Owning a madman
Why Europes far-right cannot run away from Breivik now?
After the March 11,2004,Madrid train bombings,a Spanish newspaper headline framed the public’s question: “ETA O AL-QAEDA? (ETA or al-Qaeda?)”. While the investigation didn’t establish a direct al-Qaeda link,the Basque separatist ETA’s involvement was discounted. That came 21 months after March 2004,yet then Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar’s Popular Party,which had jumped to the instinctive “It’s ETA!” conclusion while still ahead in the opinion polls,lost the general election held three days after the bombings,bringing the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party to power. Spain’s involvement in Iraq was very unpopular at home,and the equation was,retrospectively,simple: if the attacks were Islamist,the left would benefit; if homegrown,the right would save its neck.
There’s no equivalence between ETA’s “homegrown” terror and far-right fringe “lunatics” like Anders Behring Breivik envisioning blood-drenched utopias. Except,the neat reversal of the Spanish outcome in Norway and,by extension,in Scandinavia and Europe. The 2004 Spanish vote was a one-off case,punishing the right for a particular policy that invited the Islamists’ wrath. If the Oslo and Utoeya carnages had been Islamist,they would have helped the right-wing Progress Party (currently the second largest in parliament). After Breivik,Norwegians aren’t likely to remove the Labour Party from power any time soon.
Which is why,the current predicament of Europe’s far-right — running for cover for a change,turning up with placards and mourning in front of Norwegian embassies — is a desperate performance. The far-right never shies of publicity. Now,for all the talk of Breivik’s anti-Islamism,how many of his victims were third-world Muslim immigrants? He targeted his A and B Category enemies (as he advised the Hindu right to do their own) — those who enforced “Cultural Marxism” in Europe and helped its “Islamisation”. That would be the Labour Party. So it’s right to ask if far-right activists would have jumped to condemn and rushed to mourn had Breivik’s victims been mostly,only Muslim immigrants. The far-right blogs have been ruing that Breivik the Fool massacred the children of his own race!
To explain a Breivik running amok,killing kids and penning 1,500-page tomes (much of it lifted from online ideologues and copy-pasted),something in his shared ideological space has to be investigated. His political antecedents and recent online activities apart,he has been a loner for some years. There’s a problem of ideological space that led to the Norway events. Now,isn’t the far-right’s electoral mainstreaming that’s bringing its ideology closer to more and more conservative voters (an extremism also at once mitigated by the very fact of contesting polls) an expansion the far-right would never have achieved otherwise? Ironically,it would seem the far-right’s electoral success is making Europe vulnerable to the fringe individual on a killing spree.
It appears,this toning down is alienating the most extreme elements who are then left without an ideological space where their fanaticism would find an audience and also,simultaneously,be moderated by the presence of others. Breivik had been a member of the Progress Party in his youth,which he left for fringe outfits,whereon he moved to embark on a fantastic medieval crusade. So the legitimisation of the far-right has created outcasts among their midst who may all be waiting to do a Breivik. At least one analyst has already pointed out this was exactly the case with left-wing extremism in Europe,as with the Red Army Faction or Baader-Meinhof Group. The electoral route chosen by far-left outfits and their shift to the social democratic political space was a failure that shut all doors for the militants except downright violence.
That’s why,the far-right,which has a stake in national parliaments now,has understood the import of Breivik. He’s being called “a conservative catastrophe”,who may have just extended the tenures of social democratic governments and improved the prospects of social democratic oppositions in the next rounds of national elections. Thus,they rush to condemn and mourn.
Which brings us to the heart of the far-right’s worry — how representative is Breivik? Friendliness towards Jews and Slavs,cheering on Hindu nationalists — the first two certainly would be anathema for neo-Nazis,the first and third for most Christian fundamentalists. Yet,the far-right blogs,busy distancing themselves from Breivik’s violence,will find it hard to disown him (publicly as a fringe lunatic,privately as a hotchpotch). Pro-Americanism,a suspension of anti-Semitism,militant Christianity,admiration for the Tea Party — these are markers of an evolving far-right legitimising itself. The Jewish Defence League’s common cause with the English Defence League is the kind of “crossover” that makes it impossible to isolate Breivik. One thing unites them all and forms the beginning and end of Breivik’s manifesto: anti-Islamism. Breivik’s hatred defines the far-right. He is every bit their own. He will cost them votes.
sudeep.paul@expressindia.com
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