he
paranoid style in politics often imagines unlikely alliances that
coalesce into an overwhelming threat that must be countered by all
necessary means.
In The Clash of Civilisations, Samuel
Huntington conjured an amalgamated East – an alliance between
“Confucian” and “Islamic” powers – that would challenge the West for
world dominance. Many jihadis fear the crusader alliance between
Jews and Christians. They forget that until recently, historically
speaking, populations professing the latter were the chief persecutors
of the former.
Now Anders Breivik has invoked the improbable axis of
Marxism, multiculturalism and Islamism together colonising Europe. As he
sees multiculturalism as essentially a Jewish plot, Breivik has managed
to wrap up the new and old fascist bogies in one conspiracy: communists,
Jews and Muslims.
Like his terrorist counterparts who kill in the name of
various Islamic sects, Breivik is willing to slaughter people for an
invented purity. Modern Norway is a latecomer to the world of nations,
becoming sovereign only in 1905. Vikings, Arctic explorers and
international humanitarians all went into imagining the place.
Given how readily jihadi texts are dismissed as
ravings, it is notable how much attention has already been paid to
Breivik’s wacky ideological brew. This is a worrying portent of the line
of analysis that says that the “root causes” of Breivik’s madness –
immigration and cultural difference – must be addressed. Otherwise,
European societies will lose their social cohesion, to choose one
current euphemism for the volk.
To the extent such a view takes hold, the far right may
be forgiven for concluding that terrorism works. As for the rest of us,
now facing terrorist re-imaginings from both sides of obscure battles in
a mythic past, we may long for the leftist and anti-colonial insurgents
of bygone days. They at least could offer plausible accounts of what
they were up to.
To be sure, tactically speaking, Breivik thought through
his operation. Unlike many jihadis however, he lacked the courage
to face men armed like him and to offer his own life for his beliefs as
well as the lives of others. Nonetheless, he wanted at his court
appearance to strut about in some kind of military uniform.
Smartly tailored uniforms, an abhorrence of cultural
difference and a desire for racial purity are all of a piece with
fascist mysticism. As with jihadi ideology, it is precisely the
non-rational elements of fascism that give it emotive, and hence
political, power. For what Breivik and others see as under threat in the
West is the vital source of meaning, of ultimate values which
they associate with the communion of a purified people.
Since the West faces no obvious threat of such
existential scale and significance, one must be fabricated. It is here
that the unlikely alliance of left-wing parties and Islam plays its
role, purportedly importing on a mass scale Muslims to colonise Europe.
In Norway, Muslims account for less than three per cent of the
population; in the UK, less than five per cent. Even so, the fantastical
fear of the “loss” of Europe to Islam animates many on the right. It is
part of mainstream electoral politics in Europe and has long been an
element of right-wing discourse in the US.
In this vision of danger, multiculturalism plays a key
role. Many will have noted Breivik’s odd invocation of “cultural
Marxists”, folks I have only spotted in small numbers in university
departments and cafés frequented by graduate students. Breivik’s
reference is in part to the Frankfurt School, a group of German Jewish
scholars who fled Hitler for the western cosmopolis of New York.
The idea is that “Jews” have encouraged cultural mixing
in the West, fatally compromising its purity and thus its values, while
Muslims and Jews retain their cultural strength and identity. Europe
must therefore declare “independence” and fight the
Muslim-Jewish-Marxist hordes, apparently starting by killing their
children.
We can only assume that Breivik has confused the
computer fantasy games he played – using a busty blonde avatar named
“conservatism” – with political analysis. What is truly frightening
however is that the core of this vision of multiculturalism as a threat
to the West is shared by leading political parties in France, the UK,
Germany and Italy, among others. This is why there is every chance that
Breivik’s murderous and cowardly rampage will achieve some of its aims.
Immigration, it will be argued, has unbalanced “our” people. It is
already being curtailed in all the leading western powers.
Shut up, obey and collaborate
The irony is that the West brought us empire on a global
scale and drew its cultural, economic and political strength from
interconnections with all parts of the world. The cosmopolis of New
York, London and Paris – a “brown”, not a “white”, West – are more
appropriate beacons of a West flush with power and confidence in its
values than the imaginary purification achieved through concentration
camps and closed borders.
But just what might be corroding values in the West?
This was one of the questions that animated
the Frankfurt School and those who influenced it. They focused on the
interaction between capitalism and culture. They noted the ways in which
capitalism progressively turned everything into something that could be
bought or sold, measuring value only by the bottom line. Slowly but
surely, such measures came to apply to the cultural values at the core
of society. Even time, as Benjamin Franklin told us, is money, a
doctrine which horrified Max Weber in his searing indictment of the
capitalist mentality as an “iron cage” without “spirit”.
Note, for example, the ways in which the great
professional vocations of the West – lawyers, journalists, academics,
doctors – have been co-opted and corrupted by bottom line thinking.
Money and “efficiency” are the values by which we stand, not law, truth
or health. Students are imagined as “customers”, citizens as
“stakeholders”. Professional associations worry about the risk to their
bottom line rather than furthering the values they exist to represent.
Graduates of elite western universities, imbued with the learning of our
great thinkers, are sent off to corporations like News International.
There they learn to shut up, obey and collaborate in the dark work of
exploitation for profit, for which they will be well rewarded, at least
financially speaking.
Thanks in part to the grip of corporate power on the
media and on political parties, few today in the West can imagine any
other politics than those of big money. In the US, and increasingly even
in Europe, the income differential between the poor and the wealthy
already resembles that of banana republics. The downtrodden are asked to
bear the burden of a financial crisis created by bankers. America’s
wealthy fly their children to summer camp in tax-free private jets amid
a real rate of unemployment of over 15 per cent.
Neo-liberalism has only accelerated these processes at
the heart of capitalist society. Here is a far more convincing threat to
western values and “social cohesion” than the lunatic fears of fascists.
Notably, this is a threat that emanates from within, not without. It is
precisely social democratic parties like Norway’s Labour Party –
Breivik’s target – which have sought to contain the corrosive effects of
capitalism and ensure the survival of the West’s most humane values.