Haider is a right wing populist with fascist tendencies. His anti-capitalist critique from the right promotes xenophobia, especially in the form of racism and antisemitism, which is what the dim bulbs at Telos could not understand when they championed Alain de Benoist, the intellectual leader of GRECE where ethno-nationalists from across Europe networked starting in the 1980s.
A progressive or radical left critique of Haider is not the same as a liberal or neo-liberal critique. The reason many progressives and radical leftists understand the need to protest a Haider is the objective reality of physical attacks against people of color, immigrants, and Jews. These attacks are in addition to the institutionalized forms of oppression and repression applied by governments and elected politicians.
We fight fascists and proto-fascists because they unleash a more aggressive wave of intimidation and violence. I have lived in a community being organized by a fascist Klan/Nazi/skinhead alliance and saw how the xenophobic rhetoric prompts violence. My Black neighbors had their homes firebombed. I am sure Ken had similar experiences. This is why we get so pissed off at the supercilious intellectualism that sees no difference between a Haider and ruling neo-liberal governments. It is a position born of privilege and ignorance. You would take a different view if you were a Turkish immigrant worried about your children being beaten to death in the streets because the increased status and power of a Haider was seen as a cultural signaling of permission for far right attacks.
That right wing populism and fascism are growing in respose to neocorporatist globalization is hardly a new concept. This is from a statement I helped write in 1993:
"The rise of the anti-democratic right in our country occurs at a time when racial nationalism is sweeping Europe. We have witnessed the murders of immigrants, people of color, and religious minorities in Germany, and the spread of anti-Jewish bigotry across the continent. Who could have predicted the brutal ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia or the election victories of neo-fascists in Italy? In our own country, hate crimes and physical assaults on persons in targeted groups are on the increase. We have seen the shootings of abortion providers and bombings of clinics. We should not be complacent and dismiss the possibility that an economic or social crisis in the US could serve as a trigger for some hard-right religious zealots or reactionary racial nationalists to engage in paramilitary activity or unleash a campaign of intimidation and violence that could destabilize our own country."
"It may seem a remote possibility, but it can happen here. We know from history that authoritarianism, theocracy, demagoguery, and scapegoating are building blocks for fascist political movements; and that people mobilized by the cynical, regressive, populist sounding sentiments sown by a Ross Perot can be harvested by the angry, divisive, racial nationalist rhetoric of a David Duke or Pat Buchanan. We also know the paradox of fascism is that when most people finally are asking whether or not it is too late to stop it...it is. Better that resistance be early and preventative rather than late and unsuccessful."
http://www.publiceye.org/eyes/calldef.html From: A CALL TO DEFEND DEMOCRACY AND PLURALISM, The Blue Mountain Working Group
There are a number of us that have been arguing since the early 1990s that around the world the major forms of backlash against neo-corporatist globalization are xenophobic ethno-nationalism and reactionary religious fundamentalism. Both forms have a populist anti-capitalist and anti-elite critique of the status quo.
There is a lot of good material looking at the relationships among nationalism, populism, and fascism.
I suggest:
Radical Right-wing Populism in Western Europe, by Hans-Georg Betz, (New York: St. Martins Press, 1994).
The Far Right in Western and Eastern Europe, 2nd edition, by Luciano Cheles, Ronnie Ferguson, and Michalina Vaughan, eds., (New York: Longman Publishing, 1995.
New Right, New Racism: Race and Reaction in the United States and Britain, by Amy Ansell, (New York: NYU Press, 1997).
The Beast Reawakens, by Martin A. Lee, (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1997).
New Right Discourse on Race & Sexuality, by Anna Marie Smith, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Free to Hate by Paul Hockenos, (NY: Routledge, 1993).
Peter Fritzsche, Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
"Ur-Fascism" [Eternal Fascism], by Umberto Eco, New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995.