If the hysteria of the European liberal establishments is to be imagined, recent political developments in Austria have been a combination of Anschluss, Kristalnicht and the Holocaust.

The enlightened and benevolent rulers of the real new European Order would have us believe that Austria has become a cauldron of militant neo-nazi reaction bent on sending out column after column of nazi flag waving stormtroopers to overwhelm the civilised capitals of multi-cultural Europe with a series of fascist force marches which will rapidly return the continent to another national socialist dark age.

Such social democratic delusions could be merely a mad manifestation of the idiocy of putting “political correctness” before social reality, more likely, given the pork-barrel piggery that is Brussels the pseudo-liberal bureaucracy of the corrupt European Commission is generating a pretend libertarian smoke-screen to obscure their real intentions to create a fascist imperium of their own.

First let us examine what has really been happening in Austria. Yes, there have been hundreds of thousands of demonstrators on the streets of Vienna, Austria’s capital, but they are shouting “Haider Out” and “Foreigners In”, hardly the sentiments of the vanguard of a xenophobic barbarian horde.

The election of October 1999 was a democratic election in Austria. The Freedom Party led at that time by its charismatic leader, 50 year old Jorg Haider won 27% of the popular vote and came second only to the long established Social Democratic Party. The Freedom Party won its 52 seats in the 183 seat Austrian Lower House.

The Conservative People’s Party led by Wolfgang Schussel won 26.9% of the popular vote and were beaten into third place by the Freedom Party.

The political crisis since the October 1999 General Election was provoked by the failure of the People’s Party and the Social Democrats to re-establish the so-called Red-Black Coalition which has dominated Austria’s political scene since the end of the Second World War and has governed the country for 30 years.

A good deal of the popularity of the Freedom Party is due to the public appeal of Jorg Haider who took over the reins in 1986 when the Party had only obtained 5% of the Austrian vote.

Jorg Haider has been accused of making statements that seem to praise certain aspects of Nazism. During his first period as elected governor of the provincial parliament of the southern Austrian province of Carinthia, he said “ An orderly employment policy was carried out in the Third Reich which the government cannot manage.” He also is on record as praising Waffen SS veterans for doing their duty for their Fatherland during the Second World War.

Jorg Haider has described the Freedom Party as a Democratic Movement committed to human rights. He stressed that a government which included his party would give Austria an optimistic perspective on the future, ending as it would 30 years of concensus politics.

The Freedom Party is not a fascist party advocating a Corporate State, its economic program is in fact quasi-Thatcherite. On Europe, on immigration and asylum the British Conservative Party has policies remarkably close to Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party. Haider is a right-wing radical nationalist which is a common species these days in Central and Eastern Europe.

An electoral agreement between the Conservative People’s Party and the Freedom Party led to the formation of a right-wing coalition government in Austria on the 4th February 2000. Together the government controls 104 seats out of a total of 183 seatsin the Lower House of the Austrian parliament.

The coalition agreement resulted in the People’s Party leader Wolfgang Schuessel becoming Austrian chancellor.

The agreement gave the Freedom Party a number of places in the new Austrian government including Vice-Chancellor, Finance Minister, Infra-Structure Minister, Defence Minister and Justice Minister, it also got the Ministry of Social Affairs whose budget accounts for 30% of Austria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Although Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel is one of Austria’s most pro-European politicians, the coalition’s political program demands tough pre-conditions for European Union enlargement to the East including a long transitional period before citizens of the new member state may live and work elsewhere in the European Union. Austria will also press for an enhanced E.U. Defence indentity and stronger links between the E.U. and NATO.

As a condition of approval for their coalition, Haider and Schussel signed a statement asserting that Nationalism, Dictatorship and Intolorance brought war, xenophobia, bondage, racism and mass murder. They are an exhortation to permanent alertness against all forms of Dictatorship and Totalitarianism.

Whilst it is the attitude of the Freedom Party against immigration and non-German speakers that stirs up the most opposition to it among the International Community, it is worth pointing out that the previous People Party/SDP coalition government already effectively stopped immigration to Austria. The new Freedom Party coalition will not readily resume immigration, but immigration controls were put in previously.

Wolfgang Schussel said that as Chancellor he would be able to mimimise Haider’s influence and pointed out that the joint declaration between the Freedom Party and the People’s Party pledged to work for an Austria in which xenophobia, anti-seminiticism and racism have no place. The coalition government is to make amends for Austria’s nazi past by pledging to work towards having Austrian companies who used slave-labourers under the nazi’s make restitution payments to their victims. The coalition also pledged their commitment to the fundamental values of democracy and human rights.

The Freedom Party, although effectively neutered by the coalition government agreement on the immigration front put forward a 100 day program to help people on low incomes, promote administration reforms and especially work for the de-politicization of a civil service corrupted by decades of SDP placemen.

Political pressure however, not only from the internal Austrian process but also from abroad resulted in the largest bank in the Netherlands A.B.N. AMRO N.V. freezing its offer to help finance a controversial child-support program in Mr. Haider’s home province of Carinthia because it reportedly favoured children of native Austrian parents and children who stay at home. It would appear that even in the heart of Freedom Party influenced Austria, any social policies with the slightest nationalistic tinge are not to be permitted by the economic interests of the New Europe.

As cultural nationalists Haider and the Freedom Party have a collective perception of society that is in favour of Austrian culture and folklore and against expressions of excessive individualism in art.

Haider has always had a very uneasy relationship with the art world. In his speeches he has portrayed artists as lazy, wasteful spongers and called for subsidies only for art that is enjoyed by the Austrian masses.

The Freedom Party has threatened to cut state subsidies to the Austrian artistic community which in the absence of private sector sponsorship has until now thrived on the political support of old SDP influenced governments.

Most Austrian artists and creative people are supporters of Haiders sworn enemies, the Social Democrats. Consequently many leading Austrian artists and intellectuals, the so-called cultural elite, are threatening to abandon the country because they say that life for an artist under Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party would be intolerable. They fear that from now on cultural policies will be defined by demagoguery and populism and controlled through censorship.

The adverse European reaction to the involvement of the Freedom Party in Austria’s government was in fact orchestrated by Austria’s own President Klestil. He is a member of the Social Democratic Party, organised the international protests by personally approaching other E.U. heads of state or governments and saying that only foreign intervention could head off the Freedom Party’s participation in government.

The European Union Council of Ministers responded by promising to reduce diplomatic contact with Austria to a technical minimum. The E.U. in particular warned Austria not to start deploying its veto on policy if it wanted to stay a member of the European Union. This was a clear reference to the fear that Austria could veto all E.U. decisions such as E.U. enlargement in retaliation to any European Union acts against Austrian democracy. Expulsion of one small country is obviously a worthwhile price to pay for the economic benefits to the European Elite of european enlargement to the East.

In Brussels the european parliament by a vote of 406 for and 53 against with 60 abstentions, passed a resolution which urged the E.U. to be ready to suspend the membership of any Austrian government if it made a serious and persistant breach of basic E.U. principles as defined in the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty.

The thrust of the attack by the liberal elite of Europe is that the Freedom Party is neo-nazi and racist and that their values challenge core legal principles of the European Convention on human rights and provisions in the E.U. Treaties.

These sentiments were put forward by MEP’s such as Labour’s Glyn Ford who made the following statement: “Some say it is not right for us to interfere in Austrian politics. They are wrong! Some say we have to accept the outcome of democratic elections but elections do not always make democracies.”

The liberal intellectuals of the european elite have changed in their conception of democracy.

The democratic will of the majority can now be rejected if a party or leader seeks to remove the freedoms and wider culture upon which it rests. This sound laudable and indeed even noble where it appears liberal democracy has re-defined itself as not just rule by majority but is also a system that excludes intolerance towards minorities.

This need for the individuals and communities of the European Union to conform with the norms and values of the european consensus is well and good but it poses a number of questions: If democracy itself is no longer going to be trusted as the basis for upholding the european consensus, who are to be the moral arbitors of Europe if democracy and the jury system based as it is on the concept of popular sovereignty is to be rejected, should our choices as moral guardians be the European Commission? The Council of Ministers? or even the European Court of Justice? Should we choose any or all of the above or perhaps we should look elsewhere for the creation or enforcing of moral authority. Maybe we should re-instate religious Gods or Judge Dredd or even Magistrates selected from the elect aristocracy of the super-rich. Any which way, we lose!

The route the European Superstate is going down is similar to that taken by the country which is physically at the heart of European Union, Belgium. Belgium’s foreign minister Louis Michel was very quick to jump on the bandwagon of condemnation of Austria for daring to elect the Freedom Party. He said: “I think that Europe can very well do without Austria, we don’t need it.”

Belgium clearly wanted Europe to set up a cordon sanitaire around Austria in much the same way as the Belgian political parties have maintained against the Vlamms Blok which garnered 9.8% of the popular vote in the 1999 Federal Elections and are now the third largest party in the region of Flanders. Belgium recently erected constitutional barriers to the far right. Parliament passed laws against racist discourse, cut off funds to parties with racist ideology and made ineligible for election any candidate sentenced for inciting racial hatred. The liberal approach of Belgium is therefore to fight intolerance with intolerance and without any doubt, change the volcabulary to equate racism with any form of nationalism.

It is a pity that Belgium’s much vaunted moral intolerance did not extend to the members of Belgium’s own political establishment who deliberately hid from their own public, monstrous child killers and justified to themselves pardoning child molesters, who would want to trust the moral authority of the liberals at the sick heart of Europe?

The hypocrisy of Belgium’s ruling class claim to moral virtue is magnified at the european level. If the Eurocrats would have us reject democracy, who is the Eurocitizen to trust to deciding our moral decisions for us.

Then again, should we perhaps select the European Commission? After all they swear an oath to behave with integrity and discretion and they are independently wealthy being paid annually £120,000 of taxpayers money to run the Brussels administration. Then again perhaps not! In March 1999 all twenty Commissioners were forced to resign over allegations of nepotism, waste and mismanagement.

Maybe a panel of the great and good of Europe should be selected to do our thinking for us? Let us have, for instance, such elder statesmen as Helmut Kohl, Germany’s re-unification chancellor, Edith Cresson, former French Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s ex-Prime Minister and a super-rich media magnate, throw in also Felipe Gonzales, former Prime Minister of Spain, Willy Claes, former NATO Secretary General, Guilio Andreotti and Romano Prodi, the latter an ideal choice because he was not only a former Prime Minister of Italy but also Head of the European Commission. All honourable men and women and only ever so slightly culturally corrupt! Such cultural distinctions must I suppose be accepted, as they are in Belgium, in a multi-cultural Europe, after all, to liberals morality is no Absolute but a culturally programmed concept. As arbitors we can rely on their flexibility with the truth.

Perhaps if it is felt that Europeans are, well, too European, then we should select a jury of the international super-rich to help us with those tricky moral problems. What about drawing lots from the Twenty Top Earners in the world last year, lets see, we can have George Lucas, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Mel Gibson, Jim Carrey, Julia Roberts, Shania Twain, Tom Hanks, Stephen King, Tiger Woods, Bruce Willis, David Copperfield and Harrison Ford. This representative sample earn more money than most of us would in several lifetimes and does not the Christian bible imply that earthly riches are a reward for virtue? surely as they already have material mastery over us we should make them our moral masters as well?

There are alternatives to the jury and democratic systems which once were so fundamental to Western culture but they are all flawed. Globalism has no moral superiority, global culture merely reflects the interests of the global elite who control it. Globalists pay lip-service to democracy but their manipulation of power is anything but democratic. The democratic system has its faults but it is fair and equal and allows freedom of will in our handling and judging of our fellow human beings, it would be madness to abandon democracy for the hypocritical “political correctness” of a pretend moral globalism.

The European Union action to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign member state like Austria is an example of the hypocracy of the European Liberal Elite. Who wants to be given a lecture on morals by European politicians who are corrupt and clearly implementing an undemocratic imperialist program. What right does the corrupt European Commission have to impose a checklist of so-called democratic requirements on Austria or any other state in Europe controlled by a democratically elected popular sovereignty?

Austria’s political isolation within the European Union and fears of the economic effects on trade and tourism of the hypocritical international backlash have forced Jorg Haider’s resignation as leader of the Freedom Party. Haider is however a clever politician and may be able to roll with the Euro-Elite’s punches and stage a comeback at the next elections when he could stand as Chancellor of Austria. Having flushed out the Euro-Elite’s tactics in the last few months, he may be better able to beat them, or knowing Haider, join them in the next round of struggle. Either way, Austria with Haider living in it is well worth watching.

The treatment of Austria by the controlling political and economical elite in Europe provides an example that should not be lost on the national movement in Scotland. As Scottish nationalists we should expect to have our progress impeded by the undemocratic forces of both the British and the European Superstate.

Scotland can not rely on having allies in Europe or in having faith in the political process at home. One way or another, as the example of Austria shows, Scotland will not be allowed to be politically independent by the European and Global Elites. Constitutional tinkering in Scotland will not work and a VietNam or Cuban style war of liberation is unlikely to fire the imagination of materialistically comfortable twenty-first century Scots.

The quest for real freedom has to be found in Scotland’s cultural survival against the forces of English and Global integration between 1707 and 1997. It is in the cultural fight to preserve Scottish qualities in our spirit, educational system and society that Siol nan Gaidheal must seek to re-inforce and intensify. These Scottish qualities have survived and grown in the very globalist situation that now threatens all cultural diversity in the rest of the world. Scotland must look to Scotland and the Scots for our future salvation and adapt ourselves to meet the cultural challenge of the present communication revolution.

NEWSPAPER ARTICLE DATED APRIL 20th 2000.

“The disgraced European Commission is mistrusted by more than half of the 300 million people in Europe. Only 50% of the inhabitants have any faith in the European Union eventually becoming a success. A third of the E.U.’s citizens are opposed to the single currency and more than one in three people already using the Euro are against it. The figures were revealed last night in the Commissions OWN study.”

The distrust of the European Commission in Britain rises to three quarters of the population who do not trust the the people who are trying to run their lives for them.

Brussels and its allies are completely dedicated to getting their own way and are decided in their minds that their man-made dogma of “Political Correctness” will be the tool to gag any and all opposition, it is their clear intention that “nationalism” of any kind will in future be perceived as “nazi-ism” and “narrow-mindedness” in order that we lose our individuality and become merely a number and our country be treated as a small isolated region of a greater Europe.