THE FASCIST WHO LOVED ME; gay lover of died neo-nazi Jörg Haider tells his story

[Harvey Specter]

Long but interesting read....




Jörg Haider, Europe's most telegenic Nazi-sympathizing politician, and his spin doctor, Stefan Petzner, seemed poised to return the Austrian far right to power. But after Haider died in a high-speed crash, Petzner revealed he’d been far more than his boss's protégé. Now all the young lover wants is to be the life of the party

Austria hasn't been embroiled in such a firestorm of controversy since Haider came to national power in 2000. Haider—who praised the Third Reich's forced-employment policies, socialized with SS veterans, and lobbed the Nazi-favored term überfremdung, "foreigner-overrun," during his anti-immigration rants—had won an electoral victory that gave him a place in Austria's governing coalition. Outraged that a Nazi-sympathizing extremist could hold sway in a modern state, the European Union placed sanctions on Austria—the only time it has ever done so to a member nation.

Now, after Haider's death at age 58, the fog lights have swung back, landing on Petzner, who was his protégé and anointed successor. On the night of October 10, the two men had been at a party when Haider reportedly stormed out after a lovers' quarrel; he died later that night in a drunken car crash. A heartbroken Petzner, who had assumed leadership of the party upon Haider's death, effectively outed himself and Haider in a tearful interview on a national-radio breakfast show. "We had a relationship that went far beyond friendship," Petzner said. "Jörg and I were connected by something truly special. He was the man of my life." He added, "I only had him. Now I am alone."

Petzner's disclosures didn't come as a complete shock to political insiders. Rumors about Haider's sexuality had circulated since the early nineties, though Haider had always refused to discuss the subject. As a macho, mountaineering father of two daughters, a man who espoused an ultraconservative agenda and traditional values, he likely feared that addressing such rumors would alienate thousands of his followers. "It was an open secret that Haider was gay," says Anton Pelinka, a noted scholar of nationalism who, as a professor at the University of Innsbruck, tracked Haider's rise. "But no one cared. No one talked of it. Because Haider did not attack gays. With Haider, you will not find a negative word on homosexuals. You will find anti-Semitism, xenophobia, racism, but not a word on gays."

The hip, charismatic Haider had always drawn young men like Petzner to his side—so many that his contingent was nicknamed Haider's Buberlpartei, or Boys' Party. Still, the passion of Petzner's confessions caught the nation off guard. Party officials rushed to prevent other interviews and limit the damage to the Haider myth. They reportedly forbade Petzner from speaking out further, questioned his fitness to succeed Haider, and finally stripped him of the party leadership.

Since losing his lover and protector, Petzner has become a very frightened man. When I first contacted him, by e-mail, he replied with a terse "No interview." When I arrive in Klagenfurt, where he lives, and call his cell phone, he is gracious but nervous. "It is very dangerous for me to talk," he explains. "I have been told, 'No more, any time.'"

The BZÖ's leaders—who include a former defense minister, a provincial governor, and Haider's sister, Ursula Haubner, a onetime federal minister of social security—may despise Petzner for his revelations, but they cannot eject him from the party. Not yet. Petzner ran the BZÖ's media campaign during last September's elections, in which the party had surprised many by capturing 11 percent of the national vote, catapulting Haider and the far right back into a position of power. Petzner, who turned 28 in January, was overseeing this month's regional elections in the party's stronghold of Carinthia, the southern Alpine province on the border of Slovenia where Haider had served as governor. And a portion of the party's base clearly adored him. His apparent outing of Haider, and subsequent basking in the spotlight, may have alienated the party leadership and Haider's widow, Claudia, but by giving voice to his sincere grief, which Haider's followers shared, Petzner had endeared himself to many rank-and-file neo-Fascists.

At the tavern party, old women embrace him as he nestles at their tables, expertly milking the moment. Angular and orange-hued from the tanning bed, with skinny jeans, a white cotton motorcycle jacket, and a thick scarf swaddling his neck, he rubs the women's broad backs, asks after their health, and merrily joins in their champagne toasts. No one seems to mind, or acknowledge, the greyhound-slender fortysomething man shadowing Petzner. He tells me his name is Christian and that he is Italian, from Trieste, just over the border. He calls himself Petzner's "traveling companion" and says that he too knew Haider well, for 20 years. When I ask if he and Petzner are an item, he smiles tightly. "Everyone asks us this all the time, if we are a couple," he says, holding a drink in one hand, resting the other on an oversize rhinestone belt buckle in the shape of a dollar sign. "Why should I tell you?"

This event is a morale-booster for BZÖ supporters and a chance for them to greet a local candidate as he unveils the party's new anthem for Klagenfurt. Petzner claps along to the synth-heavy club beat and lip-synchs while his candidate belts into the mike, "Then I see Wörthersee in its most beautiful blue. Then I feel it in me: Oh, my Klagenfurt!"

Petzner looks elated. Afterward, when the CD of the song, with the candidate's smiling face on the cover, is handed out, it is Petzner's autograph everyone wants scrawled across it. Maybe he's feeling the love, or maybe it's the successive glasses of champagne, beer, and a coffee-liqueur concoction—a tray of which he delivered to a darts team in the back room, just before the men hoisted him, legs splayed, into their air—but something makes Petzner want to brag. "I am the spin doctor," he says brazenly as he flops onto a leather banquette. "I make the slogans, I make pictures. I have no advertising agency here that helps me." When I tell Petzner that his father, a modest farmer, must be proud, he snaps, "Proud is not important to me. Not at all."

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[Marco911]

He looks like shite for 27. Lay off the tanning bed.

[Alphamale]

^He's gay, that's like asking him to stop fucking assholes. Impossible.

[Vansterdam]

[insert numa numa song here] unce unce unce unce