Unsurprisingly, my book has been met with some criticism, for instance people claiming that I simply call any right-wing party that I identify as xenophobic Eurofascist; and that I compare today’s anti-Muslim bigotry with the industrial mass murder of the Holocaust. Some have also criticised me for comparing a range of political parties that vary greatly.
Xenophobia does not equal fascism
Fascism, with its obsession on nationality and ethnicity, is a xenophobic ideology, and while academic definitions of fascism vary greatly, one can hardly describe fascism without mentioning this obsession. Yet, xenophobia or “opposition to immigration” does not by itself classify a party as a fascist party. This, frankly, should also be clear to anyone who has actually bothered to read my book.
Sadly, most of my critics seem to have skipped that part. Therefore, let me note the following:
Throughout modern-day Europe there is a number of political parties supporting xenophobic policies and employing xenophobic rhetorics. Not all of them are fascist parties. Some of them, like the Norwegian Progress Party, is most decidedly not, and branding them as such is a double mistake, leading not only to the very word fascism being watered out, but also allowing these xenophobic parties to take on a victim role benefitting them.
That said, almost all of these parties are faced with fascist entryism, including the Progress Party. In 1996, for instance, neo-Nazis from the Viking group, infiltrated the Oslo department of the Progress Party Youth.
Anti-Muslim bigotry does not equal the Holocaust
While it is most certainly possible to compare anti-Semitism – hostility towards Jews as a religious or racial group – and other forms of xenophobia, one can not compare the results of todays anti-Muslim bigotry with the Holocaust.
While the minaret ban in Switzerland, for instance, is certainly in violation of the freedom of religion – a fundamental human right, it is not an industrial mass murder carried out by an entire state apparatus in unison. When the Norwegian daily Dagsavisen adapted the Swiss flag to make it look like a swastika – on their front page – this could at best be interpreted as a gross overstatement and at worst as downplaying the Nazi atrocities, surely not their intention.
As the Israeli foreign ministry points out, the Holocaust was a unique culmination in the annals of racism. It can be compared with other large-scale genocides, but it makes little sense doing so. Such massive acts of cruelty should not be quantified like football statistics, and atrocity competions are somewhat meaningless.
In addition there are important differences between the Nazi variant of anti-Semitism and modern-day Islamic bigotry, even when it is founded on conspiracy theories such as the Eurabia theory suggesting that Muslims – in cooperation with Liberal elites across Europe – are taking over Europe is a large-scaled and centrally planned operation. While it is silly to see anti-Semitism as such as a unique form of racism, one should never forget the unique attributes of Nazism.
That said, xenophobia – including anti-Islamic bigotry of the kind peddled by neofascists and others across Europe and the rest of the Western world – does carry with it the potential for political violence and even for mass murder. Surfing the Internet, it is fully possible to find calls for outright genocide against Muslims, and it is hardly difficult to find suggested policies which could easily result in mass murder, including calls for “forced repatriation” (i.e. ethnic cleansing). The Srebrenica massacre, largely a result of anti-Islamic bigotry, is recent history.
All Eurofascists are not the same
While the parties I have labelled as Eurofascist certainly share many attributes, there are also considerable variations. This, too, should be painfully clear from reading my book; but since my critics often have not, I feel obliged to note it.
The German NPD, for instance, is much closer to the original German Nazism, although they too have been strongly influenced by more recent developments in fascist ideology, such as nouvelle droite-thinking, as represented by Alain de Benoist and others. Some groups have been able to rebrand themselves more effectively than others, and – as part of that process – have also broken of direct contact with more openly fascist parties such as the NPD. While one does not have to dig deep to find the connections between Vlaams Belang and the NPD, or between the VB and the BNP, the VB today generally avoids cooperating with either of the two.
There are also a number of differences when it comes to actual policies. The BNP, for instance, is rather left-oriented in economic policies, while the VB is found on the right side of the economical political spectre (the socalled Solidarist wing, however, lies closer to the BNP).