Schwarzenegger criticized for Austrian history gaffes

< snip >
Schwarzenegger, he said, was "using the old Communist enemy image for 
Bush's election campaign."
</ snip >

[Fuking great.  Here we go again. ]

Schwarzenegger criticized for Austrian history gaffes
Friday, September 3, 2004 Posted: 10:58 AM EDT (1458 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/09/03/schwarzenegger.ap/index.html

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Austrian historians are ridiculing California 
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for telling the Republican National 
Convention that he saw Soviet tanks in his homeland as a child and left 
a "Socialist" country when he moved away in 1968.

Recalling that the Soviets once occupied part of Austria in the 
aftermath of World War II, Schwarzenegger told the convention on 
Tuesday: "I saw tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes."

No way, historians say, challenging Schwarzenegger's knowledge of 
postwar history -- if not his enduring popularity among Austrians who 
admire him for rising from a penniless immigrant to the highest official 
in America's most populous state.

"It's a fact -- as a child he could not have seen a Soviet tank in 
Styria," the southeastern province where Schwarzenegger was born and 
raised, historian Stefan Karner told the Vienna newspaper Kurier.

Schwarzenegger, now a naturalized U.S. citizen, was born on July 30, 
1947, when Styria and the neighboring province of Carinthia belonged to 
the British zone. At the time, postwar Austria was occupied by the four 
wartime allies, which also included the United States, the Soviet Union 
and France.

The Soviets already had left Styria in July 1945, less than three months 
after the end of the war, Karner noted.

"Let me tell you this: As a boy, I lived for many years across the 
street from where the Russians were based in Vienna -- and honestly, I 
never saw a Russian tank there," retiree Franz Nitsch said Friday. "He 
said it all on purpose -- and that's bad."

In his convention address, Schwarzenegger also said: "As a kid, I saw 
the Socialist country that Austria became after the Soviets left" in 
1955 and Austria regained its independence.

But Martin Polaschek, a law history scholar and vice rector of Graz 
University, told Kurier that Austria was governed by coalition 
governments, including the conservative People's Party and the Social 
Democratic Party. Between 1945 and 1970, all the nation's chancellors 
were conservatives -- not Socialists.

What's more, when Schwarzenegger left in 1968, Austria was run by a 
conservative government headed by People's Party Chancellor Josef Klaus, 
a staunch Roman Catholic and a sharp critic of both the Socialists as 
well as the Communists ruling in countries across the Iron Curtain.

Schwarzenegger "confuses a free country with a Socialist one," said 
Polaschek, referring to East European Communist officials' routine 
descriptions of their countries as Socialist.

Polaschek saw the moderate Republican governor's recollections at the 
convention as a tactical move. Schwarzenegger, he said, was "using the 
old Communist enemy image for Bush's election campaign."

"He did not speak as a historian, after all, but as a politician," 
Polaschek said.

Norbert Darabos, a ranking official of Austria's opposition Social 
Democratic Party, sharply criticized Schwarzenegger's "disdain for his 
former homeland."

"The Terminator is constructing a rather bizarre Austria image," he said.

But many ordinary Austrians seemed to be in a forgiving mood Friday over 
the gaffes.

"Maybe he has a wrong recollection -- it's so many years since he left," 
said Wilma Fadrany, 32, a Vienna waitress.

"There must be political reasons for such comments," she said. "You've 
got to tell the (convention delegates) what they want to hear in order 
to win them over. Politicians always talk the way it fits into their 
agenda."
_______________________________________________
heads mailing list
[email protected]
http://your.ballistichelmet.org/mailman/listinfo/heads/
http://ballistichelmet.org/donate/