Word: haider
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...right politician Joerg Haider, who died in a car crash on Oct. 11 at 58, was Austria's best-known person, his sharp and perpetually tanned features ubiquitous on television and in magazines. He was also its most polarizing figure. During a long and checkered career, Haider stood out from the crowd of postwar Austrian politicians with his good looks, athletic lifestyle and devilish talent for provocation: he played on and amplified anti-immigrant and anti-E.U. sentiment, courted pariahs like Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein and at one point praised Adolf Hitler's "orderly" employment policies...
...Austrian television on Saturday was dominated by somber reports and early footage of his political career. Austrian President Heinz Fischer, a political opponent, nevertheless called Haider's death a "human tragedy." "For us, it's the end of the world," a tearful spokesman from Haider's party, Stefan Petzner, told reporters in Klagenfurt. "Joerg Haider was a politician who changed the face of politics in this country...
...Haider was born in the province of Upper Austria, but he made his political career in the mostly rural southern province of Carinthia, a mountainous region bordering Italy and Slovenia dotted with turquoise lakes and snow-capped peaks. Both his parents had been early supporters of Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party, which ruled Austria after it was annexed to Nazi Germany in 1938. After the war his father was briefly penalized for his Nazi affiliation and his mother lost her job as a teacher; those bitter consequences, biographers say, helped shape their son's political views. Haider also inherited...
...Haider joined the nationalist Freedom Party in 1976, and rose to become its leader in just ten years, ending the party's brief flirtation with liberal ideas and strengthening its nationalist roots. Political analysts praised his oratorical skills and manifest charisma as well as his talent for reducing complicated political and economic problems to easily recognized root causes. He espoused anti-immigrant positions and attempted (unsuccessfully) to prevent Austria from joining the European Union in the 1990s. In a country reluctant to acknowledge its role in Nazi atrocities carried out during the Second World War, he also repeatedly hinted that...
...More recently, Haider was seeking to re-invent Austria's far right. In campaigning for this year's national parliamentary elections, he steered clear of Nazi references, focusing instead on the alleged threat posed by immigration, a potent political issue in Austria. His greatest political success came in 1999, when he led the Freedom Party to 27% of the vote, a result that triggered outrage in Europe and, ultimately, sanctions from the European Union when the party was invited to join the government. Haider never held national office himself, preferring instead to work behind the scenes from his post...