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MP3 One Seg­ment

Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of Jörg Haider, this pro­gram ana­lyzes the progress of fas­cist polit­i­cal forces on the Euro­pean polit­i­cal scene and com­mon ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional ele­ments shared by them.

Termed “the Yup­pie Fas­cist” by some, Haider has been the lynch­pin of the Aus­tri­an Free­dom Par­ty. This par­ty was cre­at­ed in the late 1940s as a vehi­cle for the polit­i­cal reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Nazis who had served Hitler. Haider has termed his polit­i­cal agen­da “the Con­tract with Aus­tria,” after that of for­mer Amer­i­can Repub­li­can Speak­er of the House Newt Gin­grich. Suc­cess­ful­ly mobi­liz­ing Aus­tri­ans’ fear of “immi­grants,” Haider has entered the gov­ern­ment as part of a par­lia­men­tary coali­tion. Begin­ning with Haider’s links with overt Ger­man “neo”-Nazis, the pro­gram under­scores his polit­i­cal sol­i­dar­i­ty with the old and new min­ions of Adolf Hitler. Lion­iz­ing the SS, Haider has stead­fast­ly refused to con­demn his Third Reich polit­i­cal antecedents. The pro­gram reviews Haider’s links with Ital­ian reac­tionar­ies and fas­cists and dis­cuss­es the lat­ter’s adop­tion of Haider’s anti-immi­grant stance.

Next, the broad­cast high­lights the grow­ing polit­i­cal for­tunes of media mag­nate Sil­vio Berlus­coni, viewed by ana­lysts of Ital­ian pol­i­tics as a pos­si­ble prime min­is­ter. (Berlus­coni had pre­vi­ous­ly held that post, in polit­i­cal coali­tion with Gian­fran­co Fini, the head of the Ital­ian fas­cist par­ty and polit­i­cal heir to Mus­soli­ni.)

The focus then shifts to the for­mer East Bloc coun­tries, with an analy­sis of the growth of fas­cism and anti-Semi­tism in Hun­gary. An Axis nation dur­ing World War II, Hun­gary has shown signs of return­ing to the past. The broad­cast con­cludes with a look at the con­tin­ued spon­sor­ship of Nazi ter­ror­ists by domes­tic Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vices.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: analy­sis of the fas­cist alle­giances of Haider’s min­is­te­r­i­al appoint­ments; Haider’s con­nec­tions to Ital­ian reac­tionary Umber­to Bossi; Berlus­coni’s spon­sor­ship of an anti-immi­grant bill that echoes Haider’s agen­da; Berlus­coni’s mem­ber­ship in the fas­cist P‑2 Lodge; Hun­gar­i­an gov­ern­men­tal endorse­ment of media voic­es that express tra­di­tion­al Euro­pean anti-Semit­ic sen­ti­ment; Hun­gar­i­an nos­tal­gia for and revival of the Arrow Cross milieu that fought along­side the Third Reich; polit­i­cal alliance between a state-spon­sored Nazi ter­ror­ist in Ger­many and Man­fred Roed­er (a con­vict­ed Nazi killer who enjoyed sup­port from the Ger­man army and its elite offi­cers acad­e­my in the “new” Ger­many.) (Record­ed on 4/2/2000.)