The specter of Jorg Haider is haunting Europe. The xenophobic Austrian politician who’s Freedom Party has become part of a new Austrian right wing government is a taunting reminder of Europe’s nazi past.
Jorg Haider is a savvy, smooth-talking populist reformer with an anti-immigration, anti-EU message with occasional Nazi revisionist flourishes. He is widely popular in Austria among the working class and the yuppie corporate elite. He denies that he is a Nazi sympathizer, though his own father was a follower of Hitler and his mother belonged to a Nazi youth group.
Like Kurt Waldheim, Austria’s former president with Nazi connections, Jorg Haider is a reminder of Austria’s concealed, dark history of complicity and collaboration with Hitler. And his party’s popularity today speaks to the problem of unifying Europe’s past and future.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Roger Cohen, New York Times Bureau Chief in Berlin and author of “Hearts Grown Brutal”
Andy Makovits, professor of politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan and author of “German Predicament”
and Daniel Goldhagen, author of “Hitler’s Willing Executioners.”