From Seattle Times:
They beat up black and Arab football fans, terrorise immigrant neighborhoods, smash Muslim and Jewish gravestones, preach hate and rally support online. Norway’s attacks laid bare a fringe of flourishing racist anger around Europe—and exposed the risk that it could erupt into violence anywhere, anytime.
In interviews and online forums, European far-right extremists have not softened their rhetoric since Norway’s massacre left 77 dead. They may recoil at the attacker’s methods, but not his message: that Muslim immigrants are a threat to European survival.
“If there were no immigrants, there would never have been this drama,” one French blogger says. Jean-Marie Le Pen, France’s firebrand icon of anti-immigrant politics, said Norway “did not estimate the global danger that massive immigration represents, which is the principal cause” of the attacks.
Yes, this is a real threat.
Meanwhile, over at the Guardian, Donald Reeves, writes on the same subject:
There needs to be a grassroots movement across Europe to stand up to those who peddle bogus religious justifications, resurrecting memories of the Crusades; to expose the racist ideology drawn from Nazism, in which Muslims have now become the new Jews of Europe; and to tackle the myth of “Islamification” and those who claim to be defending western civilisation, Christian and secular, from conquest by Muslim immigration and the spread of sharia law
I agree, except that I don’t see why it’s necessary to claim that Muslims have replaced Jews. Anti-Semitism is alive and kicking in Europe, including Mr Reeves’s Britain. In fact, much of the “bogus religious justifications” for Islamophobia works against Jews and Judaism, too. The problem is the same. People who fear a society where not all people share the same primary identity are challenging the idea of a free and pluralist society. And fear fuels intolerance, restrictions, anger, oppression, and violence.
