Waltz and all: the far right has ball in Vienna

The scene inside the opulent ballroom of Vienna's Hofburg Palace could have been lifted straight from The Sound of Music: young women in swishing dirndl dresses linked hands under chandeliers with students in traditional loden suits as they gently waltzed in formation to the rhythmic orchestral sound of Johann Strauss.

But in the streets outside the building last Saturday, the spectacle was radically different. Phalanxes of white-helmeted Austrian riot police stood equipped with shields and truncheons.

"Nazis Piss Off, Nobody Misses You!" read one of the banners held aloft by demonstrators. Ugly scuffles ensued. One man was reported to have been arrested after being caught carrying a kilo of explosives.

The event they were so vociferously objecting to was a traditional Vienna student ball known as the "Korporierten-Fest". Started in 1952 as part of Vienna's traditional ball season, the student ball has gained an unsavoury reputation for being a white-tie extravaganza for the elite of Europeans' political far right.

It is not the first embarrassment caused by Korporierten-Fest's shady far-right links. The United Nations cultural arm, Unesco, dropped the entire Viennese ball concept from its list of Austrian cultural traditions after protests from anti-fascist campaigners.

Unesco said the student ball - which is the only one in the programme with such political connections - had failed to live up to its principles which gave a "special priority to tolerance and respect for other cultures".

Its far right reputation was dutifully upheld last weekend. Hosted by Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of the far-right Freedom Party, the Viennese ball might have escaped with Unesco's rap on the knuckles, had it not been for an initially unreported anti-Semitic tirade delivered from Strache's ballroom box to some 3000 of his right wing guests, describing Austria's far-right as the "New Jews".

By yesterday it had become the focus of a blistering political row about everyday anti-Semitism and the disturbing, yet seemingly inexorable, rise of popular right-wing Austrian nationalism.

- Independent