Defiant Populist

This work analyzes Jorg Haider, the charismatic but controversial leader of Austria's Freedom Party. To some he is a neo-Nazi and admirer of fellow Austrian Adolf Hitler. To others he is merely an artful opportunist, a telegenic master of coded sound bytes and slogans that mean different things to different people. And to that quarter of the country's voters who voted his Freedom Party to power in 1999, he represents a fresh alternative to the incestuous two-party oligarchy that had run Austria for half a century. It explains the ""Haider phenomenon"" in an environment that juxtaposes an admirable record of non-violence and social peace with residual anti-Semitism, socialist economics with enviable wealth, staunchly pro-Western values with equally ardent neutralism, and a relatively new Austrian identity with a dark German past.