A FAR-RIGHT contender to become Austria’s head of state was forced to denounce the Nazis yesterday, promising to uphold a national ban on denying the Holocaust after previously insisting that it was a matter of free speech.
Amid growing uproar over a tabloid campaign to make her president, Barbara Rosenkranz, a deputy leader of the far-right Freedom party (FPÖ), surprised the Austrian elite last week by announcing she would challenge the incumbent, Heinz Fischer, for the Austrian presidency next month.
A mother of 10 married to a man who was prominent on the Austrian neo-Nazi scene for two decades, Ms Rosenkranz has repeatedly criticised Austria’s laws criminalising Holocaust denial. Asked on national radio last week whether she believed the Nazis murdered millions of Jews in concentration camp gas chambers, she answered evasively, adding that freedom of expression also meant allowing “absurd, bizarre opinions”.
Following an outcry and criticism from her main backer, the mass-circulation Kronen Zeitungnewspaper, she publicly signed a statement yesterday pledging never to contest the anti-Nazi laws. The U-turn was dismissed as meaningless by her political opponents, and an opinion poll showed that two out of five Austrians believed she was damaging the country.
Ms Rosenkranz is the sole challenger running against Mr Fischer, a Social Democrat. While she has little chance of winning, her campaign is seen as a test by the extreme right and its powerful backers to gauge how much support they can muster.
Ms Rosenkranz is running a campaign strong on xenophobia and opposition to the European Union, opposing immigration and calling for the closure of Austria’s borders with the newer EU countries of central Europe.
The Kronen Zeitungand its elderly publisher, Hans Dichand, are very powerful in Austria. Last week Dichand endorsed the Rosenkranz candidacy, writing that she was "a courageous mother" who would make a "good Austrian president".
Vienna’s Jewish community said it was unacceptable for “other political posts in the country to be occupied by cellar Nazis” and described her candidacy as “contempt for the 65,000 Austrian Jews murdered in the Shoah”.
The far-right Freedom Party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, said he believed Ms Rosencranz could take 35 per cent of the vote in next month’s poll. – (Guardian service)