Still 'Haider's Austria'?

They came from Innsbruck and Salzburg, Munich and Milan. Grooving to techno beats and house music, they marched through the streets wearing brightly colored face paint, homemade costumes or next to nothing at all. Lesbians on motorcycles ("Dykes on Bikes") and muscled go-go boys laughed and partied as elderly couples and parents with strollers looked on, waving from the sidewalks. The annual Europride parade, celebrating gay liberation, has become such old hat on the Continent it was barely covered in newspapers two weeks ago. But this year's venue was newsworthy in itself: after three hours, the festive cortege dissipated into the manicured grounds of a Habsburg palace--in Vienna.

Last week there was another raucous demonstration in another stately square in the Austrian capital. On Thursday labor-union leaders shouted across Ballhausplatz, "This is not our democracy." They were addressing 50,000 workers who had come to protest a government plan to revamp Austria's social-security system, replacing its directors--union leaders--with government appointees. "I pay my social charges, and I want my representatives to take care of that money," said one angry union member. Union leaders warned that "workplace actions" were imminent and darkly mentioned a phrase until now absent from the Austrian vocabulary: general strike.

What's going on? Once upon a time Vienna was known as the golden, staid capital of a rich, sleepy nation. More recently, thanks to the rise of Jorg Haider and his far-right Freedom Party (FPO), it's become a symbol of resurgent racism and xenophobia in the heart of Europe. But the Austria the world thinks it knows bears little resemblance to the Austria on display the past two weeks. Many Austrians say that's because, in spite of the sensational press coverage when the FPO joined the governing coalition last year, pariah Haider never typified their country. Many social and political observers say there's another reason. Basically, they argue that the rise of Haider--brace yourself-- has been good for the country.

It's a scandalous argument. When Haider's party won a place in the coalition government, international opprobrium was swift. Austria's European Union partners imposed sanctions, Israel withdrew its ambassador (and Washington called its envoy home for consultations) and critics called for a boycott of the country. Fashion designers sent models onto Milan runways wearing skirts with Haider's face, a swastika and the word no across them. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called Haider's ideology "a relative of National Socialism." And Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said, "Europe can do without Austria," adding that it would be "immoral to go skiing in Haider's Austria."

Many Austrians feared the global condemnation would backfire, driving their proud countrymen deeper into the FPO's arms. Now it seems they worried needlessly. The Freedom Party's rise may lead to its fall. Since the coalition government--with Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel's center-right People's Party--took office last February, it has been plagued by one failure after another. Coming to power on a platform appealing to the losers of globalization and fed-up former socialists, the FPO now had to feel Austrians' anger over a government austerity program. The party's one PR coup was the invention of a so-called zero- budget-deficit program by young FPO Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser. But the ensuing budget cuts and tax increases hit the FPO's constituents hardest--in the form of road tolls for drivers, higher social-security payments for the sick and university fees for students used to a free education. Vengeful voters punished the FPO in several regional elections in a row, in the provinces and--most important--in Vienna. In the capital, the FPO's share of the vote dropped from 28 percent to 20 percent, and its biggest adversary, the Social Democratic Party, sailed back to an absolute majority.

In the closing weeks of the Vienna campaign, Haider went negative in a big way. Hoping to stem his losses, he introduced openly anti-Semitic rhetoric into his speeches. For decades, he had downplayed the cruelties of the Nazi era--catering to an older, more rural electorate- -but until the Vienna elections he never used openly anti-Jewish language. At a rally in a country hall, he said the leader of Vienna's ...