Mr. Haider died as he lived, recklessly endangering the lives of innocents through acts of mindlessness and selfishness.

He will not be missed.

And of course Hitler’s ideology fit with Austria in the late 1930s; he was Austrian originally, and many of his anti-Semitic tropes can be clearly traced to the political climate of early 20th century Vienna. Not that they didn’t have resonance elsewhere, or he would never have come to power in Germany, but there’s a clear point of origin.

I think pro-Haider is a pretty vile position in politics, and I might have weighed in earlier, but life is full of things to do, sometimes it’s better to let readers debate amongst themselves, and our readers are generally sophisticated enough not to need me/us pointing out repellent nationalism. (Though the other Doug has to ride herd on the audience in his Balkan posts sometimes.)

I can’t imagine a Haider coming to power in France because of first-past-the-post voting at the top of the ticket, though it is instructive that Le Pen made it into the second round of France’s 2002 presidential election. Nor can I see a similar figure sharing power in Germany. Far right German parties (Republikaner, Schill, NVP, DVU and others from earlier decades) make it into one or two state parliaments before failing at the national level. Something structural in Germany would have to change before there would be an opening on the far right.

The structural opening for Haider was the long co-reign of Austria’s two major parties. A populist decrying the supposed stitch-up could make headway and draw the discontented. There was long tension within his party between true believers in the far-right program and people more concerned with providing an alternative to the big two. And he didn’t really have a governing program either, the government he participated in was ineffective in almost everything except embarrassing the EU.

The other Doug has written that most European countries have a noxious nationalist party, and sometimes electoral quirks bring them a share of power. What to do then is a more challenging question, as for example with Slovakia at present.

At the end of the day, it seems that somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of most Europeans will vote for parties that espouse vile, racist and nationalist politics. On the other hand, it means that 85 to 90 percent will not. Things could be (and have been) worse.

Consider this a yellow card from the proprietors.

Yeah, thanks a lot for perpetuating bigotry and racial hatred in a world already overflowing with it. To hell with Austria. There is a special place in hell for Haider, Waldheim and all the rest of these sub-human bastards.

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