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Austria’s Graf gets grief over “united Tyrol”
Breaking into the summer holiday lull, Austrian politics has gotten into a lather over a far-right populist’s call for a referendum on whether a mainly German-speaking region of northern Italy should rejoin Austria.
No matter how far-fetched, his proposal raised a hue and cry by challenging the taboo of old unreconstructed nationalism in a country restlessly determined to live down its Nazi past.
South Tyrol – Alto Adige in Italian – is an autonomous, Alpine province of Italy bordering Austria. It was annexed by Italy from defeated Austria-Hungary at the end of World War One.
Italy granted increasing self-government to South Tyrol in the decades after World War Two, defusing separatist unrest by Austro-German speakers. It is now among Italy’s richest regions, with an open border to Austria thanks to EU integration.
But Martin Graf, a rightist deputy speaker of Austria’s parliament, declared on Sunday that South Tyrol was actually “part of overall Tyrol”, and only “currently” within Italy.
The universal right of self-determination should apply for all “the German people” in Europe - just as those in old Communist East Germany got their wish to merge into one Germany at the end of the Cold War in 1990. “It’s time to ask the people if there should be one Tyrol,” Graf said.
Graf owes his parliamentary post due to the fact that his far-right Freedom Party replaced the Greens as Austria’s No. 3 party in last year’s parliamentary election.
Rising from the dead – Haider presides over Austrian regional election
Some 25,000 people attended his funeral, countless books have been written about him, a bridge was named in his honour and now the spectre of Austrian far-right leader Joerg Haider is dominating a regional election in Austria.
“A campaign with the tragically deceased Haider”; “A dead man is spearheading us”; “And above all, the spectre of Joerg Haider” read newspaper headlines.
Both of Austria’s far-right parties are staking their claim to Haider’s legacy in an election in the Alpine Province of Carinthia where he was governor for more than a decade.
“Carinthia is going HIS way,” proclaim the posters of Haider’s former Freedom Party. Freedom says Haider achieved his greatest successes when heading the party.
“We will look after your Carinthia,” echo the posters of Alliance for Austria’s Future, the splinter party that Haider set up in 2005 after internal disputes within Freedom.
Both parties, which mopped up a third of the vote between them in Austria’s recent parliamentary election, recognise the mileage still to be had out of Haider’s success.
The populist leader, who led the right into a coalition government from 2000-2006, was one of Austria’s rare internationally recognised public figures.
Neo-Nazi stabbing shows western German ills
It is not just eastern Germany that has a problem fighting far-right militants.
The stabbing of a German police chief on his doorstep in southern Germany, which prosecutors suspect is a revenge attack by neo-Nazis angry about a crackdown on their activities, has exposed the uncomfortable reality that western Germany has troubles of its own.
The attack has shocked Germany and rekindled a fierce debate about how to tackle neo-Nazis and whether to ban the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD).
But most of all, it exposes as a myth the belief many western Germans cling to — that the far-right is a problem confined mainly to former Communist eastern states where unemployment is high and young men are lured into the far-right scene due to a lack of any other prospects.
The assault on the police man took place in Passau, a picturesque city in Bavaria, the rich, southern state which Chancellor Angela Merkel has described as a model for Germany.
In fact, Bavaria has a long had close ties with the far right — starting with Hitler’s Munich “beer hall” putsch in 1923. Support for the NPD is strong in some areas and it was in Passau that a neo-Nazi tried to place a flag with a swastika on the coffin of a far-right activist at his funeral a few months ago.
The northern Bavarian town of Graefenberg has been waging its own campaign against neo-Nazis who hold regular marches through the town to protest against a local authority decision barring them from gathering at a German war memorial.
Well the 1st post couldnt have put it more simplerthen that..well done
And as you do, you go back and check your facts! The current Prime Minister in Bulgaria is Boyko Metodiev Borisov, a former body guard for Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and in 2005 a candidate for the National Movement Simeon II party although his new party is called Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria. I’m sure it’s all kosher and doesn’t indicate the European Monarchs are trying to regain their former glory!