NORWAY COMMENTARY
Terrorist aimed to mobilize racism
Multinational working-class unity can defeat it
By
John Catalinotto
Published Jul 27, 2011 4:24 PM
On July 22 a bomb attack on central Oslo and a massacre at an island Labor
Party summer camp killed 76 people, most of them youths. It was the worst such
tragedy in that country of 4.8 million people since World War II.
The world asked what crisis, what degeneration, could be poisoning society so
that such a disaster would occur in a place as apparently free of strife as
Norway.
The BBC, the New York Times and other corporate media throughout the U.S. and
Europe immediately sought out “anti-terror experts,” who
immediately blamed “Islamic terrorists.” The media repeated this
charge at full volume. The experts even underlined NATO-member Norway’s
quiet role in the occupation of Afghanistan and the bombing of Libya as the
possible motives of what they called the “terrorist” acts.
They were completely wrong. Moreover, their own words and acts showed the
media’s complicity in the crime.
Journalism Professor Rune Ottosen, cited in a Norwegian workers’ daily,
Klassekampen (Class Struggle), said that the New York Times took “an
unreasonably long time” to change its tune even after it was clear that a
Christian Norwegian was the mass murderer. Then the media avoided calling the
Norwegian a terrorist, let alone a Christian terrorist; he was instead labeled
a “psychopath,” which removes political responsibility.
By now nearly everyone knows that 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, a
self-proclaimed Christian and anti-Muslim, has admitted killing 76 people and
wounding more than 100 on July 22. They know too that he did this as a
political statement of hate for Islam and for “multiculturalism”
and for anything resembling Marxism or workers’ solidarity.
Like the Arizona shooter Jared Loughner, Breivik’s terrorist act grew out
of the racist and anti-immigrant politics that are the central organizing tools
of ultra-right organizations in Europe like the National Front in France and
the Northern League in Italy — and the Tea Party in the United States,
which is the home office of racism.
In Norway the party of this type is the Progressive Party, to which Breivik
belonged until 2006. This fascist-style ideology has been adopted — in a
barely milder form — by mainstream capitalist politicians in Europe and
North America.
Rather than combating racist ideology and right-wing fallacies, the mainstream
capitalist parties and the corporate-owned media help the ultra-right create a
political atmosphere poisoned by the worst sort of racism and anti-immigrant,
anti-foreign, especially anti-Muslim, attitudes. The Times, the BBC and the
capitalists do nothing to encourage multinational solidarity, especially among
the working class. Thus they help create the septic mix that nurtures a killer
like Breivik.
Unlike Loughner, Breivik left a 1,500-page manifesto documenting his plans and
revealing his close ties with racist U.S. bloggers and anti-Muslim ideology. A
New York Times article on July 25 exposed the role of U.S.-based
ultra-rightists in Breivik’s development. There are 64 references in this
document to Robert Spencer, who operates the U.S.-based “Jihad
Watch” website, and that’s just one example.
Look behind these developments and you find the severe capitalist economic
crisis. Its first victims were the oppressed countries, the former colonies.
Workers and farmers trying to survive made their way at great cost to Europe
and the United States to find work, and for years many did find work.
Now the crisis is hitting home in the imperialist countries. There is high
unemployment overall. What is the solution for workers and oppressed
communities?
Breivik’s ideological fellow-thinkers —including those like Glenn
Beck, whose first reaction to the massacre was to attack Norway’s Labor
Party — propose ratcheting up racism and expelling immigrants.
These “solutions” keep the working class divided and fighting each
other for the steadily dwindling pool of jobs. The capitalists are just fine
with that.
Like the Times and the BBC, the mainstream capitalist parties refuse to stand
firm against this racism, as the capitalists don’t want to promote
solidarity. They profit from keeping workers divided.
The only alternative is for the working class itself to develop and strengthen
solidarity and unity among all workers, the unemployed, and those from
oppressed nations — and to realize that our enemy is the wealthy
capitalist class, not each other.
The racist, divisive aims and acts of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant neo-fascists
can be stopped if workers, whether they are born in a country or immigrants,
join together to struggle for jobs and for an end to the nightmare of
capitalism worldwide.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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