Oslo killer’s nationalism and xenophobia not unusual in European politics

   

By Liam Britten

he terrorist attacks in Oslo
that killed 76 and shocked the

world last July are indeed hard
to comprehend. How could someone
carry them out? How will Norway
move on? And what inspired Anders
Behring Breivik to take 76 lives,
many of them young people?

If we take Breivik’s claims at
face value, his motivations were
purely political. He has claimed in
print and other media that he was
angered by unchecked Muslim
immigration. He hated how
multiculturalism and liberalism
had “failed” the Norwegian state.

He saw himself as a martyr whose
crimes would spark a series of white
European revolutions. By 2083, these
revolutions will have achieved their
goal of totally excluding immigrants
from Europe’s political and cultural
spheres.

To those of us who have lived in
North America all of our lives, the
notion of any political movement
arising from Breivik’s bizarre ideas

is impossible. We have known
multiculturalism all of our lives and
consider it to be a fundamental aspect
of our democratic society.

Europe, however, is different. It
seems that almost every nation, even
the most supposedly ultra-liberal
ones like Norway, possess far-right,
nationalistic parties which share
many similarities to Breivik’s vision
for the future. These parties inspire
hatred towards immigrants (and
Muslim immigrants in particular)
because their presence is supposedly
a threat to Caucasian Europeans’ way
of life.

It would seem the sort of
movement Breivik was hoping to
imspire already exists.

These right-wing parties — and
the policies they endorse — are seen
almost everywhere in Europe. During

16

riots in immigrant communities in
France during 2005, future president
and current interior minister Nicolas
Sarkozy promised to “hose down”
the immigrant Communities, referring
to their foreign residents as “scum.”

In 2009, Switzerland banned
the building of minarets, the prayer
towers of mosques.

This year in Austria, the
virulently anti-immigrant
Freedom Party was in hot water
for clandestinely producing an
online video game called “Bye Bye
Mosque,” that involves players
clicking on rising minarets and
praying Muslims to make them
disappear.

Norway’s nationalist parties
are considerably tamer and less
successful than their counterparts in
other nations. But even Norway’s
second-largest party, the Progress
Party, gives a message similar to the
more extreme parties: that Muslims
are dangerous. They are a threat
to Norwegian identity. They don’t
share Norwegian values. They are
oppressors of women and those who
think differently.

Progress Party MP Christian
Tybring Gjedde posted an interview
on his party’s website where he
subtly lays out his party’s antipathy
towards immigrants. He doesn’t
mention any particular group in
particular, but reading between the
lines is not difficult.

“Freedom of expression,
freedom in general for people,
freedom of sexes, equality of sexes,
... You see in certain areas of the
immigration population these
freedom aspects are not being
adhered to. And we have to put our
foot down and say, ‘we cannot accept
that,”” he said. “You come here, to
this free country, maybe one of the
richest countries in the world, we
have those freedoms and we have
to protect those freedoms. If you

 

don’t tell them they have to be continued, we
may lose and we cannot afford to lose. [The
freedoms] are too valuable.”

When the official party line of mainstream
political organizations across Europe is that
precious freedoms are threatened by Muslim

immigrants, is it any surprise that someone
decided to step forward and “protect” them?
While the world in general and Europeans in
particular were shocked by Breivik’s deeds,
the motivation behind those deeds would seem
downright normal to far too many citizens.

 

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