It is still too soon to know much about the twin terror attacks in Oslo yesterday – the bombing of government buildings in which at least seven people died, and the shooting rampage at a summer camp that, at last count, killed more than 80 children.
But given what we do know – that the man behind the attacks was white, Christian, Norwegian, and right wing — we should have seen this coming. It is, in many ways, the inevitable outcome of a multiculturalist ideal that, in practice, has failed – and in this case, failed fatally.
Usually, one tends to think of this problem as one that leads to Muslim attacks on non-Muslim targets – the rocks tossed at homosexuals in Amsterdam; the assassination attempts on Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist whose drawings of Mohammed in 2006 continue to be a source of controversy and rage; the death threats against teachers in France and Holland and elsewhere when they try to teach their students about the Holocaust. But there are two sides to this coin, as any, and we’ve just seen the other one.
At this writing, the sole suspect in custody is 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, who for the past several years has kept up running commentary on the site www.document.no (Google translation posted here ), a right-wing blog where he has targeted liberals, Muslims, and multiculturalism (“an anti-European ideology of hate that aims to destroy European culture, identity, and Christianity”). Yet nothing in these writings greatly distinguishes him from other followers of such blogs: he frequently praises a writer who goes by the name “Fjordman” and who is well known on the conservative, largely anti-Islam circuit; and he often cites posts from Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugged and other sites popular not only among anti-Islam activists, but among even more moderate types concerned about the rise of radical Islam in the West.
He is also a more extreme example of a growing right-wing trend across Europe, where from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to populist Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders and the Swedish Jimmie Akesson, non-Muslims are taking a hard line against immigration and what they view as dangerous concessions to the demands of Muslim groups. (The enormous success of Akesson’s and Wilders’ parties in the last elections testifies to the weight of this issue among voters.) Their concerns are real: efforts to censor the Danish cartoons; to restage Mozart operas (as happened in Berlin in 2006); to silence dissent (as in the recent criminal case brought against Wilders , and similar compromises to democratic principles, have created a sense of genuine fear for the future of European culture. And as Europe – and increasingly, America – has become all too willing to sacrifice those principles to accommodate a foreign immigrant culture that does not share them, a new nationalism has emerged – even, indeed, from liberals who sense their own liberal ideals are coming under attack. In essence, by tolerating intolerance, we have ourselves now become intolerant.
So that Breivik would have attacked Norway’s liberal Prime Minister and his party is horrifying – but it is therefore not terribly surprising: these are the politicians who, in the name of civil rights and equality, have made most of the concessions.
It is a response that has taken decades to build, and a dilemma that appears unresolvable. When guest workers from the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey arrived in Europe in the 1960s and ‘70s, no one expected them to stay for very long. They were therefore never asked to assimilate into their host cultures, to learn the languages of the lands where they were living, or to adopt – or at least, conform to – the basic values of the West. Now, some half a century later, Europe confronts a population of several million in which large numbers – a minority, but a significant and powerful one – reject the fundamental rights and ideals of its culture. Witness, for instance, the riots against the Danes in response to the cartoons (which, for those who haven’t seen them yet, include a drawing of Mohammed with a bomb where a turban should have been); the cancellation of Christmas parties at government-run organizations in order not to “offend” Muslim employees; the decision by Holland’s construction workers’ union to require workers long sleeves and long pants even on the hottest summer days – a response to protests a couple of years ago from Muslims who claimed to be “offended” by workers in shorts and T-shirts performing construction in near-100-degree heat.
Such gestures of accommodation are, to be sure, well-meant – as are relaxed rules for Muslim students who are exempted from co-ed class trips, or the introduction of “women-only” hours at public swimming pools so conservative Muslim girls do not have to be exposed before strange men.
But they do not breed goodwill; rather, the result is that Europeans feel increasingly – and understandably – threatened. On far too many occasions, more extremist right wing groups have taken to striking back: burning mosques, painting swastikas on Muslims’ homes, and committing similar acts of hate. Breivik has simply taken a different approach: he attacked what he sees as the enablers — frustrated, perhaps, by a failure to vote them out of power. It is a new form of protest, and he is the first to use it. But I fear that, unless Europe begins demanding that its Muslim population live according to its Enlightenment traditions and the values of democracy, he will not be the last.
POSTSCRIPT:
In response to many comments on this post from people who seem to have been too quick to rush to judgment and a bit slower actually to read, I would like to clarify what I thought was quite explicit in the above text — but evidently was not. I am not defending or apologizing for the horrors of the terrorist attacks in Oslo. I do not agree with the perspectives of far right extremists who are on the rampage against minority groups of any kind. And I have not in this column expressed anything to suggest that I do. What I am, however, is aware of the growing tensions in Europe — tensions that have clearly led to a rise in far-right, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim sentiment that is visible in — as I wrote above — the rise in power of anti-immigrant political parties. There are understandable reasons for this, whether I personally agree with those perspectives or not; and even more and more liberals are finding themselves frustrated and more accepting of right-wing ideologies than they ever thought they would be. This is a fact. It has nothing to do with what I believe to be right or wrong.
To those who say I’ve blamed the Muslims, I suggest you read again. What I have blamed are the people and governments who never helped Muslim immigrants to assimilate, who never asked them or helped them to learn their culture, and now turn against them because they haven’t done so. They have contributed, however unwittingly, to the conflict that now pervades Europe — a conflict that is growing, and which led to the horrors of these attacks. It is not inconceivable that more like this will follow – not because I think they should, but because, tragically, I doubt that this one attacker is the only one of his kind.