Freedom Party

VIENNA, Austria -- Alarmed by the prospect of a huge influx of East European immigrants, Vienna lurched to the right in voting yesterday for a municipal legislature.The result is expected to cause strains between left and right in Austria's national coalition government, which links the conservative People's Party with the Socialists of Chancellor Franz Vranitzky.The Vienna election bolstered not only the right-wing Freedom Party and its popular leader, Joerg Haider, but also the environmental Greens, who oppose Mr. Vranitzky's goal of Austrian membership in the European Community.

The Nobel Prize in literature was awarded yesterday to Austrian novelist, poet and playwright Elfriede Jelinek, a feminist writer with an uncompromisingly dark, disturbing and occasionally brutal vision of human nature. Jelinek, a little-known author on this side of the Atlantic but one of the most celebrated voices in the German language, was lauded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for "her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's cliches and their subjugating power."

WHILE MUCH OF the international community prepares to isolate Austria for including the far-right Freedom Party in its next government, the greatest offender to the memory of the Holocaust has quietly evaded punishment. Last week, Syria became the world's first Holocaust-denier state. An editorial in the official Damascus newspaper, Tishreen -- the leading mouthpiece of Syrian dictator Hafez el Assad -- proclaimed that Zionists "created the Holocaust myth to blackmail the world and terrorize its intellectuals and politicians."

Recently I visited Vienna, my old hometown, and it warmed my heart that the City of Dreams still is a feast for the senses. Along the pulsing Kaertnerstrasse, cheery throngs of tourists and often corpulent natives vainly strive to resist the unbroken string of cafes and restaurants bursting with schnitzels and Sacher tortes. In the shadow of St. Stephen's Cathedral, whose catacombs house thousands of anonymous bones along with sundry internal organs, tightly sealed, of kaisers and dukes, life goes full blast.

MELK, Austria -- The event was supposed to be a sign of Austria's new way of dealing with its Nazi past. Nearly 50 years after the last slave laborers left the vast underground munitions works in the caverns near this small town, the federal government decided to turn the area into a memorial.Only 24 hours after the opening ceremony in mid-May, however, visitors found the cave walls were covered with neo-Nazi graffiti. Embarrassed officials closed the memorial and cleaned the walls.It turned out that a paramilitary fascist organization had used the caverns for years with local officials' tacit approval.

Recently I visited Vienna, my old hometown, and it warmed my heart that the City of Dreams still is a feast for the senses. Along the pulsing Kaertnerstrasse, cheery throngs of tourists and often corpulent natives vainly strive to resist the unbroken string of cafes and restaurants bursting with schnitzels and Sacher tortes. In the shadow of St. Stephen's Cathedral, whose catacombs house thousands of anonymous bones along with sundry internal organs, tightly sealed, of kaisers and dukes, life goes full blast.

ISOLATING Austria within the European Union, for including the xenophobic Freedom Party in government, may boomerang. It could provoke the national self-pity needed to propel that party's playful demagogic leader, Joerg Haider, into the chancellorship, or prime ministry, of Austria. But the policy is having a positive effect in EU countries, isolating ultra-nationalist parties in France, Belgium and Germany. There is no sign that the ostracism of Austria's ambassadors will end just because Mr. Haider stepped down as the Freedom Party's leader.

PARIS -- The European Union's reaction to the Haider affair in Austria expresses fine sentiments about democracy but offends the fundamental democratic principle that the popular will, expressed in an election, deserves respect. Great pressure was placed on Austria to block the government coalition, announced last Thursday, between Joerg Haider's right-wing Austrian Freedom Party and the mainstream conservative People's Party. This was the only governing coalition on offer, since the People's Party and the Social Democrats failed to agree to form a government.

The Nobel Prize in literature was awarded yesterday to Austrian novelist, poet and playwright Elfriede Jelinek, a feminist writer with an uncompromisingly dark, disturbing and occasionally brutal vision of human nature. Jelinek, a little-known author on this side of the Atlantic but one of the most celebrated voices in the German language, was lauded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for "her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's cliches and their subjugating power."

HERE WE go again. Once more, the hills of Austria are alive with the sound of music, but the tunes are a far cry from those that came from the lovely throat of Julie Andrews in the fairy-tale movie of yore. Just when we thought that Austria was recovering from the black eye inflicted on its gorgeous face by the duplicitous Kurt Waldheim, along comes a ruggedly handsome, fast-skiing politician named Joerg Haider with a smashing right cross to the nose. His Freedom Party -- and isn't it hilariously ironic that rightist extremists always include "freedom" in their moniker?

ISOLATING Austria within the European Union, for including the xenophobic Freedom Party in government, may boomerang. It could provoke the national self-pity needed to propel that party's playful demagogic leader, Joerg Haider, into the chancellorship, or prime ministry, of Austria. But the policy is having a positive effect in EU countries, isolating ultra-nationalist parties in France, Belgium and Germany. There is no sign that the ostracism of Austria's ambassadors will end just because Mr. Haider stepped down as the Freedom Party's leader.

HERE WE go again. Once more, the hills of Austria are alive with the sound of music, but the tunes are a far cry from those that came from the lovely throat of Julie Andrews in the fairy-tale movie of yore. Just when we thought that Austria was recovering from the black eye inflicted on its gorgeous face by the duplicitous Kurt Waldheim, along comes a ruggedly handsome, fast-skiing politician named Joerg Haider with a smashing right cross to the nose. His Freedom Party -- and isn't it hilariously ironic that rightist extremists always include "freedom" in their moniker?

WHILE MUCH OF the international community prepares to isolate Austria for including the far-right Freedom Party in its next government, the greatest offender to the memory of the Holocaust has quietly evaded punishment. Last week, Syria became the world's first Holocaust-denier state. An editorial in the official Damascus newspaper, Tishreen -- the leading mouthpiece of Syrian dictator Hafez el Assad -- proclaimed that Zionists "created the Holocaust myth to blackmail the world and terrorize its intellectuals and politicians."

PARIS -- The European Union's reaction to the Haider affair in Austria expresses fine sentiments about democracy but offends the fundamental democratic principle that the popular will, expressed in an election, deserves respect. Great pressure was placed on Austria to block the government coalition, announced last Thursday, between Joerg Haider's right-wing Austrian Freedom Party and the mainstream conservative People's Party. This was the only governing coalition on offer, since the People's Party and the Social Democrats failed to agree to form a government.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South Africa is gearing up for its second democratic election since the apartheid era, but lack of funding, a court challenge over identification requirements and low voter registration threaten the success of the ballot in this fledgling democracy.The watershed election, marking a transfer of power from President Nelson Mandela to his heir-apparent, Thabo Mbeki, is widely predicted for May. It must be held by July.The campaign will be markedly different from that of 1994, which celebrated the nation's liberation from apartheid by electing the first black-majority government.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Armed with the certainty of youth and orange "Peace Monitor" stickers on the sides of a Toyota Corolla, Robert Gaudet drives through the night toward one of the battlefields in the civil war being waged throughout this country in transition.The barricade-strewn streets of Katlehong are a far cry from the placid Roland Park fields of the Friends School, from which Mr. Gaudet graduated in 1990. The violence in this black township on the southeast edge of Johannesburg even makes the area around New York's Columbia University, where he just finished his junior year, seem tame.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South Africa is gearing up for its second democratic election since the apartheid era, but lack of funding, a court challenge over identification requirements and low voter registration threaten the success of the ballot in this fledgling democracy.The watershed election, marking a transfer of power from President Nelson Mandela to his heir-apparent, Thabo Mbeki, is widely predicted for May. It must be held by July.The campaign will be markedly different from that of 1994, which celebrated the nation's liberation from apartheid by electing the first black-majority government.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Armed with the certainty of youth and orange "Peace Monitor" stickers on the sides of a Toyota Corolla, Robert Gaudet drives through the night toward one of the battlefields in the civil war being waged throughout this country in transition.The barricade-strewn streets of Katlehong are a far cry from the placid Roland Park fields of the Friends School, from which Mr. Gaudet graduated in 1990. The violence in this black township on the southeast edge of Johannesburg even makes the area around New York's Columbia University, where he just finished his junior year, seem tame.

MELK, Austria -- The event was supposed to be a sign of Austria's new way of dealing with its Nazi past. Nearly 50 years after the last slave laborers left the vast underground munitions works in the caverns near this small town, the federal government decided to turn the area into a memorial.Only 24 hours after the opening ceremony in mid-May, however, visitors found the cave walls were covered with neo-Nazi graffiti. Embarrassed officials closed the memorial and cleaned the walls.It turned out that a paramilitary fascist organization had used the caverns for years with local officials' tacit approval.

VIENNA, Austria -- Alarmed by the prospect of a huge influx of East European immigrants, Vienna lurched to the right in voting yesterday for a municipal legislature.The result is expected to cause strains between left and right in Austria's national coalition government, which links the conservative People's Party with the Socialists of Chancellor Franz Vranitzky.The Vienna election bolstered not only the right-wing Freedom Party and its popular leader, Joerg Haider, but also the environmental Greens, who oppose Mr. Vranitzky's goal of Austrian membership in the European Community.