OSLO, Norway — Warning voters about the danger of increasing Muslim influence in Norway, the Progress Party rode a wave of anti-immigrant feeling and took nearly a quarter of the seats in parliament in the country's last election.
Now one of Europe's most successful right-wing parties is on the defensive after one of its former members massacred 77 people in the name of fighting immigration.
The Progress Party has confirmed that Anders Behring Breivik, the confessed perpetrator of last month's massacre, was a member between 1999 and 2006. That has focused intense criticism on its platform of sharply cutting the immigration that is changing Norway's once virtually homogenous population of white Christians.
"They have to change their tone," said Magnus Takvam, a political commentator for Norwegian public broadcaster NRK. "They have to reconsider their vocabulary."
Progress Party leader Siv Jensen has been criticized for warning of a stealth Islamization of Norway. And in May, the party's leader in Oslo called the governing Labor Party's immigration policy a "demographic experiment" and said a left-wing political elite was allowing Western civilization to be eroded by Muslim immigrants with opposing values.
Breivik also condemned leftists for their tolerant attitude towards immigrants from the Muslim world, but Jensen, 42, noted that he condemned all of Norway's political parties, "mine included," in the rambling 1,500-word manifesto he released before the massacre.
Breivik, 32, says he grew disillusioned with the party and concluded that the only way to stop what he called the "Islamization" of Norway and Europe was through armed struggle.
"He has obviously developed some very, very strange, sick ideas over the years," Jensen told The Associated Press. "His manifesto is perversely unique and cannot be linked to any organization or legal political party of Norway."
First elected into Parliament in 1973, the Progress Party has steadily gained support for its calls to sharply cut immigration and lower taxes, primarily by spending more of Norway's oil revenue now, instead of saving it for future generations.
No longer a maverick opposition group, the Progress Party now boasts support that few of its counterparts in Europe can match. It won 41 of the 169 seats in Parliament in the 2009 election, its best result ever. Only the Labor Party is bigger, with 64 seats.
But the July 22 terror attacks, which shook Norway to the core, have generated a wave of sympathy for Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's Labor Party, the apparent target of the attacks. Polls show its support surging, ahead of local elections in September.
Jensen said Breivik kept a low profile in the party and never revealed his murderous plans.
"He didn't say much, he didn't do much, he didn't take part in our activities at all," Jensen told AP in her wood-paneled office decorated with an American flag — a gift from Republicans Abroad — and a tiny bust of President Ronald Reagan. "So we could not foresee any of this."
In his manifesto, Breivik says he left the Progress Party after concluding "that it would be impossible to change the system democratically." Describing himself as defender of Europe's Christian heritage, he couldn't accept that once homogenous Norway is now an increasingly diverse nation, where more than 12 percent of the 5 million residents are immigrants or children of immigrants — about half of them from Asia, Africa or Latin America.
For many years in a row, it has been in the United Nations' list of “the best place to live”. The state-society relation that exists in this country is remarkably distinct. It is all too common to see the top politicians mingling freely with people on their way to office, usually by foot. It was just a few years ago that the Prime Minister, Mr Jan Stoltenberg, applied for permission to go to work by bicycle. Despite the looming threat of global terrorism, Norwegian police do not carry guns. Perhaps, it is the only country that celebrates its national day without a weapon parade.
The booming oil revenues created an influx of immigrants, both skilled workers and political refugees. Unlike many other oil-rich nations, the Norwegian government tries to maintain a social welfare system that is ‘generous' to immigrants. The influx of ‘others' transformed the country from its original identity as a single race, a single religion and a single language into a multicultural and multiracial society.
This triggered the emergence of a few right-wing parties with an open anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policy. They managed to gain power in many Norwegian counties. However, an extreme right-wing was not apparent until the horrific event of July 22. The Internet postings by Anders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of the Oslo carnage, clearly indicates that he is a fundamental anti-Islamist preoccupied with phobias about a ‘Eurabia', a term denoting the political possibility of a demographic take-over of Europe by the prolific immigrant Muslims. Anders Behring Breivik transcended set ways of unleashing right-wing violence at two crucial levels. Firstly, he adopted the terrorists' modus operandi and changed the usual pattern of racial violence.
Like the acts of Jihadi terrorists, his ‘mission' involved meticulous planning, evoking terror, and inflicting irreplaceable human casualties. Secondly, he made a drastic redefinition of the target, that is “who is to be killed?” He did not target the immigrants or Muslims in particular.
While pursuing his goal, Breivik sought to bypass the old-fashioned mode of racial violence — killing or intimidating the “other”. What he preferred instead was terrorising and killing his own ethnic peers.
By sparing the immigrants and targeting the natives, what Breivik provided to the far-right is a novel starting premise to the already existing multicultural debates. The very presence of immigrants might remind the natives of what they had to pay for bearing the “burden of multiculturalism”. A rigorous sentence would dissipate the hate towards the culprit, but the constant presence of immigrants might keep on reminding the natives of what they lost one black Friday.
The statement that Breivik made after the arrest reveals that far-right extremists are in search of radically-novel starting premises and operational possibilities. For him, what needs to be checked immediately is the voyaging of the Norwegian state towards a multicultural identity. But unlike his neo-Nazi precursors, Breivik found it worth only when set out to “get some natives”.
There was no ‘direct place' for the immigrant foreigners in his scheme of things, as they are not the dearest of the State. He chose the youth leaders of the ruling Labour party, which, as he said before the court, is “deconstructing Norwegian culture by mass-importing Muslims”. His comment while admitting the guilt “the killings are gruesome but necessary”, the request he made for an open court hearing, and his claim about “two more cells” outside Norway — all points towards the birth pangs of a new far-right breed in Europe.
The horror events that played out on July 22 cannot be contained to the Norwegian local politics. It has certain subtle socio-political undertones of global relevance, particularly that of Europe. The Norwegian premier has insisted that the country would respond with more openness and greater political participation. However, once relieved of the shock from the dire event, some of the far-right leaders in Europe have started sympathising with Breivik's underlying motivation.
Seeing the Oslo carnage as the fault of a multi-racial society, far-right extremists from Italy, Sweden and France blame the very idea of multiculturalism. “In a Norwegian Norway this tragedy would never have happened”, was the comment by a local Swedish politician. These responses clearly indicate that the ‘‘Norway shootings” is the warning symptom of a new far-right political paranoia, rather than mere horrific acts of a deranged mind.
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