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These pro­grams dis­cuss the phi­los­o­phy and career of Jörg Haider, Austria’s so-called “yup­pie fascist.”

Com­par­ing him­self to Newt Gin­grich and call­ing his polit­i­cal agenda “the Con­tract with Aus­tria,” Haider has put together a pro­gram which is xeno­pho­bic. While harp­ing on the theme of gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion, Haider blames immi­grants for Austria’s eco­nomic prob­lems and calls for a state crack­down on the media and polit­i­cal progressives.

Haider’s inap­pro­pri­ately named Free­dom Party (cre­ated in 1949) was a repos­i­tory for Aus­trian mem­bers of Hitler’s Nazi party, and a vehi­cle for their polit­i­cal reha­bil­i­ta­tion. Haider has been very chummy with Austria’s bur­geon­ing Nazi move­ment, employ­ing some of them as occa­sional body­guards. Alarm­ingly, Haider’s pop­u­lar­ity and polit­i­cal suc­cess are increasing.

The series also dis­cusses Haider’s praise for the Waf­fen SS, deliv­ered at a Ger­man meet­ing of vet­er­ans of that orga­ni­za­tion attended by Gudrun Bur­witz, the daugh­ter of SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler. Bur­witz has been very active with” Stille Hilfe”, an orga­ni­za­tion devoted to help­ing Third Reich vet­er­ans escape ret­ri­bu­tion for war crimes and to the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of their rep­u­ta­tions. (Recorded in the spring of 1996.)