I told you so, Americans!

Two years plus two weeks ago I wrote in an entry headed Labour of Love

While the well-meaning but -- to put it politely -- slightly one-dimensional Americans tend to throw a hearty "he was a patriot" after every dead Nazi towards hell because HE opposed immigration and THEY don't know their arses from their elbows, i.e. squat about German history, society and mentality, the Austrian liberal newspaper "Der Standard" gives us a more complex insight into the now dead mind of Jörg Haider, governor of the Austrian state of Carinthia, the man who thought that he could always get away with driving at more than 140 km/h on a road designed for 70 km/h.

The question to end all questions is whose fault it was that Haider turned into a Jew-hater -- no, let me rephrase: that "he resorted to political non-correctness". Don't fret, "Der Standard" knows why:

"One can regard his antiamericanism and his resorting to political non-correctness as a result of his questionable interpretation of the European past or as reaction to his own rejection, specifically by Israel, who had recalled her ambassador from Vienna when [Haider's then party] the FPÖ became part of the government in 2000. Also, Haider was probably looking out to extend his influence to the international stage, and nobody else wanted him.

Yes, we cried too. If he hadn't been such a cuss with his obsessive antiamericanism, VDare might have even thrown a dirt cheap regular column after him. Who knows, maybe they did and he politely declined. I'm sure he had, in his own way, higher standards than VDare and their ilk.

So Haider really loved the Jews, but, like with his parents before him, this love remained unreciprocated, whereupon he turned into a Jew-hater and flirted with Arab dictators who are, as we all know, nothing but frustrated lovers of the Jews as well.

[...]

The following day I wrote:

When will you Americans finally twig that THERE ARE NO "conservatives" in Germany and that those who can be considered "patriots" hate your guts and will get at your throat rather sooner than later, given the slightest opportunity, Haider and his ilk included. Why, do you think, are they all, left right and center, rubbing elbows even with the most despicable of Islamic dictators? Because they really like them? Their looks? Their smell? Their dress sense? You must be joking.

WHAT we have are brown-painted Socialists, Sacred-Heart Socialists, green-over-brown-painted Socialists, Communists and a tiny, hapless "liberal" party that used to be a receptacle for old Nazis after '45 and which has ousted itself from serious politics by their self-consciously cultivated image of a "fun party". [Edit: Here I was wrong. In the meantime the liberals have become part of the ruling coalition with its openly homosexual leader who recently "married" his "partner" as foreign minister.]

The staple of all of them is the hatred of America and Jews, which the not-brown-painted ilk insist to call "anti-Zionism" because they are such despicable hypocrites.

Just reminding, and read the comments to the latter entry as well.

Now it transpires that the German secret service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) paid for Haider's trip to Iraq in 2002, as Austrian weekly Profil reported on Sunday.

It seems that the BND was interested in Haider's Iraqi contacts and used the services of an unidentified Austrian businessman to organise the trip and pay for the flight. According to the report, the BND spent "several hundreds of thousands" of Euros in observing Haider and his activities. According to Profil, the BND declined to comment on the information.

Last August, Profil and other Austrian media reported that Haider deposited 45 million Euro (63 million USD) over the years in secret accounts in Liechtenstein. Allegedly, the money came from the Libya's Ghaddaffi and Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

I spell it out to you again: Before you start ecstatically drooling over some "anti-immigration" politician in Europe, ask some questions first. That isn't asked too much, or is it?