NYT: Norway Attacks Put Spotlight on Rise of Right-Wing Sentiment in Europe

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/world/europe/24europe.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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. 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.

“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.”

Perhaps the horrendous massacre in Norway will make apparent the inherent flaws in right wing populism. Their politics is centered on the goal of keeping "Them" away from "Us". To accomplish this the right wingers have to demonize "Them". Otherwise what is so bad about "Them" living with "Us"? In a multicultural world that kind of thinking leads nowhere good.

this right wing racism has been growing for years. they did`t bother to mention that it`s a huge problem in russia and it`s former colonies. oh well i guess it takes some deranged right wing white guy to massacre commie loving kids to wake up the new york times to what is happening across the pond.

i wonder when they`ll start publishing articles about our own racists here in the good old usa...

NYT should do some research at home