Anders Breivik and the New European Nationalists: “Not Our Man” …
- August 9th, 2011
- Posted by EUEditor
COMMENTARY: The murder of innocents in Norway by a zealot identifying with the extreme right, called Anders Breivik, has caused some disassociation and position-taking by the so-called “new nationalist” parties in several European countries. These, like the Wilders party, PVV, in the Netherlands, or the Sweden Democrats, have made sudden electoral gains, on the back of campaigns against mass immigration, especially if Islamic. (See EUAustralia Online: “Finland vote latest in Euro-nationalist trend”, 22.4.11; “Voting: tense count in Sweden, 22.9.10; “Wilders, horse-trading …”, 5.9.10).
They have been at pains to point out that the Norwegian gunman, if singing from some pages in their songbook, was an isolate; that they concentrate on legal parliamentary politics; that they have broken their links with a fascist past, or, in cases like the Netherlands, never had such a past; and that they do not sympathise with, let alone provide any infrastructure for terrorist activities. While police in Europe have been taking a prudent look at some of the rhetoricians and associations on the radical right, few accusations have actually been made that these new parties condone egregious violent crimes. (Criticism in the liberal press is rather that extreme ideas will feed into the fantasies of weak types, and the insane).
Haydn Rippon, a doctoral researcher studying the new nationalist movement, prepared this appraisal. … Read More »
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