SALON

Friday, Mar 30, 2012 1:15 PM UTC

Terror in Europe fuels immigration tensions

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Terror in Europe fuels immigration tensionsFILE - Relatives by the coffin of Mohamed Merah during his funeral ceremony near Toulouse, southern France, in this file photo dated Thursday, March 29, 2012. Blamed for a series of deadly shootings which have shocked France, Merah died in a hail of gunfire after a standoff with police. It is announced Friday March 30, 2012, that a loosely knit group of xenophobic "defense leagues" plans to rally in Denmark upcoming Saturday against what they call the growing Islamic presence in western Europe, with fears across Europe that a growing climate of ethnic and religious hostility is inspiring extremist violence, and creating the conditions for deadly unpredictable clashes. (AP Photo/Marthial Roland, FILE)(Credit: AP)

LONDON (AP) — An al-Qaida-inspired gunman kills paratroopers and Jewish children in southern France. A far-right fanatic enraged by Muslim immigration guns down dozens of youths at a summer camp in Norway.

Two atrocities in the space of the year, coming from opposite ends of the spectrum, are raising fears across Europe that a growing climate of ethnic and religious hostility is inspiring extremist violence — and creating the conditions for deadly clashes.

The attacks in France and Norway represent the most horrific extremes of two trends of intolerance troubling Europe: strengthening far-right sentiment that has sometimes bled into the mainstream, and growing Islamic radicalization in Europe’s disadvantaged, immigrant-heavy neighborhoods.

With Europe still stunned by last week’s killings in Toulouse, France, a loosely knit group of xenophobic “defense leagues” plans to rally in Denmark Saturday against what they call the growing Islamic presence in western Europe.

The rally was organized by one of the rising forces of Europe’s far-right scene — the Danish Defense League. It’s backed by the English Defense League, which gained prominence in Britain amid urban rioting last summer. Similar groups from Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Sweden are expected.

Danish intelligence services expect up to 700 of these strident, anti-Muslim “counter-Jihadists.” A counter-demonstration is anticipated to draw several thousand people. Police vow to keep the two groups apart. But the clashing views on display show Europe’s heightened polarization.

“These terrorist events are creating sparks, and a small spark can set off a huge fire,” said Magnus Ranstorp, research director of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies in Sweden. “It can set off huge social polarization, and this is what the terrorists want to achieve. Now there is an increased rightwing climate — the counter-jihad movement — feeding off these Islamophobic forces.”

The mood is volatile, Ranstrop said, made more so by the methods of the killers — citing how in France, Mohamed Merah shot video of his attacks that was mailed to the Al-Jazeera television network.

“You have the counter-jihad movement, and on the other side you have an old al-Qaida structure giving out directives for people to carry out their own personal jihads by solo terrorist activity. The manner in which you carry out these attacks matters: Recording them, sending films to Al-Jazeera, shooting people execution style, all to create polarization and revulsion, to create an overreaction.”

For decades, western Europe has been the envy of the world with its high standard of living and tolerant social climate. Today, Europe is gripped by a profound economic crisis and festering conflict over immigration, religion and cultural identity.

Tensions over immigration from northern Africa and other countries with large Islamic populations have fueled the rise of far-right movements across Europe. In France, the ultranationlist National Front is expected to make gains in upcoming presidential and legislative elections. Xenophobic parties in Austria, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands have all gained support in recent years.

As anti-immigration rhetoric grows more strident, ideas that were once considered on the fringes of political dialogue have entered the mainstream — with French President Nicolas Sarkozy often seeming to borrow from National Front rhetoric as he campaigns for re-election.

At the same time, anti-Western diatribes on the Internet and sometimes in local mosques have played a role in radicalizing some young Muslims in Europe, even as Muslim community leaders try to steer young people toward productive futures. The long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have also enflamed passions among Muslims.

Over the past year, Europe has suffered deadly manifestations of these tensions with the France attacks and the July massacre in Norway carried out by Anders Behring Breivik, who slaughtered 77 people with a bomb in Oslo followed by a shooting rampage at a Labor Party youth camp on an island retreat.

The two horrors have drawn inevitable comparisons.

Both killers had a terrifying sense of theater. Breveik’s island rampage, in which he picked off the trapped children one at a time, seemed straight out of a horror movie. The French police account of Merah’s last stand, his Colt .45 blazing as he jumped from the balcony, seems inspired by an action film.

Initial reactions to the attacks point to the ambiguities swirling around Europe’s immigration debate.

When Breveik’s deadly bomb ripped through the Norwegian capital on July 22, many counterterrorism experts assumed Muslim radicals were behind the blast. Similarly, many initially suspected that the French killings might be the work of a far-right fanatic.

The bloodshed carried out by both extremes in the heated immigration debated raises the specter of clashes between the two. There already have been street scuffles between the English Defense League and radical Islamists in Britain — although none has escalated into major violence.

Nicolas Lebourg, a historian who studies the far-right at Perpignan University in southern France, said that both Breivik and Merah were products of an increasingly polarized Europe.

“For people who are a little fragile, people who are a little sensitive … we’re overheating them by telling them that there’s this cosmic war between good and evil,” Lebourg said.

___

Associated Press writers Raphael Satter in Paris, Karl Ritter in Stockholm, and Jan M. Olsen and David MacDougall in Copenhagen contributed to this report.

More Gregory Katz.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations