Joerg Haider was gay? Well I never.

My lord! Who would have known?

Who is (was?) Joerg Haider?

Some information on this thread - he was the (far right) Landeshauptmann ("state captain", premier minister/governor) of Carinthia.

Of course! How could we forget?

Why does Walter know this? <raises eyebrows>

Or make them feel they don't have to be in the closet anymore.

Actually Austrian media still keep quiet like during the past years (there have always been rumours) about Haider's sexual orientation.

However, since at first the German tabloids, later the serious press speculated about this, since a couple of days you can read/watch/listen to reports about Haider's various activities - but still without naming "it".
(Private life of politicians is/was in Austria a tabu, especially topics about their 'sex-life'. And strictly about dead politicians.)

No, I mean those of his followers who are neo-nazi, who engage in homophobic attacks. Sometimes.

I mean those people. I think they have at some point been attracted to men and are afraid of the impulse-- that's why they go on the attack.

joerg haider :



aaahnold , how could you ?



(i think aaahnold is just trying to measure how hight he sh.t pile is going to be)

Arnold looks like a freak. Who would want to touch any part of that? Steroids anyone?

Who do I know that looks like this guy, hmmmm ...?

The guy is 52, and at the early hours of the morning Mom is still up partying at her birthday celebration?

God bless her.

Walter's a bit formalistic - Haider is better known as the uncontested leader of the Austrian far right for a decade and a half (until it split into two a few years ago).

He took over the leadership of a small rightwing party in the mid-eighties and led it from its 5% of the vote to 27% in the 2000 elections, when it became the country's second-largest party. He did so by shamelessly exploiting every xenophobic, racist, anti-immigrant and occasionally anti-semitic prejudice in the country, and Austria has plenty of those.

In so doing, he became one of Europe's two or three most well-known and influential far-right leaders. When the Austrian conservatives to establish a coalition government with Haider's party after the 2000 elections, it led to a crisis in the EU, as EU leaders decided on a boycott of sorts of the Austrian government only to be forced to give up after a year or two.

Haider's star had fallen somewhat this decade, but in this year's elections his new, own party got 11% of the vote while his former party, which remained equally far right, got 18%. Together they pooled the best ever result for the far right since WW2 in Austria ... and in Europe.

In short, this is not some obscure regional leader; Haider was one of the most notorious figures of contemporary European politics.

I had a blog post up about this: Haider’s death offers little hope for the fight against the far right. That was before this latest news though... you cant make this **** up, eh?

You may be right that I was misled by Walter's formalism, nimh. I never knew Haider's political position, but now I remember reading about him in the past in connection with Neo-Naziism.

When he died, it was reported that Haider was driving to a birthday party for his mother. Is that some type of European code language for cruising gay bars?

Inside joke this, but actually in Dutch I guess you could use the word for "niece" for that ... "I have to go to a party of some nieces" would pretty much do the trick

(If a Dutchman calls you the Dutch word for "niece", he's not talking about bloodlines..)

#2

There should really be no surprise there . . . Ernst Röhm, and his favorite bully boys in the SA (the Sturmabteilung--the "Brown Shirts") were as queer as three dollar bills. A couple of his closest cronies, who reached positions of high authority in the SA he met when they worked as bouncers in gay night clubs.

Did you mean to leave out the Night of Long Knives. This was depicted in a tv docu-drama some time in the not too recent past. I interpreted it to mean that the SA was not going to lead the troops into war, and the Prussian generals were going to remain in command. Do you believe that is a correct interpretation?