The threat of far right-wind terrorism

Norway rarely hits the headlines. Regarded as a peaceful country, a clear example of welfare state, with a thriving economy and an unemployment rate of less than 4%, Norway has remained far from bad news headlines. When last July 23 we knew about the car bomb explosion in Oslo and a mass shooting on the island of Utoya, many of us were surprised and we wondered, why Norway?

The constant media blitz on the threat of Islamic terrorism and the modus operandi of the first attack (explosion of a boom outside a government building in downtown Oslo) were more than enough to point out Islamic terrorist by those who are impatient to find answers –among which I include myself- . However, doubts started when we were informed of the shooting that had happened in the island of Utoya, where a group of young people was attending a summer camp organized by the ruling Norwegian Labour Party. A man –white skin, blond hair, Norwegian?- dressed in a police uniform opened fire and killed 69 people, mostly youngsters. Along with the explosion in Oslo, where 8 people died, the death toll was 77.

After the arrest of Anders Breivik Behring, the man who carried out the massacre in Norway, questions began to dissipate. The murderer, a 32 years-old Norwegian right-wing extremist and islamophobic, left the Islamist terrorism offside to show a new threat: the rise of the extremist right-wing as a new form of terrorism.

Although Breivik’s mental health is not yet known, it is evident that his plan was developed conscientiously to carry out a marketing campaign to
spread his fanatic right-wing ideas. His manifesto was posted on the Internet and sent by bulk email before the attacks, and it explains everything: from the justification of the attacks based on an imaginary Islamic invasion of Europe, how to make booms, to an interview to himself and a previous diary to the terrorist attacks. In this manifesto, the terrorist says he is not alone in his peculiar crusade against Islam, Which should alert the prospect of organized groups who share their hate for Islam, immigration and cultural conservatism taken to extremes.

The rise of xenophobic parties in Europe

The macabre ideology written by the murderer in his manifesto, takes its base in the right-wing parties which have proliferated in Europe in recent years. The rapid migration experienced in the economically developed countries (in some of them their ethnic composition has changed up to 30% of non-Western immigrants) and the lack of effective policies for integration, have resulted in an increase of fear, conflicts and rejection of “multiculturalism” as a response to strong demographic changes.

The radical right-wing parties in Europe have found its gold mine in this rejection of immigration and, by a populist and nationalist discourse, they have gained more and more followers. Thus, in Norway, the Progress Party (where the confessed author of the massacre was a member for several years) became the second largest group, winning one in five votes at the last election in 2009. In neighboring Sweden, the Sweden Democrat party membership increased by 4571 people in 1010 (26% more than the previous year) with a discourse which focus on the expulsion of immigrants.

In France, anti-Islam discourse has led to Le Pen’s National Front party to hold the third political force in the country. “Islamophobia” has also gained ground in the Netherlands and finds shelter in the third largest political group representing the country, the Party for Freedom. Far right-wing is also the third force in Finland and Denmark.

Right-wing extremist terrorism

Although it is not known yet whether the terrorist acted alone or not, it is clear that his ideology has found coverage in the far-right “institutional” parties increasingly visible in Europe and other “extra-parliamentary” groups: the so-called neo-Nazi groups or racist bands. The basic difference between them is that, while the first condemn violence, the neo-Nazi bands see it as the way to defeat the immigrants considered as the “enemies”. These violent groups have no institutional representation (since they just want to destroy democracy) and, because of their tendency to dissolve and transform themselves, it is very difficult to trace them. However, the radical right-wing is visible on the Internet, in some websites and discussion forums where they share their xenophobia, anti-socialist ideas and paranoid against a democratic government.

The man accused of the killing spree in Norway participated often in these platforms and, after his first appearance in court, he claimed of accomplices, which he described as “two more cells” in an organization. Does this mean that Breivik was part of an organized terrorist group? So far, police rule out this hypothesis and the latest information suggests that the murderer acted by his own.

Whether fear is unfounded individually or under the shelter of an organized terrorist group, does not change that this twin attack in Norway is part of a fanatic right-wing terrorism, which remind the shooting occurred on last January 8 in Arizona, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fired against a crowd of people in a Democratic Party event and killed 6 people and injured seriously more than a dozen, including the US Congresswoman Gabrielle Griffords.

So far this year, we have witnessed two acts of terrorism perpetrated by fanatics fed by the ideology of the radical right-wing. Will be needed more terror so that we begin to realize the danger they pose? As well as politicians and the media have warned us about the threat of Al Qaeda, they have now a golden opportunity to expose this new form of terrorism and foster public debate about the far-right parties responsibility when they launch their apocalyptic, xenophobic and anti-Islamist discourse.