Racism on the rise in Europe

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 favor restricting immigration.
This did notgo 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 wrotebefore 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 Defense League for its anti-Islam
stance, and - according to the respected anti-fascist magazine,
Searchlight - posted a message on its website inMarch this year. Using
thepseudonym 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 ourcontinent."
United Kingdom
Searchlight said that Breivik had been in contact with both the EDLand
its Norwegian counterpart, the Norwegian Defense 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 thefounders of the EDL and during an interview
withAl Jazeera in 2009, he explained why the groupformed in Luton, the
city where he lives: "For morethan a decade now, there's been tension
in Luton between Muslim youths and whites. We allget on fine - black,
white,Indian, Chinese - everyone does, in fact, apart from some Muslim
youths who've become extremely radicalized 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,
andit 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
- thereis concern that the groupcould be inspiring other unstable
individuals who oppose Islam. The EDL hasbeen pro-active in building
links across the world and claims to have support from - aside
frompeople 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 antagonized the Muslim world
by calling for a banon 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 electionto 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 alsophotographed
apparently giving a three-fingered neo-Nazi salute in a bar, though
hesaid 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 wasdue to appear in
court oncharges, for the fifth time, of promoting neo-Nazi ideology.
Described to me as the"Puppet Master" of Austria and Germany's
farright, 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 politicalparties 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 tomake 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 in1962, 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, butaccording 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 ofStrache's party.
The Burschenschaften were banned by the Allies after WWII, but
reformed in the 1950s. In 1987, Olympia, one of themost 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
campsurvivors. 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 extremistsand the FPO said
that it only wishes to revoke theVerbotsgesetz 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 greatrisk 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 inAustrian 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 ridof the Verbotsgesetz."
The FPO continues to do well, and last October theparty's vote surged
whenit 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-Islamicsentiments. A number of neo-Nazi groups have sprung up in
recent years, the most extreme of which have attacked and killed
foreigners andimmigrants 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 resultof hate crimes during 2010. The
authors wrote:
"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 gangmembers."
During the trial, the courtheard how the gang targeted dark-skinned
victims. They were also convicted of decapitatingone of their own whom
they suspected of being apolice 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 around 100 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 appearthat the far right is
on the march.
PHOTO CAPTION
Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik is pictured in the back
of a police car as he arrives ata court in Oslo August 19, 2011. -
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