Norwegian massacre: an extreme reflection of growing malaise
The 22 July Norwegian massacre was the act of a deranged individual and is unlikely to be repeated anywhere else in Europe, let alone become a template for an ongoing campaign of terror. Nevertheless, the act was symptomatic of a discontent that has been growing in Europe for some time and which can be seen in the gradual increase in support for parties of the far right. There are three key factors at work behind this growing discontent.
The first is immigration. In Norway’s case, out of a population of 4.9m, around 790,000 are either immigrants or people born to one or more immigrant parents. This amounts to 16% of the population. Some 11% of the population are first-generation immigrants or people born to two immigrant parents. Islam is now the second-largest religion in Norway, adhered to by 3.4% of the population.
Compounding the immigration issue, which after all has been a hot political topic since the 1960s, has been the gradual erosion of the taboo against overt antagonism towards immigrants. This is a direct consequence of the attacks on Europe and America by jihadist terrorists, which have legitimized to some extent the anathematization of Muslims.
The jihadist attacks, and the failure of many Muslims to integrate into their host communities, have lent credence to the intellectual case against immigration espoused by the late British Conservative politician, and long-term anti-immigration activist, Enoch Powell.
Powell’s case was, in his own words, “neither genetic or eugenic”. He argued that his opposition was not racial but political and based on his belief that “self-identification of each part with the whole is the one essential prerequisite of being a parliamentary nation...” Immigrant participation in the jihadist campaign against the West, and the vocal opposition of many Muslim communities in Europe to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has for many people demonstrated the failure of Muslim communities in much of Europe to pass Powell’s test of “self-identification with the whole”.
The second factor is the growing backlash against the dilution of national sovereignty, particularly but not exclusively through the transfer of powers to the European Union. One example that has caused increasing antagonism is the scope-creep of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). A recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (which is responsible for enforcing the ECHR) caused outrage in Britain with its insistence that all convicted prisoners should be entitled to vote in elections, contrary to a long-standing British restriction on the rights of prisoners.
The third factor at work is that the collective memory of the excesses of fascism in Europe is fading. It is now nearly 80 years since Nazism was defeated, and 36 years since the last holdout of fascism in Europe – Franco in Spain – departed the scene in 1975, a year after the ending of the Greek junta.
For all these reasons, far more significant than the mad bloodletting of Anders Breivic has been the gradual advance of far-right parties in Europe’s parliaments. The European Union parliament, for instance, has 37 members from far-right parties. The recent successes in Western European countries include:
- Austria: The Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) won 16% of the vote in the 2010 presidential election.
- Belgium: In 2009, the Flemish separatist Vlaams Belang party won 21 out of 124 seats in the Flemish parliament. In 2010 it won 3 out of 74 seats in the Belgian Senate and 12 of the 150 seats in the Chamber of Representatives.
- Denmark: In the last parliamentary elections in 2007, the Danish People’s Party achieved 13.9% of the vote, winning 25 out of 179 seats.
- France: Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, could gain around 23% of the vote in the first round of the 2012 presidential election according to opinion polls, which, until President Sarkozy’s poll-bounce following his leading role in the second Greek bail-out, would have put her ahead of the incumbent president as the preferred candidate of the right.
- Italy: The governing coalition is made up of three right-wing parties, which between them won 102 of 630 seats in the 2008 elections.
- Netherlands: In the 2010 legislative elections, the far-right anti-immigration PVV won 24 out of 150 seats, making it the third-biggest party in parliament.
- Sweden: The extreme right-wing Sweden Democrats won 5.7% of the vote in 2010, to give the party 20 out of 349 seats in parliament.
It also needs noting that there is a significant well of nationalist feeling in Eastern Europe. The component countries of the former Yugoslavia, for instance, do not take their nationhood lightly.
The one element of the Norwegian massacre that should really concern the European political elite is the fact that the violence was so clearly directed at it, not at immigrants. It was the sons and daughters of the ruling Labour Party elite who were targeted. This alienation of the ruled from the rulers in Europe has been seen in far less extreme forms for some time, such as with the Dutch and French votes against the EU constitution in 2005 and with the Irish vote against the subsequent Lisbon Treaty in 2008 (the Dutch and French governments ratified the Lisbon Treaty without risking further referendums, while the Irish voters had to be asked to vote again and to get the right answer, which they did in 2009).
Revulsion at the Norwegian massacre may for a time dampen down enthusiasm for the far-right in Europe, but it won’t dampen down the growing reluctance to accept at face value the refrain of Europe’s ruling elite that “we know best”, not least because of the further damage being caused to the elite’s reputation for ‘knowing best’ by the crisis in the Eurozone. JdeC.