austria 2001-2

 

Organized neo-Nazis have demonstrated increased self-confidence since the FPÖ joined the government in 2000. Nevertheless, the number of extreme right racist and antisemitic crimes committed in Austria in 2001 remained virtually unchanged. While there were no violent antisemitic attacks, there was a great deal of anti-Jewish propaganda, including antisemitic rhetoric by former FPÖ leader Jörg Haider. Some of the antisemitic propaganda was blended with anti-American, anti-Zionist and anti-Israel expressions after the September 11 events.

 

the jewish community

Austria has a Jewish population of 10,000 out of a total population of 8 million, The present community, most of whom live in Vienna, is made up of several groups, the most numerous being returnee Austrians and their families, as well as former refugees from Eastern Europe. A Jewish primary school and high school, as well as several Jewish publications, serve the needs of the community. In April 2002 the 4th international Herzl Symposium was held in Vienna, attended by President Thomas Klestil and Vienna mayor Michael Haeupel.

 

extremist organizations

Militant Right-Wing Extremism and Neo-Nazism

The number of extreme right racist and antisemitic crimes committed in Austria in 2001 remained virtually unchanged; the Ministry of Interior reported 337 such crimes for 2001, compared to 336 in 2000. Organized neo-Nazis have demonstrated increased self-confidence since the Freiheitliche Parteï Österreichs (FPÖ) joined the government in 2000. In a few regions of Austria (such as Vorarlberg, parts of Tyrol and Upper Austria) neo-Nazi groups (especially skinheads), inclined to violence, are present in such large numbers that the authorities fear they threaten public security. Neo-Nazis have increased membership and support and intensified their activities. For the first time since 1991, they held an illegal march following a demonstration in Vienna on 13 April 2002 protesting the Wehrmacht exhibition (see ASW 1999/2000). The march, organized by Kameradschaft Germania (see below) together with other fraternities, was attended by about 80 skinheads, who proceeded, without police intervention, through downtown Vienna chanting “Sieg Heil!” In contrast, in June of the previous year police dispersed a solstice celebration of this group on the outskirts of Vienna.

During 2001/2 Austrian neo-Nazis began to organize themselves into so-called Freie Kameradschaften (free comradeships), based on the German model. The most successful of these groups, Kameradschaft Germania (KSG), led by Robert Faller and Sascha Gasthuber, began operating in early summer 2001, initially on the Internet. Most of the other Kameradschaften were short-lived Internet groups.

During a house search of Alexander Behrend near St. Pölten in late April 2001, officials of the Lower Austrian Security Directorate confiscated large quantities of National Socialist (NS) propaganda materials, including posters of the German NPD, as well as weapons. Behrend was a senior cadre of the now defunct Neue Jugend Offensive (NJO), established in 1998 by supporters of Robert Dürr (see below). Behrend has set up a new group, Völkergemeinschaft St. Pölten (Peoples Community St. Pölten).

 

Meetings and Rallies

As in 2000, some 100 neo-Nazis, mostly skinheads, gathered in Bregenz in August 2001 to commemorate a comrade who had committed suicide in custody in 1999. Later, in nearby Fussach, at a concert, organized by the local section of the underground network Blood & Honour featuring the popular neo-Nazi bands Noie Werte and Razors Edge, over 250 local and foreign neo-Nazis listened to NS rock, which included – according to an Internet Wikinger-Versand forum entry – several songs in memory of Rudolf Hess. In contrast to Austrian police who did not interfere with the concert, German police detained several skinheads at the border and confiscated NS paraphernalia and sound equipment. At another skinhead concert, in Vorarlberg on 30 March 2002, a mass brawl erupted among members of the audience. Again the police did not intervene.

Many German and Austrian neo-Nazis and right extremists gathered from 2 to 7 November 2001 in what they refer to as “south-German terrain” to declare a “war of values on the wave of destruction of Americanism.” Speakers included, inter alia, Deutsche Kulturgemeinschaft (DKG) head Lisbeth Grolitsch and Austrian NPD chief ideologist Herbert Schweiger.

In October 2001, the right-wing extremist Arbeitsgemeinschaft fuer demokrtische Politik (AFP) held its “36th political academy” in Lungau, near Salzburg. Prominent among the speakers was Sascha Rossmüller, federal chairman of the German Junge Nationaldemokraten, regional chairman of the NPD Bavaria, and former activist in the Nationaler Block (NB), banned in 1993.

 

Antisemitic activity

FPÖ and Extreme Right Antisemitism

Carinthian state governor Jörg Haider of the FPÖ made antisemitic slurs during the campaign for the spring 2001 local election in Vienna. At a party political rally on Ash Wednesday (the first day of the Catholic Lent), 28 February 2001, in Ried/Innkreis, Haider said of Ariel Muzicant, chairman of the Jewish Community (IKG): “I do not understand how someone called Ariel [detergent] can be involved with so much shit.” He called Muzicant a “real estate speculator” and accused him of financial misconduct as chairman of the IKG. Haider also accused Muzicant of insulting Austria when the latter criticized the FPÖ and the settlement of looted Jewish property during a visit to Washington. “Such a person [Muzicant],” Haider declared on 22 March 2001, is not a patriotic Austrian.” Following further attacks on Muzicant, including the allegation that Muzicant himself had written threat letters he claimed to have received, Muzicant sued Haider for defamation of character. The matter was settled, with an apology by Haider, out of court in early 2002.

Haider also stirred up controversy through his close relationship with Arab despots. Shortly before his second trip to Iraq Haider gave an interview to the Arab TV station al-Jazeera in which he claimed the Israeli army had committed war crimes in the Jenin refugee camp. Later, in an interview with the Austrian news magazine Profit, he called the Israeli Prime Minister Sharon a “war criminal.”

            Right-wing extremist and former FPÖ politician Robert Dürr continued his activities in 2001 despite having been sentenced in November 2000 for repeated NS activity (see ASW 2000/1), and even intensified his antisemitic vitriol in his extremely racist PNO-Nachrichten. In June 2001 he wrote: “A parasite not only affixes itself to individual organisms, but can attack the body of an entire people … Today the global parasite resides in the US. From there it pursues its globalization mania.” In Austria the DÖW [Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes] was in the “global parasite’s service ... [through] an intensive exchange of information with Israel.”

After a lengthy absence, Dürr´s close associate Franz Radl, jr, reappeared in public. A leaflet bearing Radl´s address says, inter alia: “This circle ... has had information for some time that Israel has been exporting foodstuffs to Austria that have been specially treated with radioactivity and chemicals not permitted in Austria.”

DKG head Lisbeth Grolitsch wrote an editorial in the group’s 20-year-old mouthpiece Huttenbriefes (no. 1–2/2002) about Judaism’s alleged plans for world dominion. Only National Socialism had withstood those plans, she claimed, and after “the 1945 defeat” they had reached “threatening dimensions.”

In the same edition, Swiss neo-Nazi Gerd Zikeli dealt with the “spiritual roots of internationalism,” citing the father of modern racism Count Gobineau. “In World War II, he said, racists on the Soviet side were the Ilia Ehrenburgs, whose racial inferiority complex was turned into the infernal will of hatred and elimination of the German people.”

 

Anti-American, Anti-Israel, Anti-Zionist and Antisemitic Propaganda

After the September 11 attacks, the traditional support of the Austrian extreme right for Arab nationalism was extended to sympathy for Islamic extremists. Aula editor and former FPÖ parliamentary representative Otto Scinzi described the perpetrators as “political or religious but certainly not criminal fundamentalists in the cheap sense of the word.” An article by journalist J.F. Balvany in the same issue, marking the first anniversary of the second intifada, mentioned the presence of “concentration camps” in Israel. Balvany, also writing in the FPÖ organ Neue Freie Zeitung (mid-Sept. 2001), blamed Israel for the terror attacks on the US. Hemma Tiffner, publisher of the extreme right-wing periodical Die Umwelt claimed they were belated vengeance for the “double defeat of our fatherland.”

The weekly Zur Zeit, which has served for several years as a forum for representatives of Islamist and Palestinian organizations, dedicated its 24–25/2001 issue to Iraq, “a victim of the Zionist-imperialistic world conspiracy.”

Eckartbote, organ of the far right Österreichische Landsmannschaft, stated in April 2002: “The suffering and fight for survival of the Palestinians are in a way, reminiscent of the fate of the Germans in the Sudentenland. Both were thrown out and both are now deprived of their right to their fatherland. The brutal and bloody assault of the Israeli army against the Palestinian civil population, say the Palestinians, is close to ethnic cleansing and genocide. Some believed that Israeli soldiers behaved in Palestine like the SS-troops did in the East.”

In December 2001, the homepage of the extreme right Wiener Nachrichten Online (WNO) called for a demonstration “against terrorism and war. Peace for Afghanistan and Palestine” (organized by the pro-Iranian International Committee of Palestine – Austrian Section). WNO refers to organizations such as Hamas, Jihad and Hizballah as “liberation organizations,” while Israel is accused of state terrorism and systematic genocide. Right-wing extremist Robert Schwarzbauer, alias Martin Schwarz, initiator of the appeal “Palestine to Palestinians” wrote an essay entitled “Wehrmacht and Intifada,” in March 2002 for the WNO homepage, in which he links the struggle against Israel to that protesting the exhibition on the crimes of the Wehrmacht (Wehrmachtsausstellung) (see ASW 1999/2000). Appealing to sympathizers to join the demonstration on 13 April 2002 protesting the exhibition, Schwarzbauer concludes: “Against the war criminals of today! Against the history falsifiers of today! Support the Intifada! Defend the war generation!”

WNO frequently acts as bin Ladin's mouthpiece. It adopted the conspiracy theory, spread mainly in Arab countries, that about 4,000 Jews working in the World Trade Center (WTC) did not show up for work that day. Hence, it claimed, it might be assumed that “the CIA and the Mossad knew at least something about the assaults on the WTC, even if they did not plan them themselves.”

Gerd Honsik, who fled Austrian justice in 1992, has continued editing his publication HALT from exile in Spain. In 2002 he published a book by Holocaust denier Ahmed Rami, Zuerst nach Casablanca (First to Casablanca) and translated into German by Swiss Holocaust denier Jürgen Graf. The book is dedicated to the German Nazi Otto Ernst Remer who died in 1997, in exile in Spain. Remer was a friend of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husayni and an advisor to President Gamal Abd al-Nasser of Egypt. Commenting on Rami's book, Honsik said: “Israel’s settlement policy in Palestine is a racist policy of ethnic cleansing and acquisition of land similar to that carried out against 15 million Germans after 1945.”

A hostile anti-Israel stand has also been taken by some social democratic politicians. The general secretary of the GÖAB (Austrian-Arab Society), Fritz Edlinger repeatedly called Israelis “child murderers.” At the beginning of April 2002 member of the European parliament Hannes Swoboda (SPÖ) asked the Jewish communities in Europe to dissociate themselves from Israeli politics, lest they promote antisemitism.

Extreme left groups, led by the Revolutionary Communist League and members of Anti-imperialist Coordination (AIK) – openly agitate against Israel. During a demonstration in December 2001, a pamphlet of the pro-Iranian International Palestine Committee was distributed which openly belittles the Holocaust and supports neo-Nazi falsifiers of history. The pamphlet also refers to the alleged influence of Zionists on international policies, especially in the US. The Palestinian community of Austria is more secular than the pro-Iranian group, but no more moderate in tone, claiming on their homepage, for example, that Zionism and Israeli policies are worse than National Socialism.

Two days prior to the attacks in the US, the Austrian edition of the leftist Internet website Indymedia published a list of “US Israelis who worked in the US under Clinton.” This list of American Jews or persons with “Jewish” sounding names had appeared in numerous neo-Nazi pamphlets and later in the above mentioned brochure of the International Palestine Committee. Indymedia –Austria has become an electronic dumping ground for antisemitic trash.

 

responses to racism and antisemitism

The FPÖ’s participation in the government has weakened the authorities’ ability to combat neo-Nazism and right-wing extremism: When, for instance, in 2001 the fraternities featured prominently in the Interior Ministry’s 2001 annual report on right-wing extremism, FPÖ protests ensured that the report would no longer appear.

A parliamentary ceremony on Holocaust Memorial Day (5 May 2001, the date of the liberation of Mauthausen concentration camp) was cancelled after the opposition threatened not to attend should Bundesratspresident Gerd Klamt (FPÖ) be permitted to speak.

 

Legal Activity

In 2001, police received a total of 269 complaints of alleged violations of the NS prohibition law, compared to 239 in 2000. The trials of some prominent extreme right activists under this law are outlined below.

In January 2001, Hans Gamlich of Vienna was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison sentence for denying and minimizing NS crimes in Zur Zeit (no. 23, 1999). Gamlich called Adolf Hitler a “great social revolutionary,” and Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess a “bold idealist.” He claimed that it was Churchill, not the NS leadership, who had plunged “Europe into disaster.”

On the other hand, proceedings against the chief editor of Zur Zeit, Andreas Mölzer, were suspended, after Mölzer, a close confident of Jörg Haider, convinced the court that he had not read the incriminating text before it went to print.

Gamlich’s conviction does not seem to have harmed Zur Zeit’s relations with the governing coalition. After the trial, articles by Federal Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel (ÖVP) and Ministers Herbert Scheibner and Herbert Haupt (both FPÖ), and a joint interview with Vice Chancellor Suzanne Riess-Passer and Minister Monika Forstinger (both FPÖ) appeared in the periodical. Half a year later Riess-Passer claimed she had never heard of Zur Zeit. Moreover, the federal government continues its financial support of this bridge between right-wing extremism and conservatism to the amount of some 63,000 euro annually.

In October 2001, Günther Reinthaler, of the neo-Nazi Volkstreue Ausserparlamentarische Opposition (VAPO), was given a three-year prison sentence for returning to neo-Nazi activity following his release from a previous four-year prison term. Reinthaler had organized and participated in meetings, and a house search had yielded extensive NS material.

Another neo-Nazi given an additional prison term was Walter Ochensberger from Vorarlberger (see ASW 1999/2000). In January 2002, a court sentenced him to 24 months imprisonment, 16 suspended, for Holocaust denial in his publications Phoenix/Top Secret. Ochensberger was also accused of reprinting a Holocaust denial article from the Syrian Times in the 4/2000 edition of Phoenix/Top Secret. In 2001 he asserted that Jews were interned in concentration camps as potential enemies because Jewish world organizations had declared war on Germany “at least three times” between 1933 and 1939.

In 2001 the flight from justice of Austrian neo-Nazi Karl Polacek ended when he was arrested in the south of Greece and extradition proceedings were begun against him. In 1998 Polacek had been sentenced to two years imprisonment.

In September 2001, the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence of Salzburg right extremist and former FPÖ functionary Peter Kurt Weiss passed in 2000 (see ASW 2000/1). Weiss, however, continues to fight against his sentence, and intends to appeal, among others, to the European Court of Human Rights. In the meantime, he claims he will “withdraw from all public activities in Austria.”

The KSG Internet forum has been closed several times by the authorities after participants openly expressed racist and antisemitic sentiments. In March 2002, for example, it was shut down after a neo-Nazi wrote that Jews had invented “the Holocaust lie ... for the purpose of exploitation.”