It is not only a question of directly confronting the terrorist groups; thinking also needs to be changed. * 1. The reference here is to the slogan of the French SOS-Racisme campaign "Touche pas à mon pote".
Polarization in Vienna seems that among the skinheads there are activist cores who whip up their associates, organize them for action and establish a level of discipline.
### Creating organization through action
The idea may be to create the organızation through action. To do this they can rely on the broadly sympathetic environment. If such a plan were to succeed then we would find ourselves living and working in quite different conditions.
Their resonance is bigger than ever before. For the first time since the end of the Nazi period, there exists a militant fascist movement. Their actions are carried out in such a way that people will inevitably be killed or injured.
Things will not stand still. There is already evidence that arms are being stockpiled and that special groups are engaging in military training. Lists of "enemies of the people" are without doubt already being drawn up. Terror against political opponents and indiscriminate mass terror can intimidate the population, as was seen in the 1970s in Italy or Turkey
The shock of the terror will above all be replied to by demonstrations and other such actions. This may result in restricting and perhaps reducing the public influence of the far right — but no more. In particular this will do nothing to halt the construction of the militant fascist gangs. The real problem is that the far right are appealing to and building among the working class youth, when the left and the social movements have lost more or less all their influence in this layer.
The fascist danger cannot only be met with protests. Furthermore, the use of legislation banning organizations, the favoured antidote of reformists and exStalinists, is useless. The fascists are the emergency reserves of the bourgeois state and will be protected by it. Furthermore, even if a group is banned, there is nothing to stop it reappearing in another guise. The whole history of the banning of West German Nazi organizations 16 shows this.
What is required is the construction of a
IN THE recent municipal elections in Vienna the social democrats lost their absolute majority, the traditional conservatives found themselves overtaken by the populist right FPO and the Greens won seats for the first time. However the electoral success of the progressive Green Alternative cannot be allowed to obscure the fact that the basic shift was towards the right. HERMANN DWORCZAK
HE social democrats' result was their worst since 1945. They lost 7.1% of their vote and retained an absolute majority of the seats only due to electoral arithmetic. The traditional Austrian bourgeois party, the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), meanwhile, suffered a debacle, losing 10.3% of its vote and seeing itself overtaken by the FPÖ. In 1987 the ÖVP had 28.4% to the FPÖ's 9.7%. This time they got 18.1% and 22.5% respectively. The Green Alternative got 4.7% and seven council seats. The Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ) got less than 5,000 votes and lost its last seat at local government level.
The elections were dominated by the issue of immigration. The FPÖ launched a massive anti-immigrant campaign, the conservatives followed in the FPO's wake and the Social Democrats attempted to make the longest possible detour around the issue. Only the Green Alternative directly opposed the xenophobia, if not always with the necessary consisten-
As the head of the Green's list, Peter
Pilz put it thus when rejecting the infaslogan of "Foreigners Out" mous ("Ausländer Raus"): "but we are not a 'foreigners in' party".
Against this background the FPÖ succeeded in taking 45,000 votes from the Social Democrats. In traditional working class constituencies the FPO sometimes reached the 25% mark. The failures of the Social Democrats over the decades of their administration — in such basic areas as transport, health care, nursery care and housing construction and the lack of a public integration policy for immigrants - allowed xenophobia to act as a point of crystallization for all kinds of diffuse discontent.
The conservatives, who have already suffered severe setbacks in regional elec tions in the Steiermark and Oberösterreich, have been plunged into a fundamental crisis by the debacle in Vienna. Many observers believe that the the FPÖ is already running neck-and-neck with the OVP at the national level -which can only increase the pressure on the governing coalition of social democrats and conservatives.
A green and silver lining
The silver lining in this election was evidently the good score obtained by the Green Alternative.
The Greens' electoral efforts were very strongly marked by the crowd puller Peter Pilz, but the left was by no means invisible. Thus the well known trade unionist, Jean Margulies, is now on the city coun cil. These elections have sharpened the polarization in Austria.
The social democratic/ conservative bloc is fraying. On the right the FPÖ, with its populist rabble rouser Jörg Haider, is gaining. On the left, the Green Alternative - in which the members of the SOAL, the Austrian section of the Fourth Interna tional, participate - has the chance to become a pole of attraction for progressive people interested in social change. It is an open question if the chance will be taken. *
THE GENERALIZED breakthrough of the far right is the most striking feature of the Belgian general election of