So much for the lone wolf theory. According to Norwegian journalist @ketilbstensrud, Breivik’s lawyer says his client belongs to an international network of right-wing extremists. He planned his actions for a long time, and has requested his hearing on Monday be open to the media so that he can “reveal all”. There’s also strong suspicion that Breivik was funded by an international network.
http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/bat020/~DqCoY
Tagged: far right Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
thabet
-
thabet
Oh, delicious irony, how sweet do you taste!
Von der Dunk was invited to deliver an annual address named after the Dutch resistance hero Willem Arondeus. The address is aimed at underlining the relevance of World War Two to the present day. Von der Donk planned to criticise Geert Wilders’ PVV party, which he claims is discriminatory and undermining the rule of law.
[...]
But Von der Dunk is apparently not allowed to say this in the Netherlands, and his address has been cancelled. The organisation says his speech was “too politically coloured”. But Von der Dunk says it’s impossible to avoid politics in an argument about social issues.
There’s more at Radio Netherlands.
-
thabet
Moron Le Pen is as ignorant of her own history as she is of Islam:
“I think that France can be secular because it’s a Christian culture and you notice that in Muslim countries they have more difficulty,” she told LCP, the French parliament’s TV channel.
“Muslim countries that are secular got there in general by force,” she continued, citing the examples of Turkey and Iraq.
In December, the 42-year-old compared Muslims praying in the street to the German occupation during World War II, shortly before she took over from her father Jean-Marie as head of the anti-immigrant party.
“Secularism is absolutely not compatible … not natural in Islam, because Islam mixes the spiritual and the temporal,” she told LCP on Friday.
“France is France. It’s a country with Christian roots and that’s also what’s given us our identity. It’s secular, we’ll hold this identity and we won’t let this identity be changed.”
But, of course, her goose-stepping fascism and racism are completely compatible with secularism.
-
thabet
Today’s editorial in The Daily Telegraph, a paper which used to b a home for sceptical Toryism, calls for a right-wing populism based on hatred of Muslims.
-
thabet
The French, morally sophisticated and classy as ever:
Le Pen, the frontrunner to succeed her father Jean-Marie Le Pen as head of the party, made the comments on a television show last Thursday with about 3.4 million viewers watching. On Monday she dismissed any suggestion of a gaffe. “My comments were absolutely not a blunder, but a completely thought-out analysis,” she told a news conference, adding she was merely saying out loud what everyone thought privately.
Not to be outdone, Napoleon II has proposed banning Muslims from praying in public:
After his expulsions of gypsies and a crackdown on immigrant crime, the French President will warn that the overflow of Muslim faithful on to the streets at prayer time when mosques are packed to capacity risks undermining the French secular tradition separating state and religion.
He will doubtless be accused of pandering to the far Right: the issue of Muslim prayers in the street has been brought to the fore by Marine Le Pen, the charismatic new figurehead of the National Front, who compared it to the wartime occupation of France.
Her words provoked uproar on the Left, whose commentators took them as evidence that far from being the gentler face of the far Right, Ms Le Pen, 42, is no different from Jean-Marie, 82, her father, who has been accused of racism and Holocaust denial.
According to his aide, Mr Sarkozy agrees with the junior Le Pen that the street cannot be allowed to become “an extension of the mosque” as it does in some parts of Paris, which are closed to traffic because of the overflow of the faithful. Local authorities have declined to intervene, despite public complaints, because they are afraid of sparking riots.
“People overreacted to Marine Le Pen’s comments,” said the aide, referring to the furore in which she was accused of rabble-rousing racism. “She is right: this phenomenon is unacceptable.”
-
thabet
Half-wit pseudo-scholar Robert Spencer rides to the defence of Pamela Geller, a self-proclaimed champion of the far-right English Defence League (EDL).
-
aziz
-
-
thabet
Perhaps the people of Vienna will receive a lecture on ‘extremism’?
“Red Vienna” has been a socialist and then social democratic stronghold since the 1920s. There was never any chance of Michael Häupl, the incumbent and long-serving SPÖ (social democratic) mayor, losing his job. But the customary absolute majority in Vienna’s gargantuan mock-gothic town hall is gone, perhaps for a long time. That makes yesterday’s vote a bit of a watershed.
Former dental technician Heinz-Christian Strache, the loud extreme right leader who is heir to the late Jörg Haider, was the real winner of the poll. He came second with a staggering 27% to the SPÖ’s 44%. That is the social democrats’ worst result since 1996, when Haider was in his prime, and the second worst result ever.
-
Pretty Pink Ponies
They should. The slogans from “HC”‘s campaign are wildly Nationalistic and xenophobic.
-
Hitch
It’s a little tricky. I don’t particularly like the labeling as “extreme right” because it makes it difficult to understand what is going on. There are even more right wing factions in many European countries than what is described here as extreme right. This is the extreme right of what is electable. It’s not the groups that would actually run on overt fascism.
It’s a weird new populist right, that does run on anti-foreign sentiments, job envy of the “why should foreigners get it if I cannot have one” and exploitation of other prejudicial thinking.
But the ideology is not outright fascist or broadly anti-democratic (depending on how one sees that). But they wedge in fascist tendencies on select issues and create a strong us-vs-them and anti-integration and anti-multi-cultural tendencies.
Frankly these kinds of election results illustrate nicely why it bothers me so much when I see my muslim friends rail against “secularization”. The SPÖ in Austria is a largely secularized party, but their are largely pro-integration, pro-multi-culturalism, and all that, and they are the alternative to the lower and lower-middle-class electorate, that when disillsioned go to the populist right otherwise.
So by seeing the secular as the problem, the drivers for a more open and tolerant attitude are actually undermined, which are the center left and left parties.
-
thabet
-
Hitch
Stunningly ignorant yet pseudo-sophistic piece by Gray. For example the whole economic libertarianism thing… Haider took over the FPÖ when it was indeed an uneasy but not overly radical right libertarian party with two wings. One being old Nazi sympathizers and the other being economic libertarian. In a way not parallel but similar to the unholy alliance that we see in the US between Ron Paul libertarians and the moral majority as centered around the republican party.
Before Haider it was mostly a economic libertarian party with some old Nazis in it.
But Haider won the power struggle against the libertarians and amplified the populist, neo-fascist right wing (pretty much against) libertarian notions. The liberals left and formed their own party, to later disappear, leaving a populist right wing of Haider that really did not speak at all to libertarianism and even less to modernity.
But yes, a piece like Gray’s gives comfort to those who want to find blame secular society and whatever “modernity” is for fascism. Sadly he is just factually wrong.
-
thabet
Gray jumps around a lot. One minute it’s Thatcher who he champions, next he’s a vaguely defined anti-humanist attacking globalisation. But his basic point about the ‘new fascists’ not being a new phenomenon is right.
Also, I do not think he is wrong to at least bring up the darker side of ‘modernity’ even if he does it incorrectly and with a lot of hand-wringing.
-
Hitch
I’d agree that Gray is all over the place.
I can appreciate critiques of modernity. Sadly Gray just got it wrong that “modernity” is at fault for the new populist right wing, specifically in Austria. I think these movements in different European countries have points of comparison but also clear divergences. Fortuyn and Haider have more differences than commonalities and this is colored by the differences of the Netherlands and Austria. And by trying to make the case about modernity he forces an inversion. In reality the FPÖ since Haider is both anti-modernist and anti-intellectual and his narrative pretty much directly goes against what is actually going on.
I’d rather see a critique of the darker side of “modernity” in realms where they apply, rather than in realms where they are false.
-
-
-
-
thabet
Frankly these kinds of election results illustrate nicely why it bothers me so much when I see my muslim friends rail against “secularization”.
Reminds me of a quote by Yahya Birt on the old eteraz dot org blog.
-
-
-
thabet
Thousands of people turned up to an event in Leicester to show their opposition to the far-right English Defence League (EDL) last weekend.
A report in The Graun also noted that the Tea Party is forging links with the EDL, highlighting shrill racist lunatic Pamela Geller:
An Observer investigation has established that the EDL has made contact with anti-jihad groups within the Tea Party organisation and has invited a senior US rabbi and Tea Party activist to London this month. Rabbi Nachum Shifren, a regular speaker at Tea Party conventions, will speak about Sharia law and also discuss funding issues.
The league has also developed links with Pamela Geller, who was influential in the protests against plans to build an Islamic cultural centre near Ground Zero. Geller, darling of the Tea Party’s growing anti-Islamic wing, is advocating an alliance with the EDL. The executive director of the Stop Islamisation of America organisation, she recently met EDL leaders in New York and has defended the group’s actions, despite a recent violent march in Bradford.
The EDL also plans to meet up with their neo-Nazi friends across Europe if and when Geert Wilders’ trial comes to an end:
French and Dutch “defence leagues” will join the EDL and several other anti-Islamic organisations on 30 October to coincide with the end of Wilders’s trial for hate speech and inciting racism.
-
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
Here in the U.S., most of these right wing anti-Muslim groups portray themselves as staunch defenders of Israel and friends of Jews (at least of right wing Jews). I’m interested in how that plays out in Europe, where most of these far right groups one would normally assume to be very anti-semitic.
-
thabet
I’m interested in how that plays out in Europe, where most of these far right groups one would normally assume to be very anti-semitic.
The EDL claim to have a ‘Jewish division’ and, unfortunately for one particular staunch pro-Israeli activist, he was caught with his proverbial pants around his ankles wrt the EDL.
I believe this also is one of the issues Charles Johnson has with his former friends.
Btw, did Johnson ever apologise for heaping slurs and crap onto Muslims for years before he started portraying himself as a voice of moderation and toleration?
-
shams
charles got fooled.
just like i did.
i apolo brother thabet….i punch myself in the neck evry day.
-
-
-
-
thabet
Wilders’ party is part of the government and used his weekend victory speech to declare an Europe-wide anti-Muslim hate campaign:
“Today there is a ghost going around Europe. It is the ghost of Islam,” Wilders said. “This danger today is also political. Islam is not just a religion, as many believe. Islam is above all a dangerous political ideology.”
Europe never learns, does it.
-
thabet
aziz is discussing. 
Hitch, 
thabet, and 
Pretty Pink Ponies are discussing. 
shams, 
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee are discussing. 
it’s like that episode of How I Met Your Mother about having someone “on the hook”