Victim Competition: Antisemitism and the Austrian Left

DURING THE SEPTEMBER 2008 parliamentary elections, the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) lost many of its traditional voters, yet still emerged as the biggest single party. Any understanding of the continuing hold of the SPÖ needs to begin with the development of Austrian society after the country's liberation by the Allies in spring 1945, and the specific fact, as Ruth Contreras has argued, "[T]hat the majority of Austrian society supported the Nazis or at least obeyed the Nazi regime was assiduously ignored." [1]

From the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft (the National Socialist term for "national community,") Austria developed into a Sozialpartnerschaft (social partnership,) based on compromise between employers and employees and the integration of former Nazis: thus social harmony, compromise and consensus became predominant. One current example of this emphasis on consensus, which will bemuse those unfamilar with Austria's internal workings, concerns Werner Faymann, the leader of the Social Democratic party (SPÖ). Faymann maintains a close relationship with the Neue Kronenzeitung, a populist rag which quite often publishes racist and xenophobic texts.

While the extreme right parties propagate implicit or explicit racism, xenophobia and antisemitism, the SPÖ shies away from conflict with them, trying to soften their impact. This strategy merely strengthens the far right - the two extreme right wing parties, the FPÖ and BZÖ, gained a massive 29 per cent of the vote in September elections. Indeed, nothing better illustrates this new democratic "Volksgemeinschaft" than the oration of Austria's Social Democratic Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer at the funeral of the BZÖ leader Jörg Haider, who was killed in a car accident shortly after the elections. "He was a remarkable person," said Gusenbauer, as he urged his fellow Austrians to "pay tribute" to Haider. [2]

The Post-War Paradigm

From 1945 onwards, a central tenet of Austria's distortion of its own past was the half-truth, originating in the Allies' Moscow Declaration of November 1943, which designated the country as the "first victim of Nazi aggression." For the Austrian political establishment, the argument was a simple one: from 1938 to 1945 Austria did not even exist. Thus Austrians could not be held responsible for what happened to their Jewish compatriots and only the Germans were to blame for the Holocaust. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

The persistence of antisemitism in Austria after 1945 originates above all from this "first victim" myth and the resulting reluctance to assume responsibility for the destruction of Austrian Jewry. The incidents and trends documented in this article show that antisemitism has deep and lasting roots in Austrian culture, politics and society. All the legends that were to shape the new Austria and its handling of the Holocaust were incorporated into the Second Republic's declaration of independence of 27 April 1945. Specifically: that the Anschluss had been "forced upon" the "helpless Austrian people" from outside; and the "fact that Adolf Hitler's National Socialist government, having totally subdued the

Austrian people and rendered it powerless by means of this complete political, economic and cultural annexation of the country, led it into a pointless and hopeless war of conquest that no Austrian had ever wanted, foreseen or endorsed. The German government led Austrians into waging war against peoples whom no true Austrian had ever had feelings of animosity or hate."