http://www.euronews.com/2018/02/15/austrian-far-right-party-pledges-to-clean-up-pro-nazi-image
To be frank trying to wash off the nazi image has been a favourite past time for the far-right parties around Europe for the last decade or so. And sadly it's been quite effective. What happens in Austria remains to be seen.
Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) has appointed a group of historians to look into its past in a bid to distance itself from its anti-Semitic image.
The party, founded by a former officer in the Schutzstaffel (SS) in the 1950s, entered Austria's coalition government in December 2017 after coming in third in elections in October, with 26% of the vote.
https://www.thelocal.at/20180214/fp...ly-justified-and-pledges-to-clean-ups-its-actTuesday's announcement comes after a local party official was forced to step down after it emerged he was vice-chairman of a far-right fraternity that had printed a song celebrating Nazi atrocities.
Lyrics in the book, produced in 1997 by the Germania zu Wiener Neustadt organisation, included "Step on the gas, old Germanics, we can make it to seven million."
"There's been a lot of criticism of the FPÖ, much of it unjustified, some, we have to say, justified," parliamentary group leader Walter Rosenkranz told a press conference.
"We face the latent criticism that within the FPÖ Nazi and neo-Nazi ideas are tolerated.
"No, they are not tolerated and those who think they can impose such ideas on us have nothing to do in the party," Rosenkranz said.
Former FPÖ MP and retired university professor Wilhelm Brauneder will chair the committee, which will invite contributions from researchers and representatives of independent bodies.
These will include the DOW resistance archive centre, which specialises in Nazism and neo-Nazism and has been a powerful critic of the FPÖ.
The human rights group SOS Mitmensch pointed to the fact that Brauneder has had work published in a far-right Austrian magazine, along with another member of the commission, Andreas Mölzer.
Mölzer had to resign as an FPÖ candidate for the European Parliament in 2014 after he reportedly told an event that the EU was in danger of becoming a "conglomerate of niggers, where everything is chaos".
To be frank trying to wash off the nazi image has been a favourite past time for the far-right parties around Europe for the last decade or so. And sadly it's been quite effective. What happens in Austria remains to be seen.