DPA, Vienna
Austrian politician and populist Joerg Haider, 58, the man behind the resurgence of the country’s right wing parties, died in a car crash yesterday.
With his death, Austria’s right loses its most important figurehead, a man both reviled and admired by many Austrians.
The crash occurred near Klagenfurt in Carinthia province, where Haider was a popular governor.
Shortly before his death, he had made a successful comeback to the national political scene when his Alliance for the Future of Austria won 11 percent in parliamentary elections late last month.
Although Haider was trying to shed his image as a right-wing firebrand, he and his party won votes not only by railing against the governing centrist coalition but also with rethoric directed against immigrants and asylum seekers, often portraying them as criminals.
This summer, he proposed that all asylum seekers should be made to wear electronic tags on their ankles to be able to monitor their movements.
Haider was born in 1950 in Bad Goisern in Upper Austria. His parents were devoted members of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party.
Haider’s political career started at university as the leader of the youth movement of the right-wing Freedom Party, a party formed after World War II by liberals and former Nazis.
Haider appealed to disaffected voters by building a young, fashionable image and employing extremist rethoric.
His first stint as Carinthia governor was cut short unexpectedly in 1991 when he had to step down over a revisionist comment.
During a debate on unemployment, he said: “Well, that didn’t happen in the Third Reich, because in the Third Reich they had a proper employment policy, something that the government in Vienna can’t accomplish.”<
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