia­tive doesn’t make sense eco­nom­i­cal­ly. (Luck­i­ly its chances of becom­ing law are slim—it would need to win out­right in a pop­u­lar vote, and also in the major­i­ty of can­tons that make up the Swiss Fed­er­a­tion.) But ref­er­en­da like this and the one Swiss vot­ers recent­ly passed to clamp down on immi­gra­tion real­ly aren’t about eco­nom­ics. They’re about the increas­ing­ly influ­en­tial right­ward drift of Euro­pean pol­i­tics, which threat­ens to result—especially in the case of the Save our Swiss Gold initiative—in some real­ly ter­ri­ble poli­cies.”

    Yes, iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics and a gener­ic right­ward drift appear to have once again put the Euro­pean lizard brain in the dri­ver’s seat so who knows if it will pass at this point. And while the chances of this law pass­ing are still seen as rel­a­tive­ly small since it lacks major­i­ty back­ing, keep in mind that it’s get­ting pret­ty close to hav­ing that major­i­ty:

    The Wall Street Jour­nal
    Swiss Bank Speaks Out Against Gold Ini­tia­tive
    Polls Show Vote on Gold Bul­lion Pro­pos­al Too Close to Call

    By John Revill
    Nov. 12, 2014 5:55 a.m. ET

    ZURICH—The head of Switzerland’s cen­tral bank has warned that main­tain­ing sta­ble prices would be hard­er to achieve if the Alpine coun­try votes to require the bank to keep a min­i­mum amount of gold in its vaults.

    The adop­tion of the so-called “Save Our Swiss Gold” ini­tia­tive would be a “fatal error of judg­ment,” Thomas Jor­dan, pres­i­dent of the Swiss Nation­al Bank, told Swiss news­pa­per 20 Minuten in an inter­view pub­lished Wednes­day.

    On Nov. 30, the Swiss are sched­uled to vote in a ref­er­en­dum on the ini­tia­tive to make the Swiss Nation­al Bank to hold a fifth of its assets in gold, a lev­el it would need to meet with­in five years. The SNB cur­rent­ly has assets of around $550 bil­lion.

    The require­ment, the cam­paign for which is led by mem­bers of the right-wing Swiss People’s Par­ty, would also pro­hib­it the bank from sell­ing any of its gold in the future and repa­tri­ate gold held over­seas.

    A recent poll showed the vote was too close to call with 44% of respon­dents in favor of the ini­tia­tive, 39% against and 17% unde­cid­ed. A major­i­ty of vot­ers and a major­i­ty of Switzerland’s 26 can­tons, akin to U.S. states, need to approve the ini­tia­tive for it to pass.

    Mr. Jor­dan said the pro­pos­als would dam­age the SNB’s abil­i­ty to deal with infla­tion, while jobs could be endan­gered.

    “Too lit­tle gold in the eco­nom­ic cri­sis was nev­er the prob­lem, the strong franc was the prob­lem,” Mr. Jor­dan said in the inter­view. “We had a mas­sive over­val­u­a­tion which has led to major prob­lems.

    “We must be able to damp­en this prob­lem, but our abil­i­ty to do this would be severe­ly restrict­ed,” he said. The ini­tia­tive would force the SNB to buy gold every time it buys euros, which it has done to curb the rise of the Swiss franc.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 12, 2014, 12:51 pm
  2. Vic­to­ry for Aus­tri­a’s new anti-EU leader and surge in sup­port for anti-immi­grant par­ty sends shock­waves through Europe as Merkel warns of ‘big chal­lenge’ ahead

    By Joe Shep­pard and Gareth Davies and Scott Camp­bell For Mailon­line Octo­ber 16, 2017

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4984980/Sebastian-Kurz-victory-sends-shockwaves-Europe.html#ixzz4vm4fcU6r 
    Fol­low us: @MailOnline on Twit­ter | Dai­ly­Mail on Face­book

    The arti­cle states:
    Sebas­t­ian Kurz’s elec­tion vic­to­ry last night has sent shock­waves through Europe as it appears he may seek a coali­tion with the coun­try’s anti-immi­gra­tion Free­dom Par­ty.

    The Euroscep­tic leader of Aus­tri­a’s right-lean­ing Peo­ple’s Par­ty has declared vic­to­ry in a nation­al elec­tion that puts him on track to become the world’s youngest leader.

    Kurz, 31, fell well short of a major­i­ty and may be look­ing to strike a deal with anoth­er par­ty. 

    The Free­dom Par­ty (FPO) got around 26 per­cent of votes in Sun­day’s par­lia­men­tary vote, boost­ed by a Euro­pean migra­tion cri­sis in 2015 that affect­ed Aus­tria and also led Kurz to cam­paign on an anti-migra­tion plat­form. 

    Today Euro­pean Union min­is­ters con­grat­u­lat­ed Aus­tri­a’s Sebas­t­ian Kurz on his elec­tion vic­to­ry but some were uneasy about the far-right, euroscep­tic par­ty that may enter the new gov­ern­ment.

    And Ger­man chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel warned that the surge in sup­port for the FPO posed a ‘big chal­lenge’ for oth­er par­ties.
    Before arriv­ing to talks with his EU peers Lux­em­bourg For­eign Min­is­ter Jean Assel­born said: ‘I don’t have a prob­lem with Sebas­t­ian Kurz as a per­son. We’re not fol­low­ing the same line polit­i­cal­ly, that has nev­er been the case and it nev­er will be.’

    He list­ed pro-Euro­pean Aus­tri­an politi­cians as role mod­els for Kurz and warned Vien­na not to side with migra­tion hard­lin­ers, includ­ing Hun­gary, whose gov­ern­ment is also euroscep­tic.

    Skip­ping down in the arti­cle…
    Here’s what the two par­ties stand for: 

    Peo­ple’s Par­ty 
    • Cap basic wel­fare pay­ments for refugees at 540 euros a month
    • No inher­i­tance tax and intro­duce 1,500 euros-a-month min­i­mum wage
    • Cut­ting income tax on annu­al earn­ings up to 60,000 euros

    Free­dom Par­ty
    • Push for Brus­sels to hand more pow­ers back to mem­ber states
    • Shut sec­tors of econ­o­my to non-EU work­ers
    • Cut pro­por­tion of for­eign pupils in schools
    • Deport for­eign con­victs

    Where they agree... 
    • Stop res­cue mis­sions of refugees in the Mediter­ranean
    • Cut EU influ­ence on the day to day gov­ern­ing of Aus­tria
    • High­er stan­dards of inte­gra­tion before grant­i­ng cit­i­zen­ship
    • For­eign­er ben­e­fits ban for five years

    Skip­ping down fur­ther…

    The resur­gent far-right: How pol­i­tics across Europe has tak­en a shift from the cen­tre 
    Aus­tri­a’s hard-right Free­dom Par­ty has a shot at shar­ing pow­er after elec­tions on Sun­day, hav­ing nar­row­ly lost out in a pres­i­den­tial vote last year.

    A far-right par­ty has also had some suc­cess in Ger­many, in Sep­tem­ber becom­ing the first such par­ty to enter the Bun­destag since the end of World War Two, but their coun­ter­part in France is far­ing less well.
    Here is a snap­shot of some of the far-right par­ties in Europe.

    Aus­tria
    The euroscep­tic and anti-immi­grant Free­dom Par­ty (FPOe) came close to win­ning the pres­i­den­cy in Decem­ber, which would have made its leader the Euro­pean Union’s first far-right pres­i­dent.

    One of Europe’s most estab­lished nation­al­ist par­ties, it is fore­cast to come sec­ond or third in this week­end’s vote and could become junior coali­tion part­ners to the favourites, the con­ser­v­a­tive Peo­ple’s Par­ty (OeVP).

    Found­ed in 1956 by ex-Nazis, the par­ty earned a stun­ning sec­ond place in 1999 elec­tions with near­ly 27 per­cent.

    Last year its can­di­date Nor­bert Hofer nar­row­ly lost a pres­i­den­tial runoff against Greens-backed eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor Alexan­der Van der Bellen.

    Ger­many
    The open­ly anti-immi­gra­tion and Islam­o­pho­bic Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) is the third-biggest par­ty in the Bun­destag after the Sep­tem­ber elec­tion, a polit­i­cal earth­quake for post-war Ger­many.
    The par­ty took near­ly 13 per­cent of the votes, hav­ing failed in the 2013 elec­tion to make even the five per­cent required for rep­re­sen­ta­tion in par­lia­ment.
    It has more than 90 seats on the bench­es of the par­lia­ment that meets for the first time on Octo­ber 24.

    France
    Marine Le Pen’s Nation­al Front (FN), found­ed by her fire­brand father Jean-Marie in 1972, took near­ly 34 per­cent of votes in the May pres­i­den­tial elec­tion run-off won by Emmanuel Macron.

    Marine Le Pen’s Nation­al Front (FN), found­ed by her fire­brand father Jean-Marie in 1972, took near­ly 34 per­cent of votes in the May pres­i­den­tial elec­tion run-off won by Emmanuel Macron

    This was dou­ble her father’s 17.8 per­cent score when he reached the sec­ond round in 2002.
    In cam­paign­ing, Le Pen vowed to aban­don the euro, rein­state con­trol of the nation’s bor­ders and curb immi­gra­tion if she won.

    But the par­ty fared bad­ly in June par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, tak­ing just eight seats out of 577.

    Ten­sions since then burst into the open when Le Pen’s right-hand man Flo­ri­an Philip­pot quit and looks set to go his own way. 

    Hun­gary
    The Move­ment for a Bet­ter Hun­gary, known as Job­bik, is ultra-nation­al­ist and euroscep­tic. It is the sec­ond largest par­ty in the leg­is­la­ture but has been out­flanked by Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban’s own hard­line anti-immi­gra­tion stance.

    Italy
    The North­ern League is a ‘region­al­ist’ for­ma­tion that evolved into an anti-euro and anti-immi­grant par­ty that secured 18 seats in the 2013 par­lia­men­tary elec­tion.
    The next gen­er­al elec­tion must be held by spring 2018 and the par­ty is hov­er­ing at around 14 per­cent of vot­er inten­tions.

    Greece
    The neo-Nazi Gold­en Dawn fin­ished third in the Sep­tem­ber 2015 elec­tion, with sev­en per­cent of the vote and 18 MPs. One lat­er defect­ed and the par­ty is now the fourth biggest in par­lia­ment.

    Swe­den
    The anti-Islam Free­dom Par­ty (PVV) of Geert Wilders (pic­tured) in March became the sec­ond par­ty in par­lia­ment, with 20 seats in the 150-mem­ber par­lia­ment

    The Swe­den Democ­rats par­ty, with roots in the neo-Nazi move­ment, made a break­through in Sep­tem­ber 2014 to become the coun­try’s third biggest par­ty with 48 of 349 seats and near­ly 13 per­cent of the vote.
    Nether­lands

    The anti-Islam Free­dom Par­ty (PVV) of Geert Wilders in March became the sec­ond par­ty in par­lia­ment, with 20 seats in the 150-mem­ber par­lia­ment.

    Bul­gar­ia
    The nation­al­ist Unit­ed Patri­ots coali­tion entered gov­ern­ment for the first time in May after com­ing third in a March elec­tion. It is the junior par­ty in the gov­ern­ing coali­tion.

    Slo­va­kia
    In March 2016 the Peo­ple’s Par­ty Our Slo­va­kia ben­e­fit­ed from Europe’s refugee cri­sis to enter par­lia­ment for the first time, win­ning 14 seats out of 150.

    REFERENCE: Not men­tioned in the arti­cle, but Marine LePenn’s father, Jean Marie LeP­ene was sent to Alge­ria (1957) as an intel­li­gence offi­cer. He has been accused of hav­ing engaged in tor­ture. Le Pen has denied these accu­sa­tions, although he admit­ted know­ing of its use.
    Source: Le Pen, son univers impi­toy­able Archived 24 Feb­ru­ary 2012 at the Way­back Machine., Radio France Inter­na­tionale, 1 Sep­tem­ber 2006 (in French)

    Posted by Mary Benton | October 17, 2017, 6:13 am

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