TIMES ONLINE: ‘We want to preach of the Holy German Reich,’ sings candidate who swears she’s no Nazi
The voice of Barbara Rosenkranz rises above the small crowd in the Ballhausplatz as she makes the case for the far Right in Austria’s presidential elections tomorrow.
Her chin is square, her hair forms a tight grey helmet. Ms Rosenkranz, mother of ten children, is, for another 24 hours at least, the great white hope of the radical nationalists in Europe.
She is destined to lose against the incumbent President, Heinz Fischer, but if she nets more than 20 per cent of the vote it will be seen as the most significant comeback in Austria since the death of the far-right idol Jörg Haider 18 months ago.
“The family is at the heart of our society and it has been betrayed,” she says, raising her voice to drown out the hoots of left-wing demonstrators. The crowd, mainly Freedom Party supporters still mourning Haider, applaud. The word verrat — betrayal — always goes down well in Vienna. They are craggy men in green jackets, a woman shivering in a low-cut dirndl folk dress and a surprising number of young fans — there largely to see Heinz-Christian Strache, 40-year-old leader of the far Right. He and Ms Rosenkranz are the faces of the radical Right revival. He talks of a modern patriotism and the threat of Islam; she thinks that women should stay at home and breed, and that national socialists should not be muzzled.
In Western Europe Islamophobia has replaced Holocaust denial as a rallying call for rightwingers such as Geert Wilders. Austria, though, is still very much a part of Central Europe — and here the Rosenkranz message, coded though it may be, is well understood. After all, in neighbouring Hungary, once part of the great Austro-Hungarian empire, the extremist Jobbik grouping — anti-Semitic, anti-Gypsy, anti-modernism — has recently won seats in Parliament and is on the way up. >>> Roger Boyes in Vienna | Saturday, April 24, 2010
