ABSTRACT
Austrian trends are influenced by the larger political arena and often parallel, follow in the footsteps of, or are overshadowed by German discourses. Therefore it seemed worthwhile and profitable to ask such questions in the Austrian context as well. After World War II, Austrian governments never were interested in initiating a serious debate about the role of Austrians in the war. Instead they have perpetrated the myth that Austria was a “victim” of German annexation and occupation. Particularly the German nationalist Burschenschaften, which broke with liberalism in the later nineteenth century, cultivated the extreme forms of racist anti-Semitism that directly led to the Holocaust in the sense that these people joined the SS killing machine in droves. The authors of the Handhuch des Rechtsextremismus have concluded that “the ideas of Jorg Haider and his core group dominating the Freedom Party are unquestionably on the extreme right.”
