VIENNA — Joerg Haider, who catapulted his party into a powerful force in Austrian politics with a mix of folksy aphorisms, in-your-face attacks on rivals and provocative praise of the Nazi era, died Saturday in a car accident. He was 58.
His death on a little-traveled stretch of southern Austrian highway left Austria without the politician best-known outside the country — although the governor of Carinthia province never held a post in the national government.
Alone at the wheel, Haider was overtaking another motorist when his car veered off the road, crashed into a concrete pillar and overturned. He died of multiple injuries. Authorities said they do not suspect foul play but are investigating.
Although he was commonly labeled a rightist, Haider was more a populist who defied categorization, often embracing positions at odds with his early reputation as an admirer of Nazi times and a hater of foreigners.
Often at odds with the telegenic Haider, politicians from across the ideological spectrum expressed shock at his death.
Austrian President Heinz Fischer described it as a “human tragedy.” Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer expressed his condolences to Haider’s family and said he had shaped Austria’s domestic political landscape over decades.
Haider achieved notoriety for past remarks that sounded sympathetic to the Nazis and contemptuous of Jews, a visit with Saddam Hussein on the eve of the Iraq war and a friendship with Moammar Gadhafi when Libya was still an international pariah.
He praised a member of Hitler’s notorious Waffen SS convicted of eradicating the population of an Italy village as someone “who (only) did his duty.” He lauded Nazis as creating “a good policy of employment.”
He condemned the “laziness of the Southerners” — meaning immigrants south of Austria, describing their countries as “the place of criminality and corruption.”
But later in his political life, he also endorsed European Union membership for Turkey — out of line with most Austrians. He apologized for some comments hateful of Jews and contemptuous of foreigners and stopped making others.
