Sunday, July 24, 2011 6:29:08 AM
Norway killer attacked multicuturalism, Islam online
By Johan Ahlander and Victoria Klesty
OSLO | Sat Jul 23, 2011 9:24am EDT
OSLO (Reuters) - The Norwegian charged with going on a killing spree in which at least 91 people died is a former member of a populist anti-immigration party who wrote blogs attacking multiculturalism and Islam.
The suspect, detained after 84 people were gunned down at a youth camp and another 7 killed in a bomb attack on Friday, has been identified by Norwegian media as Anders Behring Breivik.
Website entries under Breivik's name criticized European policies of trying to accommodate the cultures of different ethic groups, and claimed a significant minority of young British Moslems back radical Islamic militancy.
"When did multiculturalism cease to be an ideology designed to deconstruct European culture, traditions, identity and nation-states?" said one entry, posted on February 2, 2010 on the right-wing website www.document.no.
"According to two studies, 13 percent of young British Muslims aged between 15 and 25 support al Qaeda ideology," said another entry dated February 16 last year.
Police searched an apartment in an Oslo suburb on Friday, but neighbors said the home belonged to Breivik's mother, whom they described as a nice lady.
Deputy Police Chief Roger Andresen would not speculate on the motives for what was believed to be the deadliest attack by a lone gunman anywhere in modern times. But they said the man in custody had described himself on his Facebook page as leaning toward right-wing Christianity.
Breivik had also been a member of the Progress Party, the second largest in parliament, the party's head of communications Fredrik Farber said. Breivik was a member from 2004 to 2006 and in its youth party from 1997-2006/2007.
The Progress Party wants far tighter restrictions on immigration, whereas the center-left government backs multiculturalism. The party leads some polls of public opinion.
Progress leader Siv Jensen stressed he had left the party. "He is not a member any more," she told Reuters. "It makes me very sad that he was a member at an earlier point. He was never very active and we have a hard time finding anyone who knows much about him."
Farber said: "He was a member and had some participation in the local chapter in Oslo but stopped paying his membership dues and ceased being a member in 2006 or 2007."
Breivik was also a freemason, said a spokesman for the organization. Freemasons meet in secretive fraternal groups in many parts of the world.
(Additional reporting by Patrick Lannin; editing by David Stamp)
© Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/23/us-norway-killer-idUSTRE76M1P420110723 [with comments]
===
Norway attacks: Anders Behring Breivik was active member of far-right party
Anders Behring Breivik was active in far-right politics, and had held several positions in one of Norway's biggest parties.
By Laura Donnelly
9:00PM BST 23 Jul 2011
Despite a proud reputation for peace and tolerance, Norway is a country which has suffered increased tensions over race and immigration in recent years.
In the home of the Nobel Peace Prize, the far right has attracted increasing support both at the ballot box and on the streets.
Behind the growth in extremism lie concerns about a rising numbers of immigrants, in a struggling economy.
In parliament, the anti-immigration Progress Party is now the second largest group, winning one in five votes at the last election.
Commentators have likened the party - Fremskrittspartiet in Norwegian -to the French National Front and the Dutch Pim Fortuyn List, though its leadership says it is much more liberal.
And earlier this year a report by the Norwegian Police Security Service noted an “increase in the activity of far-right extremist circles” and predicted this would continue.
It also warned that “a higher degree of activism in groups hostile to Islam may lead to an increased use of violence”, although it concluded that Islamist extremists were the greater threat.
Kari Helene Partapuoli, director of the non-governmental Norwegian Centre against Racism, said yesterday that fringe groups had hardened their rhetoric about Islam and immigration, which has turned Oslo into Europe’s fastest growing city.
The percentage of immigrants in the population has grown from 2 per cent in 1970 to 11 per cent. The nation’s 163,000 Muslims make up 3.4 per cent of the population, and analysts say that Islam has been a particular flashpoint.
The Progress Party, created in 1973, campaigned against immigration, saying it placed too great a burden on Norway’s generous welfare state.
In recent years it has shifted to a broader attack, saying that immigrants are failing to integrate and creating tension in a small and culturally cohesive country.
However it denies holding neo-Nazi views. The charge is particularly explosive in a country which fought a bitter resistance campaign against German occupiers during World War II, and whose war-time prime minister, the Nazi sympathiser Vidkun Quisling, is a byword for collaboration.
Since Siv Jensen became leader in 2006 the Progress Party has made efforts to tone down its extremist image. Whereas mainstream party once shunned the fringe group, the centre-right Conservatives have recently considered co-operating.
Ms Jensen said it was “absolutely terrible” to learn that Anders Behring Breivik had been a Progress activist, but insisted “this is not the time for analysis” about it.
Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s Labour prime minister, attempted to quell panic over the scale of the far right’s activities, and to appeal to the country’s tradition of democracy and tolerance.
“This is dramatic, it’s frightening, but we must not allow ourselves to be scared,” Mr Stoltenberg said. “We stand for an open society, and open democracy in Norway, and violence like this can’t scare us.”
He said the country did not have a notable problem with far-right wing extremism, and that police were now looking into these groups following the attacks.
While tensions have simmered, flashpoints have been rare.
One of the most public came last year, when a photograph of a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad printed on the front page of Norwegian tabloid Dagbladet sparked mass protests including wildcat strikes by taxi drivers, many of whom are Muslim.
The country’s tradition of tolerance reflects a population which is broadly Christian, but distinctly unevangelical about it.
While most are baptised as members of the Protestant Church of Norway, very few people attend services. Latest figures suggest just 2 per cent of Norwegians attend church weekly, the lowest percentage in Europe.
Across the Nordic countries, a rise in the far right has produced a backlash. In the mid 1990s Stieg Larsson, the late crime writer, founded an anti-racist publication in Sweden following a rise in violence carried out by neo-Nazis.
While the Swedish movement had gained momentum, and was tightly controlled, groups in Norway a the time were disorganised and largely incoherent, he said.
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8656966/Norway-attacks-Anders-Behring-Breivik-was-active-member-of-far-right-party.html [with comments]
===
Norway attacks: Utøya gunman boasted of links to UK far right
Anders Brehing Breivik, the man accused of the murders on Utøya and the bomb in Oslo, claimed to have links to far right groups across Europe.
Photograph: Getty
Anders Brehing Breivik took part in online discussions with members of the EDL and other anti-Islamic groups
Mark Townsend in Sundvollen, Peter Beaumont and Tracy McVeigh guardian.co.uk, Saturday 23 July 2011 18.59 BST
Anders Behring Breivik, the man accused of the murder of at least 92 Norwegians in a bomb and gun massacre, boasted online about his discussions with the far-right English Defence League and other anti-Islamic European organisations.
The Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, said Norwegian officials were working with foreign intelligence agencies to see if there was any international involvement in the slaughter. "We have running contact with other countries' intelligence services," he said.
Breivik was arrested on Utøya island where he shot and killed at least 85 people, mostly teenagers, at a youth summer camp for supporters of Norway's Labour party after bombing Oslo's government district just hours before. Dressed as a police officer, he ordered the teenagers to gather round him before opening fire. Survivors described how dozens of people were mown down. The massacre led to the largest death toll ever recorded by a single gunman on the rampage.
Ida Knudsen, 16, said she had been in a group of 100 who had initially run from the killer, but that was reduced to about 60 as the gunman pursued them. Eventually she was one of 12 who climbed into a boat and escaped.
Another survivor, 15-year-old Mattori Anson, described how he fled into a cabin with 40 other teenagers. They blocked the door and the killer tried to get inside. "Then he began shooting at the door." Eventually he gave up and the occupants all survived.
With the entire island a crime scene, officers were still combing the shoreline on Saturday and boats were searching the water for more bodies amid fears the toll could rise further. Police were continuing to investigate whether there had been a second gunman on the island.
The disclosure of Breivik's claimed links with far-right organisations came as details continued to emerge about the rightwing Christian fundamentalist and Freemason behind Norway's worst postwar act of violence.
It was revealed that the 32-year-old former member of the country's conservative Progress party – who had become ever more extreme in his hatred of Muslims, leftwingers and the country's political establishment – had ordered six tonnes of fertiliser in May to be used in the bombing. While police continued to interrogate Breivik, who was charged with the mass killings, evidence of his increasingly far-right world-view emerged from an article he had posted on several Scandinavian websites, including Nordisk, a site frequented by neo-Nazis, far-right radicals and Islamophobes since 2009.
The Norwegian daily VG quoted one of Breivik's friends, saying that he had become a rightwing extremist in his late 20s and was now a strong opponent of multiculturalism, expressing strong nationalistic views in online debates.
Breivik had talked admiringly online about conversations he had had with unnamed English Defence League members and the organisation Stop the Islamification of Europe (SIOE) over the success of provocative street actions leading to violence.
"I have on some occasions had discussions with SIOE and EDL and recommended them to use certain strategies," he wrote two years ago. "The tactics of the EDL are now to 'lure' an overreaction from the Jihad Youth/Extreme-Marxists, something they have succeeded in doing several times already."
Contacted by email, the EDL had not answered.
The latest disclosures came as the Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, flew by helicopter to a hotel in the town of Sundvollen – close to the island of Utøya – where many survivors were taken and where relatives converged to reunite with loved ones or identify their dead.
"A whole world is thinking of them," Stoltenberg said, his voice cracking with emotion. He said the twin attack made Friday the deadliest day in Norway's peacetime history. "This is beyond comprehension. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare for those who have been killed, for their mothers and fathers, family and friends."
Buildings around the capital lowered their flags to half-mast while people streamed to Oslo cathedral to light candles and lay flowers. Outside, mourners began building a makeshift altar from dug-up cobblestones. On Saturday the Queen wrote to Norway's King Harald to offer her condolences and express her shock and sadness.
Breivik's Facebook page was blocked, but a cached version describes a conservative Christian from Oslo. The profile veers between references to lofty political philosophers and gory popular films, television shows and video games. The account appears to have been set up on 17 July. The site lists no "friends" or social connections.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/23/norway-attacks-utoya-gunman
===
Norway did not see far-right as 'serious threat'
Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg says he will not speculate on the gunman's motives.
AFP
First posted July 23, 2011 22:28:04
Updated July 23, 2011 23:28:20
Norwegian intelligence did not consider the far-right as a serious threat to society and instead primarily feared an attack by Islamist extremists, according to an official report published this year.
With its forces involved in the NATO campaigns in both Afghanistan and Libya, Friday's tragic twin attacks prompted speculation that the country could have been paying a price for its participation in the Western alliance.
But after the arrest of a 32-year-old ethnic Norwegian, whom police have described as a fundamentalist Christian with political opinions that leaned to the right, there has been a fundamental shift in focus.
Norway's prime minister Jens Stoltenberg has refused to comment directly on the motives of the gunman who shot dead at least 84 people at a summer youth camp after seven other people were killed in a bomb attack in Oslo.
But in a press conference on Saturday, the prime minister denied that right-wing extremism was a particular problem for Norway.
"Compared to other countries I would not say we have a big problem with right-wing extremists in Norway," he said.
"We have had some groups, we have followed them before, and our police is aware that there are some right-wing extreme groups, or at least have been some groups of that kind in Norway.
"We will not speculate, we will wait for the investigation from the police before we say anything about this particular case but its part of the work of our police to follow this kind of right wing extreme group."
In its annual threat assessment report released earlier this year, the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) had detected a rise in far-right activity but said "the lack of strong leaders limits the growth of these groups."
"There was an increase in the activity of far-right extremist groups in 2010, and this activity is expected to continue in 2011," the PST said.
However, "as in previous years, the far-right and far-left extremist communities will not represent a serious threat to Norwegian society in 2011," the report added.
The same report said there were indications of contacts between Norwegian far-right extremists and criminal groups, which could give far-right activists easier access to weapons and "thereby increase the potential for violence."
According to the TV2 channel, the arrested suspect possessed two weapons registered in his name. Other Norwegian media reported that the suspect, widely named as Anders Behring Breivik, was interested in hunting and computer games like World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 2.
© 2011 AFP
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-23/norway-did-not-see-far-right-as-27serious-threat27/2807566
===
Norway attacks: police investigate fears main suspect was part of a larger terror group
Anders Behring Breivik
Photo: AP
Norwegian police were urgently trying to piece together the movements of Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right activist responsible for the murders of almost 100 people, amid fears he may have been part of a wider terror network.
By Robert Mendick, Edward Malnick and Harriet Alexander in Oslo
9:00PM BST 23 Jul 2011
Officers were interrogating Breivik, who was captured on Friday about three hours after planting a bomb in central Oslo before going on a shooting rampage on an island 25 miles away.
Acting Chief of Police Sveinung Sponheim said: "He has had a dialogue with the police the whole time, but he's a very demanding suspect."
They were also poring over his computer, looking for links to other extremists.
It emerged on Saturday that the massive bomb that devastated the political centre of Oslo was manufactured from six tons of fertiliser bought by Breivik just ten weeks ago.
A silver-grey van seized by officers near Utoya island was also being examined by forensic teams in the hunt for clues. Breivik used the van to drive from Oslo to Utoya.
Police chief Sponheim said: "Forensics experts are going through his computer and looking for any kind of electronic traces. It's very difficult at this point to say if he was acting alone or if he was part of a larger network."
The officer told how Breivik, after being surrounded by police, gave himself up rather than continuing to shoot. At the time he was in possession of two guns. It is not clear if he had run out of ammunition.
"The police caught him and when they did he put down his weapons," said the spokesman, adding, "There's a difference in calibre between the hand weapon and the automatic gun so forensics are now investigating whether there could have been more weapons used."
Police chief Sponheim said body parts remained in government buildings which could not be searched because of the structural damage caused by the power of the blast.
"The buildings in the city centres are very fragile and it is dangerous to search [them]. We know that there are remains of bodies in the ruins of the buildings and it's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle and a difficult search. There are body parts in the buildings.
"The security advice and restrictions are still in place and we're asking people to stay away from the areas which have been cordoned off in the city centre."
He said the van which was now in possession of police was "the car that he used from Oslo to Utoya".
As police tried to piece together Breivik's movements in the days and hours before and after the attack, questions were being asked about why security was so lax in the streets around the Prime Minister's official office and other government buildings, targeted by Breivik.
The explosion caused carnage at the heart of the Norwegian government. Seven people died in the blast and many dozens more were wounded, several of them suffering life-threatening injuries that required emergency treatment at hospitals in the city.
Victims have still to be named officially although it was confirmed last night two members of the Norwegian civil service were among those killed.
At the scene of the blast on Saturday, the carnage was evident. Windows were blown out in buildings as far as five blocks away while in the immediate vicinity of Grubbegata Street, which runs alongside the Ministry of petroleum and Energy and the Prime Minister's office, there was utter devastation.
The road and the pavements around the building were still covered in twisted metal and broken glass yesterday while official documents blown out of offices by the force of the explosion still lay strewn in the street.
Other buildings badly damaged included the nearby Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health.
With buildings so badly damaged, police were reluctant to search them until they had been made safe.
Eyewitnesses had described how the bomb went off at a 3.26 pm local time the day before, wreaking havoc. Bodies lay strewn in the street; torsos hanging out of office windows. Blood poured from the wounds of the injured as emergency services took the wounded to two hospitals in the city.
"Some people covered with blood are lying in the street," said Ingunn Andersen, who had been drinking a coffee nearby, "There was glass everywhere. It was total chaos. The windows of all the surrounding buildings have been blown out."
Precise details on how Breivik had struck remain scant. Police sources suggested the bomb was left in a brown delivery van parked on Grubbegata Street, just a few yards from the energy ministry. The van acted as shrapnel sending pieces of metal flying through the air, causing terror on a catastrophic scale.
Police were collecting CCTV footage from the site of the bomb blast and from toll road booths between the city centre and Utoya where Breivik went on a shooting spree killing a further 91 people - most of them teenagers - at an island youth camp.
Breivik is thought to have parked the van outside the oil ministry and walked away. The bomb was likely detonated by a timer device rather than by a more sophisticated remote signal.
Before the explosion, Breivik is thought to have got into a silver/grey van and then driven to Utoya.
The lack of security outside the government building will raise serious questions. Ironically the roads were due to be blocked off to traffic with work on constructing barriers due to begin in September after a debate over security that had being going on since the September 11 2001 attacks on New York.
The barriers would have come two months too late to save the lives of those blown up on Friday.
An agricultural supply company Felleskjopet said yesterday the fertiliser had been delivered to Breivik on May 4, just ten weeks before the bombing. The scale of the delivery to a man who had set up a farming business in 2009 was not considered anything out of the ordinary, the supplier said yesterday.
The company's spokeswoman Oddny Estenstad said yesterday that the company alerted police to the purchase after Breivik was named.
Police searching breivik's farm found three tons of artificial fertiliser, suggesting as much as three tons went into making the bomb.
Fertiliser is highly explosive and has been used in past terrorist atrocities to starling effect. How Breivik learnt to make a bomb - and whether he had outside help - will be subject of the police investigation. Bomb-making guidance can be found on the internet.
Norway's prime minister Jens Stoltenberg insisted Norway would not allow the attacks to undermine the fundamental values of its society. "We are an open society, a democratic society, we are a society where we have a very close relationship between politicians and the people," he said.
At Ulleval Hospital - one of Oslo's main hospitals, in the north west of the city - pairs of armed police were on guard duty outside the main entrance, as well as the hospital ward where some of the victims were being treated.
Beate Orbeck, a hospital spokeswoman, said that the hospital was treating 28 patients from both the island and central Oslo blasts. "Most of them are in a serious condition," she said but declined to give further details.
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8657141/Norway-attacks-police-investigate-fears-main-suspect-was-part-of-a-larger-terror-group.html [with comments]
===
Norway attack: Right-wing extremism emerging?
European governments facing possibility of new threat — 'equivalent of Oklahoma City'
By William Maclean, security correspondent
Reuters
updated 7/22/2011 10:11:15 PM ET 2011-07-23T02:11:15
ANALYSIS
LONDON — A report that Norway's bomb and gun rampage may be the work of a far-right militant confronts Europe with the possibility that a new paramilitary threat is emerging, a decade after al-Qaida's Sept. 11 attacks.
One analyst called the attacks possibly Europe's "Oklahoma City" moment, a reference to American right-wing militant Timothy McVeigh who detonated a truck bomb at a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.
Police forces in many western European countries worry about rising far-right sentiment, fueled by a toxic mix of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry and increasing economic hardship.
But violence, while sometimes fatal, has rarely escalated beyond group thuggery and the use of knives.
That may have changed in Oslo and on the holiday island of Utoya on Friday. Seven people were killed in a bombing in the capital — Western Europe's worst since the 2005 London al-Qaida-linked suicide attacks that killed 52 people — and at least 80 in a shooting rampage by a lake.
Independent Norwegian television TV2 reported on Saturday that the Norwegian man detained after the attacks had links to right-wing extremism [ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43854355/ns/world_news-europe/t/least-dead-norway-youth-camp-attack/ ].
Police were searching a flat in west Oslo where he lived, TV2 said.
"If true this would be pretty significant — such a far-right attack in Europe, and certainly Scandinavia, would be unprecedented," said Hagai Segal, a security specialist at New York University in London.
"It would be the European/Scandinavian equivalent of Oklahoma City — an attack by a individual (with extremist anti-government views, linked to certain groups) aimed at the government by attacking its buildings/institutions."
"The next key question is whether he was acting alone, or whether he is part of a group."
A report by European police agency Europol on security in 2010 said that there was no right-wing terrorism on the continent in that period.
Growing professionalism
But it added the far right was becoming very professional at producing online propaganda of an anti-Semitic and xenophobic nature and was increasingly active in online social networking.
"Although the overall threat from right-wing extremism appears to be on the wane and the numbers of right-wing extremist criminal offences are relatively low, the professionalism in their propaganda and organization shows that right-wing extremist groups have the will to enlarge and spread their ideology and still pose a threat in EU member states," it said.
If the unrest in the Arab world, especially in North Africa, leads to a major influx of immigrants into Europe, "right-wing extremism and terrorism might gain a new lease of life by articulating more widespread public apprehension about immigration from Muslim countries into Europe," it added.
Public manifestations of right-wing extremism can often provoke counter-activity by extreme left-wing groups. Such confrontations invariably result in physical violence.
In May 2010, a far-right supporter was assaulted and knifed in Sweden during a demonstration staged by a white supremacist movement. An activist was arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault and attempted murder.
The Swedish Security Service says on its website that the so-called White Power scene is made up individuals, groups and networks with right-wing extremist views prepared to use violence for political gain.
In a speech in September 2010, Jonathan Evans, the Director-General of Britain's MI5 Security Service, cited a notorious far-right militant in a passage describing the security outlook for the country.
"Determination can take you a long way and even determined amateurs can cause devastation. The case of the neo-Nazi David Copeland, who attacked the gay and ethnic minority communities with such appalling results in 1999, is a good example of the threat posed by the determined lone bomber."
Copeland struck three targets in London with nail bombs. Three people were killed and scores were wounded at a gay bar in Soho. It followed attacks against the Muslim community in Brick Lane, east London, and a market in Brixton, south London.
In an unclassified 2011 national security outlook published by the Norway Police Security Service (PST) in February 2011, the service said it saw a picture of "increased uncertainty."
Part of that was due to what it called an expected increased level of activity in 2011 by far-right militants.
"Norwegian far-right extremists are in contact with Swedish far-right extremists, as well as with other far-right extremist groups in Europe. Contact also takes place between Norwegian and Russian far-right extremists," it said.
"An increased level of activity among some anti-Islamic groups could lead to increased polarization and unease, especially during, and in connection with, commemorations and demonstrations."
In Britain, police chiefs and Muslim groups are worried about a rise in attacks by far-right groups, and in 2009 one senior officer, Commander Shaun Sawyer, from London's counter-terrorism unit, told a meeting of the Muslim Safety Forum that senior officers had increased surveillance of suspects to monitor their ability to stage attacks.
"I fear that they will have a spectacular ... They will carry out an attack that will lead to a loss of life or injury to a community somewhere," he said.
An analysis by Michael Whine, the Government and International Affairs Director at the Community Security Trust, an agency of the UK Jewish community, said the willingness to employ extreme violence in defense of European 'values' is apparent in the ideology of several groups, among them the British Patriots of the White European Resistance (POWER), which emerged in 2006, and which claims supporters in Croatia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Sweden.
Security specialist Segal said of Friday's bombing and shootings: "The tactics and actuality of these attacks would be quite striking if carried out by a domestic far-right actor - trying to kill Norway's PM is one thing and not surprising from any extremist elements, but killing average citizens in this manner is very, very unusual indeed for far-right/supremacists, and certainly for ones in Europe."
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43859395/ns/world_news-europe/t/norway-attack-right-wing-extremism-emerging/ [with comments]
===
Norway Attacks Put Spotlight on Rise of Right-Wing Sentiment in Europe
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in Berlin on Saturday. She said that the sort of hatred behind the Norway attacks went against "freedom, respect and the belief in peaceful coexistence."
Joerg Carstensen/European Pressphoto Agency
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France held a nationwide debate on "national identity" last year and earlier this year banned Muslim full-face veils.
Jock Fistick/Bloomberg News
British Prime Minister David Cameron told the Munich security conference in February that the country's decades-old policy of multiculturalism had encouraged "segregated communities" where Islamic extremism can thrive.
Andy Rain/European Pressphoto Agency
More Photos »
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/07/22/world/europe/20110723-norway.html
By NICHOLAS KULISH
Published: July 23, 2011
BERLIN — The attacks in Oslo on Friday have riveted new attention on right-wing extremists not just in Norway but across Europe, where opposition to Muslim immigrants, globalization, the power of the European Union and the drive toward multiculturalism has proven a potent political force and, in a few cases, a spur to violence.
The success of populist parties appealing to a sense of lost national identity has brought criticism of minorities, immigrants and in particular Muslims out of the beer halls and Internet chat rooms and into mainstream politics. While the parties themselves generally do not condone violence, some experts say a climate of hatred in the political discourse has encouraged violent individuals.
“I’m not surprised when things like the bombing in Norway happen, because you will always find people who feel more radical means are necessary,” said Joerg Forbrig, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin who has studied far-right issues in Europe. “It literally is something that can happen in a number of places and there are broader problems behind it.”
Last November a Swedish man was arrested in the southern city of Malmö in connection with more than a dozen unsolved shootings of immigrants, including one fatality. The shootings, nine of which took place between June and October 2010, appeared to be the work of an isolated individual. More broadly in Sweden, though, the far-right Sweden Democrats experienced new success at the polls. The party entered Parliament for the first time after winning 5.7 percent of the vote in the general election last September.
The bombing and shootings in Oslo also have served as a wake-up call for security services in Europe and the United States that in recent years have become so focused on Islamic terrorists that they may have underestimated the threat of domestic radicals, including those upset by what they see as the influence of Islam.
In the United States the deadly attacks have reawakened memories of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, where a right-wing extremist, Timothy J. McVeigh, used a fertilizer bomb to blow up a federal government building, killing 168 people. That deadly act had long since been overshadowed by the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
According to Mr. Forbrig, isolated right-wing groups in Europe would rise up and then quickly disappear from the ’60s into the ’90s. But in recent years far-right statements have appeared to lose much of their post-World War II taboo even among some prominent political parties.
A combination of increased migration from abroad and largely unrestricted movement of people within an enlarged European Union, such as the persecuted Roma minority, helped lay the groundwork for a nationalist, at times starkly chauvinist, revival.
Groups are gaining traction from Hungary to Italy, but it is particularly apparent in northern European countries that long have had liberal immigration policies. The rapid arrival of refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants, many of them Muslims, led to a significant backlash in places like Denmark, where the Danish People’s Party has 25 out of 179 seats in Parliament, and the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom won 15.5 percent of the vote in the 2010 general election.
Mr. Wilders famously compared the Koran, the holy book of Islam, to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” Both the Danish and Dutch right-wing parties are backing precarious minority governments while not directly participating by having ministers, and inching toward mainstream acceptance in the process.
Friday’s attacks were swiftly condemned by leaders from across the political spectrum in Europe. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel was particularly sharp in speaking out against what she called an “appalling crime.” The sort of hatred that could fuel such an action, she said, went against “freedom, respect and the belief in peaceful coexistence.”
Yet some of the primary motivations cited by the suspect in Norway, Anders Behring Breivik, are now mainstream issues. Mrs. Merkel, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Prime Minister David Cameron in Britain all recently declared an end to multiculturalism. Multiculturalism “has failed, utterly failed,” Mrs. Merkel told fellow Christian Democrats last October, though stressing that immigrants were welcome in Germany.
Perhaps the most surprising about-turn came in Britain, a country that has long considered itself among the most immigrant-friendly in Europe until a series of coordinated bomb attacks in London six years ago. In one of his most noticed speeches, Mr. Cameron told the Munich security conference in February that the country’s decades-old policy of multiculturalism had encouraged “segregated communities” where Islamic extremism can thrive.
France, a fiercely secularist state where all religion is banned from the public sphere, was long isolated and berated for its staunch opposition to the laissez-faire of multiculturalism. Girls who show up in public schools there with the Muslim headscarf are suspended, as are teachers or any other employees in the public sector.
If Mr. Sarkozy appeared to soften his understanding of official secularism, or “laïcité” earlier in his political career, even toying with the idea of affirmative action, he has recently scrambled to backtrack. He held a nationwide debate on “national identity” last year and earlier this year banned Muslim full-face veils like niqab, as well as the burqa.
That hasn’t stopped the far-right National Front, now led by Marine Le Pen, the daughter of its founder, to surge in opinion polls, with some surveys predicting that she might make it into next year’s presidential runoff. She compared Muslims praying in the streets outside overcrowded mosques to the Nazi occupation, and decries the European Union and the euro.
Earlier this month the daily newspaper Berliner Zeitung reported that neo-Nazis were attacking the offices of the far-left Left Party with increasing frequency. In the former East German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, statistics showed that there were 30 such attacks in the first half of 2011 compared to 44 attacks in all of 2010.
Due to its Nazi past, Germany keeps a watchful eye on right-wing extremists, and the parties of the far right have a hard time gaining traction, with no representatives in Parliament. In Finland, the True Finns, a populist nationalist party founded in 1995, became the third largest party [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/world/europe/19iht-finland19.html ] represented in the Finnish Parliament after winning 19 percent of the vote in April. And Norway’s Progress Party, a right-wing populist party, is the second largest in the country, winning 23 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary election in September 2009.
“The Norwegian right-wing groups have always been disorganized, haven’t had charismatic leaders or the kind of well-organized groups with financial support that you see in Sweden,” said Kari Helene Partapuoli, director of the Norwegian Center against Racism. “But in the last two or three years our organization and other antifascist networks have warned of an increased temperature of debate and that violent groups had been established.”
But neither does Norway exist in a vacuum. Its right-wing scene is connected to the rest of Europe through the Internet forums where hate speech proliferates and through right-wing demonstrations that draw an international mix of participants.
“This may be the act of a lone, mad, paranoid individual,” said Hajo Funke, a political scientist at the Free University in Berlin who studies rightist extremism, referring to the right-wing fundamentalist Christian charged in connection with the killings, “but the far-right milieu creates an atmosphere that can lead such people down that path of violence.”
Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger from Oslo, Katrin Bennhold from Paris, Stefan Pauly from Berlin, and Scott Shane from Washington.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/world/europe/24europe.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/world/europe/24europe.html?pagewanted=all ]
By Johan Ahlander and Victoria Klesty
OSLO | Sat Jul 23, 2011 9:24am EDT
OSLO (Reuters) - The Norwegian charged with going on a killing spree in which at least 91 people died is a former member of a populist anti-immigration party who wrote blogs attacking multiculturalism and Islam.
The suspect, detained after 84 people were gunned down at a youth camp and another 7 killed in a bomb attack on Friday, has been identified by Norwegian media as Anders Behring Breivik.
Website entries under Breivik's name criticized European policies of trying to accommodate the cultures of different ethic groups, and claimed a significant minority of young British Moslems back radical Islamic militancy.
"When did multiculturalism cease to be an ideology designed to deconstruct European culture, traditions, identity and nation-states?" said one entry, posted on February 2, 2010 on the right-wing website www.document.no.
"According to two studies, 13 percent of young British Muslims aged between 15 and 25 support al Qaeda ideology," said another entry dated February 16 last year.
Police searched an apartment in an Oslo suburb on Friday, but neighbors said the home belonged to Breivik's mother, whom they described as a nice lady.
Deputy Police Chief Roger Andresen would not speculate on the motives for what was believed to be the deadliest attack by a lone gunman anywhere in modern times. But they said the man in custody had described himself on his Facebook page as leaning toward right-wing Christianity.
Breivik had also been a member of the Progress Party, the second largest in parliament, the party's head of communications Fredrik Farber said. Breivik was a member from 2004 to 2006 and in its youth party from 1997-2006/2007.
The Progress Party wants far tighter restrictions on immigration, whereas the center-left government backs multiculturalism. The party leads some polls of public opinion.
Progress leader Siv Jensen stressed he had left the party. "He is not a member any more," she told Reuters. "It makes me very sad that he was a member at an earlier point. He was never very active and we have a hard time finding anyone who knows much about him."
Farber said: "He was a member and had some participation in the local chapter in Oslo but stopped paying his membership dues and ceased being a member in 2006 or 2007."
Breivik was also a freemason, said a spokesman for the organization. Freemasons meet in secretive fraternal groups in many parts of the world.
(Additional reporting by Patrick Lannin; editing by David Stamp)
© Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/23/us-norway-killer-idUSTRE76M1P420110723 [with comments]
===
Norway attacks: Anders Behring Breivik was active member of far-right party
Anders Behring Breivik was active in far-right politics, and had held several positions in one of Norway's biggest parties.
By Laura Donnelly
9:00PM BST 23 Jul 2011
Despite a proud reputation for peace and tolerance, Norway is a country which has suffered increased tensions over race and immigration in recent years.
In the home of the Nobel Peace Prize, the far right has attracted increasing support both at the ballot box and on the streets.
Behind the growth in extremism lie concerns about a rising numbers of immigrants, in a struggling economy.
In parliament, the anti-immigration Progress Party is now the second largest group, winning one in five votes at the last election.
Commentators have likened the party - Fremskrittspartiet in Norwegian -to the French National Front and the Dutch Pim Fortuyn List, though its leadership says it is much more liberal.
And earlier this year a report by the Norwegian Police Security Service noted an “increase in the activity of far-right extremist circles” and predicted this would continue.
It also warned that “a higher degree of activism in groups hostile to Islam may lead to an increased use of violence”, although it concluded that Islamist extremists were the greater threat.
Kari Helene Partapuoli, director of the non-governmental Norwegian Centre against Racism, said yesterday that fringe groups had hardened their rhetoric about Islam and immigration, which has turned Oslo into Europe’s fastest growing city.
The percentage of immigrants in the population has grown from 2 per cent in 1970 to 11 per cent. The nation’s 163,000 Muslims make up 3.4 per cent of the population, and analysts say that Islam has been a particular flashpoint.
The Progress Party, created in 1973, campaigned against immigration, saying it placed too great a burden on Norway’s generous welfare state.
In recent years it has shifted to a broader attack, saying that immigrants are failing to integrate and creating tension in a small and culturally cohesive country.
However it denies holding neo-Nazi views. The charge is particularly explosive in a country which fought a bitter resistance campaign against German occupiers during World War II, and whose war-time prime minister, the Nazi sympathiser Vidkun Quisling, is a byword for collaboration.
Since Siv Jensen became leader in 2006 the Progress Party has made efforts to tone down its extremist image. Whereas mainstream party once shunned the fringe group, the centre-right Conservatives have recently considered co-operating.
Ms Jensen said it was “absolutely terrible” to learn that Anders Behring Breivik had been a Progress activist, but insisted “this is not the time for analysis” about it.
Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s Labour prime minister, attempted to quell panic over the scale of the far right’s activities, and to appeal to the country’s tradition of democracy and tolerance.
“This is dramatic, it’s frightening, but we must not allow ourselves to be scared,” Mr Stoltenberg said. “We stand for an open society, and open democracy in Norway, and violence like this can’t scare us.”
He said the country did not have a notable problem with far-right wing extremism, and that police were now looking into these groups following the attacks.
While tensions have simmered, flashpoints have been rare.
One of the most public came last year, when a photograph of a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad printed on the front page of Norwegian tabloid Dagbladet sparked mass protests including wildcat strikes by taxi drivers, many of whom are Muslim.
The country’s tradition of tolerance reflects a population which is broadly Christian, but distinctly unevangelical about it.
While most are baptised as members of the Protestant Church of Norway, very few people attend services. Latest figures suggest just 2 per cent of Norwegians attend church weekly, the lowest percentage in Europe.
Across the Nordic countries, a rise in the far right has produced a backlash. In the mid 1990s Stieg Larsson, the late crime writer, founded an anti-racist publication in Sweden following a rise in violence carried out by neo-Nazis.
While the Swedish movement had gained momentum, and was tightly controlled, groups in Norway a the time were disorganised and largely incoherent, he said.
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8656966/Norway-attacks-Anders-Behring-Breivik-was-active-member-of-far-right-party.html [with comments]
===
Norway attacks: Utøya gunman boasted of links to UK far right
Anders Brehing Breivik, the man accused of the murders on Utøya and the bomb in Oslo, claimed to have links to far right groups across Europe.
Photograph: Getty
Anders Brehing Breivik took part in online discussions with members of the EDL and other anti-Islamic groups
Mark Townsend in Sundvollen, Peter Beaumont and Tracy McVeigh guardian.co.uk, Saturday 23 July 2011 18.59 BST
Anders Behring Breivik, the man accused of the murder of at least 92 Norwegians in a bomb and gun massacre, boasted online about his discussions with the far-right English Defence League and other anti-Islamic European organisations.
The Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, said Norwegian officials were working with foreign intelligence agencies to see if there was any international involvement in the slaughter. "We have running contact with other countries' intelligence services," he said.
Breivik was arrested on Utøya island where he shot and killed at least 85 people, mostly teenagers, at a youth summer camp for supporters of Norway's Labour party after bombing Oslo's government district just hours before. Dressed as a police officer, he ordered the teenagers to gather round him before opening fire. Survivors described how dozens of people were mown down. The massacre led to the largest death toll ever recorded by a single gunman on the rampage.
Ida Knudsen, 16, said she had been in a group of 100 who had initially run from the killer, but that was reduced to about 60 as the gunman pursued them. Eventually she was one of 12 who climbed into a boat and escaped.
Another survivor, 15-year-old Mattori Anson, described how he fled into a cabin with 40 other teenagers. They blocked the door and the killer tried to get inside. "Then he began shooting at the door." Eventually he gave up and the occupants all survived.
With the entire island a crime scene, officers were still combing the shoreline on Saturday and boats were searching the water for more bodies amid fears the toll could rise further. Police were continuing to investigate whether there had been a second gunman on the island.
The disclosure of Breivik's claimed links with far-right organisations came as details continued to emerge about the rightwing Christian fundamentalist and Freemason behind Norway's worst postwar act of violence.
It was revealed that the 32-year-old former member of the country's conservative Progress party – who had become ever more extreme in his hatred of Muslims, leftwingers and the country's political establishment – had ordered six tonnes of fertiliser in May to be used in the bombing. While police continued to interrogate Breivik, who was charged with the mass killings, evidence of his increasingly far-right world-view emerged from an article he had posted on several Scandinavian websites, including Nordisk, a site frequented by neo-Nazis, far-right radicals and Islamophobes since 2009.
The Norwegian daily VG quoted one of Breivik's friends, saying that he had become a rightwing extremist in his late 20s and was now a strong opponent of multiculturalism, expressing strong nationalistic views in online debates.
Breivik had talked admiringly online about conversations he had had with unnamed English Defence League members and the organisation Stop the Islamification of Europe (SIOE) over the success of provocative street actions leading to violence.
"I have on some occasions had discussions with SIOE and EDL and recommended them to use certain strategies," he wrote two years ago. "The tactics of the EDL are now to 'lure' an overreaction from the Jihad Youth/Extreme-Marxists, something they have succeeded in doing several times already."
Contacted by email, the EDL had not answered.
The latest disclosures came as the Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, flew by helicopter to a hotel in the town of Sundvollen – close to the island of Utøya – where many survivors were taken and where relatives converged to reunite with loved ones or identify their dead.
"A whole world is thinking of them," Stoltenberg said, his voice cracking with emotion. He said the twin attack made Friday the deadliest day in Norway's peacetime history. "This is beyond comprehension. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare for those who have been killed, for their mothers and fathers, family and friends."
Buildings around the capital lowered their flags to half-mast while people streamed to Oslo cathedral to light candles and lay flowers. Outside, mourners began building a makeshift altar from dug-up cobblestones. On Saturday the Queen wrote to Norway's King Harald to offer her condolences and express her shock and sadness.
Breivik's Facebook page was blocked, but a cached version describes a conservative Christian from Oslo. The profile veers between references to lofty political philosophers and gory popular films, television shows and video games. The account appears to have been set up on 17 July. The site lists no "friends" or social connections.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/23/norway-attacks-utoya-gunman
===
Norway did not see far-right as 'serious threat'
Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg says he will not speculate on the gunman's motives.
AFP
First posted July 23, 2011 22:28:04
Updated July 23, 2011 23:28:20
Norwegian intelligence did not consider the far-right as a serious threat to society and instead primarily feared an attack by Islamist extremists, according to an official report published this year.
With its forces involved in the NATO campaigns in both Afghanistan and Libya, Friday's tragic twin attacks prompted speculation that the country could have been paying a price for its participation in the Western alliance.
But after the arrest of a 32-year-old ethnic Norwegian, whom police have described as a fundamentalist Christian with political opinions that leaned to the right, there has been a fundamental shift in focus.
Norway's prime minister Jens Stoltenberg has refused to comment directly on the motives of the gunman who shot dead at least 84 people at a summer youth camp after seven other people were killed in a bomb attack in Oslo.
But in a press conference on Saturday, the prime minister denied that right-wing extremism was a particular problem for Norway.
"Compared to other countries I would not say we have a big problem with right-wing extremists in Norway," he said.
"We have had some groups, we have followed them before, and our police is aware that there are some right-wing extreme groups, or at least have been some groups of that kind in Norway.
"We will not speculate, we will wait for the investigation from the police before we say anything about this particular case but its part of the work of our police to follow this kind of right wing extreme group."
In its annual threat assessment report released earlier this year, the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) had detected a rise in far-right activity but said "the lack of strong leaders limits the growth of these groups."
"There was an increase in the activity of far-right extremist groups in 2010, and this activity is expected to continue in 2011," the PST said.
However, "as in previous years, the far-right and far-left extremist communities will not represent a serious threat to Norwegian society in 2011," the report added.
The same report said there were indications of contacts between Norwegian far-right extremists and criminal groups, which could give far-right activists easier access to weapons and "thereby increase the potential for violence."
According to the TV2 channel, the arrested suspect possessed two weapons registered in his name. Other Norwegian media reported that the suspect, widely named as Anders Behring Breivik, was interested in hunting and computer games like World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 2.
© 2011 AFP
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-23/norway-did-not-see-far-right-as-27serious-threat27/2807566
===
Norway attacks: police investigate fears main suspect was part of a larger terror group
Anders Behring Breivik
Photo: AP
Norwegian police were urgently trying to piece together the movements of Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right activist responsible for the murders of almost 100 people, amid fears he may have been part of a wider terror network.
By Robert Mendick, Edward Malnick and Harriet Alexander in Oslo
9:00PM BST 23 Jul 2011
Officers were interrogating Breivik, who was captured on Friday about three hours after planting a bomb in central Oslo before going on a shooting rampage on an island 25 miles away.
Acting Chief of Police Sveinung Sponheim said: "He has had a dialogue with the police the whole time, but he's a very demanding suspect."
They were also poring over his computer, looking for links to other extremists.
It emerged on Saturday that the massive bomb that devastated the political centre of Oslo was manufactured from six tons of fertiliser bought by Breivik just ten weeks ago.
A silver-grey van seized by officers near Utoya island was also being examined by forensic teams in the hunt for clues. Breivik used the van to drive from Oslo to Utoya.
Police chief Sponheim said: "Forensics experts are going through his computer and looking for any kind of electronic traces. It's very difficult at this point to say if he was acting alone or if he was part of a larger network."
The officer told how Breivik, after being surrounded by police, gave himself up rather than continuing to shoot. At the time he was in possession of two guns. It is not clear if he had run out of ammunition.
"The police caught him and when they did he put down his weapons," said the spokesman, adding, "There's a difference in calibre between the hand weapon and the automatic gun so forensics are now investigating whether there could have been more weapons used."
Police chief Sponheim said body parts remained in government buildings which could not be searched because of the structural damage caused by the power of the blast.
"The buildings in the city centres are very fragile and it is dangerous to search [them]. We know that there are remains of bodies in the ruins of the buildings and it's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle and a difficult search. There are body parts in the buildings.
"The security advice and restrictions are still in place and we're asking people to stay away from the areas which have been cordoned off in the city centre."
He said the van which was now in possession of police was "the car that he used from Oslo to Utoya".
As police tried to piece together Breivik's movements in the days and hours before and after the attack, questions were being asked about why security was so lax in the streets around the Prime Minister's official office and other government buildings, targeted by Breivik.
The explosion caused carnage at the heart of the Norwegian government. Seven people died in the blast and many dozens more were wounded, several of them suffering life-threatening injuries that required emergency treatment at hospitals in the city.
Victims have still to be named officially although it was confirmed last night two members of the Norwegian civil service were among those killed.
At the scene of the blast on Saturday, the carnage was evident. Windows were blown out in buildings as far as five blocks away while in the immediate vicinity of Grubbegata Street, which runs alongside the Ministry of petroleum and Energy and the Prime Minister's office, there was utter devastation.
The road and the pavements around the building were still covered in twisted metal and broken glass yesterday while official documents blown out of offices by the force of the explosion still lay strewn in the street.
Other buildings badly damaged included the nearby Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Health.
With buildings so badly damaged, police were reluctant to search them until they had been made safe.
Eyewitnesses had described how the bomb went off at a 3.26 pm local time the day before, wreaking havoc. Bodies lay strewn in the street; torsos hanging out of office windows. Blood poured from the wounds of the injured as emergency services took the wounded to two hospitals in the city.
"Some people covered with blood are lying in the street," said Ingunn Andersen, who had been drinking a coffee nearby, "There was glass everywhere. It was total chaos. The windows of all the surrounding buildings have been blown out."
Precise details on how Breivik had struck remain scant. Police sources suggested the bomb was left in a brown delivery van parked on Grubbegata Street, just a few yards from the energy ministry. The van acted as shrapnel sending pieces of metal flying through the air, causing terror on a catastrophic scale.
Police were collecting CCTV footage from the site of the bomb blast and from toll road booths between the city centre and Utoya where Breivik went on a shooting spree killing a further 91 people - most of them teenagers - at an island youth camp.
Breivik is thought to have parked the van outside the oil ministry and walked away. The bomb was likely detonated by a timer device rather than by a more sophisticated remote signal.
Before the explosion, Breivik is thought to have got into a silver/grey van and then driven to Utoya.
The lack of security outside the government building will raise serious questions. Ironically the roads were due to be blocked off to traffic with work on constructing barriers due to begin in September after a debate over security that had being going on since the September 11 2001 attacks on New York.
The barriers would have come two months too late to save the lives of those blown up on Friday.
An agricultural supply company Felleskjopet said yesterday the fertiliser had been delivered to Breivik on May 4, just ten weeks before the bombing. The scale of the delivery to a man who had set up a farming business in 2009 was not considered anything out of the ordinary, the supplier said yesterday.
The company's spokeswoman Oddny Estenstad said yesterday that the company alerted police to the purchase after Breivik was named.
Police searching breivik's farm found three tons of artificial fertiliser, suggesting as much as three tons went into making the bomb.
Fertiliser is highly explosive and has been used in past terrorist atrocities to starling effect. How Breivik learnt to make a bomb - and whether he had outside help - will be subject of the police investigation. Bomb-making guidance can be found on the internet.
Norway's prime minister Jens Stoltenberg insisted Norway would not allow the attacks to undermine the fundamental values of its society. "We are an open society, a democratic society, we are a society where we have a very close relationship between politicians and the people," he said.
At Ulleval Hospital - one of Oslo's main hospitals, in the north west of the city - pairs of armed police were on guard duty outside the main entrance, as well as the hospital ward where some of the victims were being treated.
Beate Orbeck, a hospital spokeswoman, said that the hospital was treating 28 patients from both the island and central Oslo blasts. "Most of them are in a serious condition," she said but declined to give further details.
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8657141/Norway-attacks-police-investigate-fears-main-suspect-was-part-of-a-larger-terror-group.html [with comments]
===
Norway attack: Right-wing extremism emerging?
European governments facing possibility of new threat — 'equivalent of Oklahoma City'
By William Maclean, security correspondent
Reuters
updated 7/22/2011 10:11:15 PM ET 2011-07-23T02:11:15
ANALYSIS
LONDON — A report that Norway's bomb and gun rampage may be the work of a far-right militant confronts Europe with the possibility that a new paramilitary threat is emerging, a decade after al-Qaida's Sept. 11 attacks.
One analyst called the attacks possibly Europe's "Oklahoma City" moment, a reference to American right-wing militant Timothy McVeigh who detonated a truck bomb at a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.
Police forces in many western European countries worry about rising far-right sentiment, fueled by a toxic mix of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry and increasing economic hardship.
But violence, while sometimes fatal, has rarely escalated beyond group thuggery and the use of knives.
That may have changed in Oslo and on the holiday island of Utoya on Friday. Seven people were killed in a bombing in the capital — Western Europe's worst since the 2005 London al-Qaida-linked suicide attacks that killed 52 people — and at least 80 in a shooting rampage by a lake.
Independent Norwegian television TV2 reported on Saturday that the Norwegian man detained after the attacks had links to right-wing extremism [ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43854355/ns/world_news-europe/t/least-dead-norway-youth-camp-attack/ ].
Police were searching a flat in west Oslo where he lived, TV2 said.
"If true this would be pretty significant — such a far-right attack in Europe, and certainly Scandinavia, would be unprecedented," said Hagai Segal, a security specialist at New York University in London.
"It would be the European/Scandinavian equivalent of Oklahoma City — an attack by a individual (with extremist anti-government views, linked to certain groups) aimed at the government by attacking its buildings/institutions."
"The next key question is whether he was acting alone, or whether he is part of a group."
A report by European police agency Europol on security in 2010 said that there was no right-wing terrorism on the continent in that period.
Growing professionalism
But it added the far right was becoming very professional at producing online propaganda of an anti-Semitic and xenophobic nature and was increasingly active in online social networking.
"Although the overall threat from right-wing extremism appears to be on the wane and the numbers of right-wing extremist criminal offences are relatively low, the professionalism in their propaganda and organization shows that right-wing extremist groups have the will to enlarge and spread their ideology and still pose a threat in EU member states," it said.
If the unrest in the Arab world, especially in North Africa, leads to a major influx of immigrants into Europe, "right-wing extremism and terrorism might gain a new lease of life by articulating more widespread public apprehension about immigration from Muslim countries into Europe," it added.
Public manifestations of right-wing extremism can often provoke counter-activity by extreme left-wing groups. Such confrontations invariably result in physical violence.
In May 2010, a far-right supporter was assaulted and knifed in Sweden during a demonstration staged by a white supremacist movement. An activist was arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault and attempted murder.
The Swedish Security Service says on its website that the so-called White Power scene is made up individuals, groups and networks with right-wing extremist views prepared to use violence for political gain.
In a speech in September 2010, Jonathan Evans, the Director-General of Britain's MI5 Security Service, cited a notorious far-right militant in a passage describing the security outlook for the country.
"Determination can take you a long way and even determined amateurs can cause devastation. The case of the neo-Nazi David Copeland, who attacked the gay and ethnic minority communities with such appalling results in 1999, is a good example of the threat posed by the determined lone bomber."
Copeland struck three targets in London with nail bombs. Three people were killed and scores were wounded at a gay bar in Soho. It followed attacks against the Muslim community in Brick Lane, east London, and a market in Brixton, south London.
In an unclassified 2011 national security outlook published by the Norway Police Security Service (PST) in February 2011, the service said it saw a picture of "increased uncertainty."
Part of that was due to what it called an expected increased level of activity in 2011 by far-right militants.
"Norwegian far-right extremists are in contact with Swedish far-right extremists, as well as with other far-right extremist groups in Europe. Contact also takes place between Norwegian and Russian far-right extremists," it said.
"An increased level of activity among some anti-Islamic groups could lead to increased polarization and unease, especially during, and in connection with, commemorations and demonstrations."
In Britain, police chiefs and Muslim groups are worried about a rise in attacks by far-right groups, and in 2009 one senior officer, Commander Shaun Sawyer, from London's counter-terrorism unit, told a meeting of the Muslim Safety Forum that senior officers had increased surveillance of suspects to monitor their ability to stage attacks.
"I fear that they will have a spectacular ... They will carry out an attack that will lead to a loss of life or injury to a community somewhere," he said.
An analysis by Michael Whine, the Government and International Affairs Director at the Community Security Trust, an agency of the UK Jewish community, said the willingness to employ extreme violence in defense of European 'values' is apparent in the ideology of several groups, among them the British Patriots of the White European Resistance (POWER), which emerged in 2006, and which claims supporters in Croatia, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Sweden.
Security specialist Segal said of Friday's bombing and shootings: "The tactics and actuality of these attacks would be quite striking if carried out by a domestic far-right actor - trying to kill Norway's PM is one thing and not surprising from any extremist elements, but killing average citizens in this manner is very, very unusual indeed for far-right/supremacists, and certainly for ones in Europe."
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43859395/ns/world_news-europe/t/norway-attack-right-wing-extremism-emerging/ [with comments]
===
Norway Attacks Put Spotlight on Rise of Right-Wing Sentiment in Europe
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in Berlin on Saturday. She said that the sort of hatred behind the Norway attacks went against "freedom, respect and the belief in peaceful coexistence."
Joerg Carstensen/European Pressphoto Agency
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France held a nationwide debate on "national identity" last year and earlier this year banned Muslim full-face veils.
Jock Fistick/Bloomberg News
British Prime Minister David Cameron told the Munich security conference in February that the country's decades-old policy of multiculturalism had encouraged "segregated communities" where Islamic extremism can thrive.
Andy Rain/European Pressphoto Agency
More Photos »
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/07/22/world/europe/20110723-norway.html
By NICHOLAS KULISH
Published: July 23, 2011
BERLIN — The attacks in Oslo on Friday have riveted new attention on right-wing extremists not just in Norway but across Europe, where opposition to Muslim immigrants, globalization, the power of the European Union and the drive toward multiculturalism has proven a potent political force and, in a few cases, a spur to violence.
The success of populist parties appealing to a sense of lost national identity has brought criticism of minorities, immigrants and in particular Muslims out of the beer halls and Internet chat rooms and into mainstream politics. While the parties themselves generally do not condone violence, some experts say a climate of hatred in the political discourse has encouraged violent individuals.
“I’m not surprised when things like the bombing in Norway happen, because you will always find people who feel more radical means are necessary,” said Joerg Forbrig, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin who has studied far-right issues in Europe. “It literally is something that can happen in a number of places and there are broader problems behind it.”
Last November a Swedish man was arrested in the southern city of Malmö in connection with more than a dozen unsolved shootings of immigrants, including one fatality. The shootings, nine of which took place between June and October 2010, appeared to be the work of an isolated individual. More broadly in Sweden, though, the far-right Sweden Democrats experienced new success at the polls. The party entered Parliament for the first time after winning 5.7 percent of the vote in the general election last September.
The bombing and shootings in Oslo also have served as a wake-up call for security services in Europe and the United States that in recent years have become so focused on Islamic terrorists that they may have underestimated the threat of domestic radicals, including those upset by what they see as the influence of Islam.
In the United States the deadly attacks have reawakened memories of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, where a right-wing extremist, Timothy J. McVeigh, used a fertilizer bomb to blow up a federal government building, killing 168 people. That deadly act had long since been overshadowed by the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
According to Mr. Forbrig, isolated right-wing groups in Europe would rise up and then quickly disappear from the ’60s into the ’90s. But in recent years far-right statements have appeared to lose much of their post-World War II taboo even among some prominent political parties.
A combination of increased migration from abroad and largely unrestricted movement of people within an enlarged European Union, such as the persecuted Roma minority, helped lay the groundwork for a nationalist, at times starkly chauvinist, revival.
Groups are gaining traction from Hungary to Italy, but it is particularly apparent in northern European countries that long have had liberal immigration policies. The rapid arrival of refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants, many of them Muslims, led to a significant backlash in places like Denmark, where the Danish People’s Party has 25 out of 179 seats in Parliament, and the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom won 15.5 percent of the vote in the 2010 general election.
Mr. Wilders famously compared the Koran, the holy book of Islam, to Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” Both the Danish and Dutch right-wing parties are backing precarious minority governments while not directly participating by having ministers, and inching toward mainstream acceptance in the process.
Friday’s attacks were swiftly condemned by leaders from across the political spectrum in Europe. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel was particularly sharp in speaking out against what she called an “appalling crime.” The sort of hatred that could fuel such an action, she said, went against “freedom, respect and the belief in peaceful coexistence.”
Yet some of the primary motivations cited by the suspect in Norway, Anders Behring Breivik, are now mainstream issues. Mrs. Merkel, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Prime Minister David Cameron in Britain all recently declared an end to multiculturalism. Multiculturalism “has failed, utterly failed,” Mrs. Merkel told fellow Christian Democrats last October, though stressing that immigrants were welcome in Germany.
Perhaps the most surprising about-turn came in Britain, a country that has long considered itself among the most immigrant-friendly in Europe until a series of coordinated bomb attacks in London six years ago. In one of his most noticed speeches, Mr. Cameron told the Munich security conference in February that the country’s decades-old policy of multiculturalism had encouraged “segregated communities” where Islamic extremism can thrive.
France, a fiercely secularist state where all religion is banned from the public sphere, was long isolated and berated for its staunch opposition to the laissez-faire of multiculturalism. Girls who show up in public schools there with the Muslim headscarf are suspended, as are teachers or any other employees in the public sector.
If Mr. Sarkozy appeared to soften his understanding of official secularism, or “laïcité” earlier in his political career, even toying with the idea of affirmative action, he has recently scrambled to backtrack. He held a nationwide debate on “national identity” last year and earlier this year banned Muslim full-face veils like niqab, as well as the burqa.
That hasn’t stopped the far-right National Front, now led by Marine Le Pen, the daughter of its founder, to surge in opinion polls, with some surveys predicting that she might make it into next year’s presidential runoff. She compared Muslims praying in the streets outside overcrowded mosques to the Nazi occupation, and decries the European Union and the euro.
Earlier this month the daily newspaper Berliner Zeitung reported that neo-Nazis were attacking the offices of the far-left Left Party with increasing frequency. In the former East German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, statistics showed that there were 30 such attacks in the first half of 2011 compared to 44 attacks in all of 2010.
Due to its Nazi past, Germany keeps a watchful eye on right-wing extremists, and the parties of the far right have a hard time gaining traction, with no representatives in Parliament. In Finland, the True Finns, a populist nationalist party founded in 1995, became the third largest party [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/world/europe/19iht-finland19.html ] represented in the Finnish Parliament after winning 19 percent of the vote in April. And Norway’s Progress Party, a right-wing populist party, is the second largest in the country, winning 23 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary election in September 2009.
“The Norwegian right-wing groups have always been disorganized, haven’t had charismatic leaders or the kind of well-organized groups with financial support that you see in Sweden,” said Kari Helene Partapuoli, director of the Norwegian Center against Racism. “But in the last two or three years our organization and other antifascist networks have warned of an increased temperature of debate and that violent groups had been established.”
But neither does Norway exist in a vacuum. Its right-wing scene is connected to the rest of Europe through the Internet forums where hate speech proliferates and through right-wing demonstrations that draw an international mix of participants.
“This may be the act of a lone, mad, paranoid individual,” said Hajo Funke, a political scientist at the Free University in Berlin who studies rightist extremism, referring to the right-wing fundamentalist Christian charged in connection with the killings, “but the far-right milieu creates an atmosphere that can lead such people down that path of violence.”
Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger from Oslo, Katrin Bennhold from Paris, Stefan Pauly from Berlin, and Scott Shane from Washington.
© 2011 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/world/europe/24europe.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/world/europe/24europe.html?pagewanted=all ]
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
Join the InvestorsHub Community
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
