Catching Haider

Haider was no doubt the most successful of the European far right populists. But who was the man who made Europe tremble when his party won 27% at the national elections in 1999 and entered the Austrian government? Was he a Carinthian traditionalist, a Nazi, a Christian Democrat in disguise, a metrosexual yuppie? None of his electors could say for sure what exactly they were voting for. Did he have any vision, or was politics simply a way to serve his own thirst for recognition? Was he merely an Austrian phenomenon or the epitome of the “modern European right-wing populist”? A subjective voyage through Haider’s political, geographical, familial, and emotional world. Meeting his former supporters and colleagues, seeking to glimpse the real person behind and finally identifying the illusionary and deceptive methods of populist politics which have since spread all over Europe.