Note : Use of the word "racism" in the title clearly is inflammatory. The
article itself makes
clear that most of the white Europeans in question get along well with
people from China,
India, Latin America , and so forth, and that the problem always is general
Muslim insularity
and their perceived backwardness --and the fanatic jihadist population
within Islam.
Needless to say, the word "Islamophobia" is an absurdity since the issue is
not some sort
of irrational bigotry which the title implies by associating racism with
opposition to Islam,
an absurdity since Muslims come from many different races. The problem in
every case
is what Europeans have learned about Islam from negative experiences with
Muslims
and, in many cases, from study of the Koran and Islam at large, finding its
doctrines
to be immoral and repugnant. In other words, just as you would not call
an anti-Nazi a Naziophobe, nor an anti-Communist a Communistophobe,
those who oppose Islam simply are critics of Islam --with good reason.
Regardless, an informative article.
BR
------------------------------------------------
Al Jazeera
Racism on the rise in Europe
In Norway, England, the Netherlands, Russia, and especially Austria,
racist and Islamophobic movements are on the rise.
_Billy Briggs_
(http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/profile/billy-briggs.html) Last
Modified: 02 Sep 2011
Racism on the rise in Europe
In Norway, England, the Netherlands, Russia, and especially Austria,
racist and Islamophobic movements are on the rise
Billy Briggs / September 2, 2011
In the wake of the atrocities in Norway perpetrated by Anders Behring
Breivik, it is still unclear whether he was part of a wider conspiracy, but
alarm bells are now ringing across Europe about the threat from far-right
extremist groups. With no end in sight to the economic crisis afflicting many
nations, the growing fear is that voters are increasingly attracted to
far-right parties, many of whom have been building support by opposing
immigration and stirring up hatred of Muslims.
In Norway, the right-wing Progress party garnered 23 per cent of the vote
in the last election, making it the second-largest. And a recent poll found
that half of all Norwegians favour restricting immigration. This did not go
far enough for Breivik, who believed that the forced deportation of
Muslims should be government policy, a radical political view he formed over
time
by participating in extreme online forums where he discussed his beliefs
with like-minded individuals across the world.
The 32-year-old Norwegian made his thoughts clear in a 1,500 page document
he wrote before embarking on his killing spree. Shortly before he detonated
his bomb in Oslo and then killed 68 people on Utoeya, Breivik emailed his
document to 1,003 of his far-right contacts, including extremists in
England whom Breivik boasted to have forged links with in recent years in his
opposition to Islam.
He particularly admired the English Defence League for its anti-Islam
stance, and - according to the respected anti-fascist magazine, Searchlight -
posted a message on its website in March this year. Using the pseudonym
Sigurd Jorsalfare after a Norwegian king who led a Crusade in the 12th
century,
Breivik wrote: "Hello. To you all good English men and women, just wanted
to say that you're a blessing to all in Europe, in these dark times all of
Europe are looking to you in such [sic] of inspiration, courage and even
hope that we might turn this evil trend with islamisation all across our
continent."
United Kingdom
Searchlight said that Breivik had been in contact with both the EDL and its
Norwegian counterpart, the Norwegian Defence League (NDL), a claim denied
by the EDL whose leadership condemned Breivik's crimes.
The EDL has always insisted it is a peaceful protest group which opposes
militant Islam, but since its inception in 2009, violence has erupted at
many EDL demonstrations in Britain.
Stephen Lennon, who was convicted last week (Monday) of leading a street
brawl involving 100 soccer fans in the English city of Luton in August 2010,
is one of the founders of the EDL and during an interview with Al Jazeera
in 2009, _he explained why the group formed in Luton_
(http://english.aljazeera.net/photo_galleries/europe/2010112275625847519.html)
, the city where he
lives: "For more than a decade now, there's been tension in Luton between
Muslim youths and whites. We all get on fine - black, white, Indian,
Chinese - everyone does, in fact, apart from some Muslim youths who've become
extremely radicalised since the first Gulf War. Preachers of hate such as
Anjem Choudary have been recruiting for radical Islamist groups in Luton for
years. Our government does nothing, so we decided we'd start protesting
against radical Islam, and it grew from there," he said.
While the EDL has been largely unsuccessful in gaining public support -
mainly due to the fact that its core consists of football hooligans - there
is concern that the group could be inspiring other unstable individuals who
oppose Islam. The EDL has been pro-active in building links across the world
and claims to have support from - aside from people in Norway - Holland,
France, Sweden, USA and Israel, among others.
The Netherlands
Indeed, the EDL embraced the Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders,
whom Breivik also cited in his writings. Wilders is virulently anti-Islam and
leads the Party for Freedom, Holland's third-largest party. He is a
controversial figure who antagonised the Muslim world by calling for a ban on
the
Quran, which he likened to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Despite this, Wilders
was voted politician of the year in 2007 by the Dutch press, and his
Freedom Party went from winning nine seats in the 2006 election to 24 in 2010,
taking a larger share of the vote than the Christian Democrats.
Austria
Austria has a Freedom Party (FPO) too, with a similar political outlook.
The party is led by Heinz-Christian Strache, who has been successful in
drumming up support by opposing Islam and immigration.
In 2008, the FPO and Alliance for the Future (BZO) jointly secured almost
one-third of the electorate's vote during the 2008 election. Campaigning
against the "Islamisation" of Austria, the two parties secured 29 per cent in
a result viewed as a horrifying development by many people across Europe.
Both parties ran highly xenophobic campaigns, particularly the FPO, which
pledged to set up a ministry to deport foreigners and whose leader,
Heinz-Christian Strache, mocked homosexuals and described women in Islamic
dress as
"female ninjas". The FPO also wishes to revoke the Verbotsgesetz, an
Austrian law enacted in 1947 that bans the promotion of neo-Nazi ideology.
Strache has been at the centre of controversy, and pictures surfaced in
2008 showing the FPO leader wearing army fatigues and clutching what appeared
to be a gun in a forest. The images were allegedly taken at a neo-Nazi
training camp in his youth, but Strache denied this and said they were from a
day out paint-balling. He was also photographed apparently giving a
three-fingered neo-Nazi salute in a bar, though he said he was only ordering
three
beers.
The FPO has tried to distance itself from extremism, but the party was
founded by two former SS officers, Anton Reinthaller and Herbert Schweiger. In
2008, I interviewed Schweiger - who died this past July - at his home in
Austria a few weeks before he was due to appear in court on charges, for the
fifth time, of promoting neo-Nazi ideology.
Described to me as the "Puppet Master" of Austria and Germany's far right,
Schweiger, 85, was remarkably sharp-minded and remained proud of his Nazi
views. He was a lieutenant in the Waffen SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte
Adolf Hitler, an elite unit formed in the 1930s to act as the Führer's
personal bodyguards. After escaping a POW camp during WWII, Schweiger returned
to
his homeland, Austria, where he lived openly from 1947 and became heavily
involved in politics.
He was a founding member of three political parties in Austria - the VDU,
the FPO, and the banned NDP. During our interview he also admitted to
involvement in terrorism and training a far-right cell comprising of
Burschenschaften (right-wing brotherhoods founded in universities) who were
fighting
for the reunification of Austria and South Tyrol, now part of Italy, in
1961.
"I was an explosives expert in the SS so I trained the Burschenschaften how
to make bombs. We used the hotel my wife and I owned as a training camp,"
he said. Thirty people in Italy were murdered during a bombing campaign.
One man convicted for the atrocities, Norbert Burger, later formed the
now-banned neo-Nazi NDP party with Schweiger. Schweiger's involvement earned
him
his first spell in custody in 1962, but he was acquitted.
Schweiger gave support to the FPO, saying that Strache was correct with
his strategy in opposing Islam and immigration. Schweiger said that despite
his age, he still travelled widely both in Austria and Germany to teach "the
fundamentals of Nazism" to underground cells of neo-Nazis whom, he claimed,
had infiltrated mainstream political parties such as the FPO.
The FPO disputed this, but according to Vienna's Documentation Centre of
Austrian Resistance (DOW) - which monitors neo-Nazi activity - the party has
strong links to neo-Nazis through the Burschenschaften, many of whom are
members of Strache's party.
The Burschenschaften were banned by the Allies after WWII, but reformed in
the 1950s. In 1987, Olympia, one of the most extreme fraternities,
nominated Rudolf Hess for the Nobel Peace Prize. Senior members of the FPO are
Burschenschaften, including Strache and Martin Graf, who was elected deputy
president of the Austrian Parliament after the election, despite vociferous
opposition from concentration camp survivors. The FPO's Andreas Molzer is
also Burschenschaften and has met with the British National Party in London.
Graf, Strache and Molzer all strongly denied having links to extremists and
the FPO said that it only wishes to revoke the Verbotsgesetz because it
believes in upholding freedom of expression.
Wolfgang Purtscheller, a revered author and journalist who has spent his
career exposing Austria's far right at great risk to his life, said that
neo-Nazis have learned by the mistakes of their past, and are now working to
build public support within the mainstream parties:
"You had people like Schweiger - the puppet master in the mountains for
half a century - able to form political parties while teaching people to make
bombs, and the Burschenshaften with its history of terrorism and links to
the mainstream parties. These are the intellectuals who hold the positions
of power in Austrian society, in the police, the judiciary and in
parliament. The neo-Nazis have learned by the mistakes of their past and are
now
working to build public support within the mainstream parties. Imagine what
could happen if the FPO gets rid of the Verbotsgesetz."
The FPO continues to do well, and last October the party's vote surged when
it took 27 per cent of the vote in Vienna's provincial election. Later
that month, the FPO hosted a two-day conference attended by far-right factions
from across Europe, including representatives of the Sweden Democrats,
Italy's Lega Nord and the Danish People's Party. Strache has succeeded in
making the FPO "respectable", and last week he sacked a party official who
responded to the Norwegian murders by declaring that the real danger was
Islam,
not Breivik.
Russia
Russia is another nation experiencing an upsurge in racism and
anti-Islamic sentiments. A number of neo-Nazi groups have sprung up in recent
years,
the most extreme of which have attacked and killed foreigners and immigrants
from Chechnya, Tajikstan, and Caucasian nations that were once part of the
USSR.
This past July, Amnesty International reported that racially-motivated
violence remained a serious problem in Russia. The AI report said that,
according to data from the SOVA Centre for Information and Analysis, 37 people
died as a result of hate crimes during 2010. _The authors wrote_
(http://www.amnestyusa.org/
research/reports/annual-report-russian-federation-2011?page=show) :
"In April, Moscow judge Eduard Chuvashov was killed, reportedly by members
of a far-right group, after he had sentenced several perpetrators of hate
crimes to long-term imprisonment. In October, 22-year-old Vasilii Krivets
was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 15 people of non-Slavic
appearance. The extent of the problem was brought into sharp focus shortly
before the AI report was published when five members of one of Russia's
most vicious neo-Nazi gangs were jailed for committing 27 murders. They
belonged to the Nationalist Socialist Society North and were handed life
sentences at Moscow City Court. The string of killings included the videotaped
decapitation of one of their own gang members."
During the trial, the court heard how the gang targeted dark-skinned
victims. They were also convicted of decapitating one of their own whom they
suspected of being a police informant and stealing money from the gang's
funds.
The decapitation, during which they donned clown masks and sang a
patriotic song, was videotaped and posted online. Following the case, a group
of
nationalists announced a coalition with Russia's third-largest political
party, the Liberal Democrat Party, which is committed to protecting Russian
people and their interests.
Breivik, who murdered 76 people, said he was committed to protecting Europe
from Islam. He claimed that two cells from a network he was involved with
were still active. It remains to be seen if the 32-year-old was a lone
wolf, but it would appear that the far right is on the march.
Billy Briggs is a freelance journalist. His work has appeared in the New
Statesman, The Guardian, the Sunday Times and other publications around the
world.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
necessarily represent Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
--
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