Anti-Foreigner Party Surges in Vienna Vote : Politics: Right-wing group gets 23% support as its leader proclaims ‘Austria for the Austrians.’

A far-right party whose leader has praised German Third Reich labor policies and promised to protect “Austria for the Austrians” won a surprising 23% of the vote in Vienna city elections Sunday.

The Freedom Party of Austria posted its third electoral gain in as many months by capitalizing on anti-foreigner and anti-Semitic sentiments that have flooded across Austria with the influx of refugees from war-torn and economically devastated areas of Eastern Europe.

Although fremdenhass --hatred of foreigners--is less violent in Austria than in Germany, where foreign workers and refugees have been attacked and beaten by neo-Nazis in recent weeks, the Freedom Party’s growing popularity illustrates a wider current of archconservatism among Austrians.

Austria’s Gallup Institute released the results of a poll last week showing that nearly a third of Austrians dislike Jews and foreigners and that one in five think Jews should be dismissed from their jobs.

The Freedom Party’s strong showing in the Vienna local election was mostly symbolic, since the leading Social Democratic Party, which won 47.7% of the vote, has said it would refuse any coalition with the right-wing party headed by Joerg Haider.

Austria and its capital are both governed by coalitions, drawing together the mainstream conservative Austrian People’s Party and left-wing Social Democrats.

The Social Democrats lost their outright majority in Sunday’s election, forcing continuation of the city government coalition with the People’s Party, which Austria Radio described as having suffered “an election debacle.”

The People’s Party dropped from a strong second-place finish in the last election to win only 18% of the vote, substantially behind the 23% the Freedom Party collected with its blatant anti-foreigner campaign.

Haider’s party openly played on the fears of many Austrians that foreigners flooding in from poorer Mediterranean countries and newly liberated Eastern Europe threaten jobs, housing and social security. A flood of refugees from Yugoslavia’s civil war in recent weeks probably helped the Freedom Party more than double its 10% showing in the last Vienna election in 1987.

Freedom Party campaign posters pictured the 41-year-old Haider, who was not a candidate, under slogans appealing to voters to “Give our children a chance” and “Vienna should be home for us Viennese.” Other messages warned that it was “high time” to take action to stem the tide from the east.

The party has leaped from the political fringes throughout Austria. It won 20% of the national vote last year and posted similarly strong showings in two regional ballots in the last three months.

Haider stirred an international scandal earlier this year when he publicly praised Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich for providing jobs and a boost to the German economy in the 1930s.

Austrian President Kurt Waldheim does not plan to run for reelection next year, but charges of involvement in Nazi war crimes, raised against him three years ago, continue to cloud Austria’s international standing.

Most disturbing, in the view of fledgling groups pressing for more social tolerance, were the results of the recent Gallup Poll commissioned by the American Jewish Assn. in which 2,000 Austrians were surveyed.

“Twenty to 30% of the Austrian population have negative views of foreigners, including Jews,” the institute said in its findings.

According to the survey, 19% said they thought Austria would be a better place to live without Jews. One-fifth said they thought Jews should be dismissed from top jobs, and one in three said they would not want Jews for neighbors.