Fear and Loathing In Norway and Elsewhere

No one saw this coming. No one could ever believe that peaceful nation such as Norway could be the scene of such deadly attacks in both the center of its capital and on an island retreat for youth. The United States has experience with madmen who go on murderous rampages to make extremist political points, such as Timothy McVeigh, but no one ever expected someone like Anders Breivik to plant bombs in the Norwegian prime minister's offices in Oslo and attack the ruling Labor party's youth camp on Utoya Island to protest the party's liberal stance on immigration from Islamic countries. But that's because no one was paying attention.

Because of their more generous social programs and lower crime rates, European countries have always been seen - in part by Europeans themselves, in part by envious American liberals - as more harmonious than countries in other parts of the world. But with the rise of immigration, the growing debt crises in the Eurozone, and the attempt at a stronger union of the continents, that has changed. European nations are reverting to the suspicions and prejudices toward each other that existed before the Cold War shifted the balance of global power to the United States, and the growth of African and Middle Eastern populations that have trouble assimilating politically or culturally has stoked fear and paranoia among average Europeans, and the killings in Norway have brought such fear to light. As recently as last year, German chancellor Angela Merkel said that European multiculturalism has failed. No one was listening.

The United Kingdom has probably absorbed immigrant populations better than countries on the European mainland, if only because the British have had experience with right-wing extremism from the late seventies and they have a sense of cultural independence strengthened over centuries by its geographic isolation. (Britain has been militarily invaded only once since 1066, and the 1940 Nazi invasion was an air attack.) But with the world and Europe growing smaller and wit h Britain experiencing its own economic troubles, even tolerance of outsiders there is wearing thin.

The anti-Muslim paranoia should seem familiar to Americans having gotten used to Florida pastor Terry Jones's stunts and Herman Cain's ingorant statements. And Muslims in America account for only less than one percent of the population. If American reactionaries are concerned about Shari'a law being imposed here, imagine how many National Frontists in Europe fear the same thing, in countries where Muslims are a greater share ofthe population and where imams just as extreme actually have called for Shari'a law. If Muslim womren in America feel put down upon for wearing their hejabi in public, how do Muslim women in France feel about the ban on public hejab wearing? Islamophobia in the United States pales in comparison to the strains of Muslim-bashing in the Old Country, so it's no surprise that another Oklahoma City took place not in a state capital here but a national capital there.

Multiculturalism may not have worked so far in Europe, and it may not be doing much better here, but something has to be done to prevent another event like Oklahoma City or Oslo. In this new globalized world, there's no alternative.