Letter from the Continent

Sometime in 1956 there are going to be new elections in Austria, and so the coalition armistice between the two government parties has come to an end. The “People’s Party,” which is moderately right-wing, and the Socialist Party, which professes some sort of Marxism, are the successors of the pre-Anschluss “Christian Social Party” and the “Social Democratic Party,” respectively. Last time, they polled between them almost 90 per cent of all the votes. Their ancestor parties had fought each other, in 1934, on the barricades with submachine guns, but in the face of the Russian danger the successor parties decided to pool their forces. Their puny competitors—the “Independents” and the Communists— are numerically so insignificant that non-committed Austrian voters had for a long time only the choice between the two partakers in one and the same government. But the Socialists have, ever since 1945, been the gainers in this process because the former Austrian Nazis turn “red” rather than “black.” (Which once more confirms the fact that the Nazis always belonged to the Left.)

The “People’s Party” has chosen this noncommittal label because the men who founded it in 1945, though mostly active Catholics, wanted to avoid the revival of another “Christian” party; but since it is forced to defend the Church’s interests, the “People’s Party” is another Catholic party and nobody is being fooled by its name. Intelligent Catholics hate to see their Church mixed up in politics, but as soon as the enemies of the Church want to curtail Catholic rights in schools, in marriage legislation, and similar domains, everybody agrees that a methodical opposition to these efforts has to be set up; and this means, of course, a Catholic political party.

EK

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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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Sometime in 1956 there are going to be new elections in Austria, and so the coalition armistice between the two government parties has come to an end. The “People’s Party,” which is moderately right-wing, and the Socialist Party, which professes some sort of Marxism, are the successors of the pre-Anschluss “Christian Social Party” and the “Social Democratic Party,” respectively. Last time, they polled between them almost 90 per cent of all the votes. Their ancestor parties had fought each other, in 1934, on the barricades with submachine guns, but in the face of the Russian danger the successor parties decided to pool their forces. Their puny competitors—the “Independents” and the Communists— are numerically so insignificant that non-committed Austrian voters had for a long time only the choice between the two partakers in one and the same government. But the Socialists have, ever since 1945, been the gainers in this process because the former Austrian Nazis turn “red” rather than “black.” (Which once more confirms the fact that the Nazis always belonged to the Left.)

The “People’s Party” has chosen this noncommittal label because the men who founded it in 1945, though mostly active Catholics, wanted to avoid the revival of another “Christian” party; but since it is forced to defend the Church’s interests, the “People’s Party” is another Catholic party and nobody is being fooled by its name. Intelligent Catholics hate to see their Church mixed up in politics, but as soon as the enemies of the Church want to curtail Catholic rights in schools, in marriage legislation, and similar domains, everybody agrees that a methodical opposition to these efforts has to be set up; and this means, of course, a Catholic political party.