Anders Behring Brevik's online following and the way forward.

[Louis VI the Fat]

In the context of Louis' statement:


with an element of the (poorly specified) right becoming mainstream in european politics, i took him to mean the populist right which does not include the likes BNP, but instead those winning elections all over europe, those struggling for recognition as a mainstream political movement, and those who will find their anti-immigration stance vulnerable to the events in norway.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...758883,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...757982,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...770045,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...737676,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...772875,00.html
www.demos.co.uk/files/File/prospectarticle1.pdf

I mean the fascist, extreme right.

There is a dilution of the term, of the political current, coming from two directions. One, succesful hardright parties have developed a 'fascism with a human face'. A kind of fascism-lite. Spearheaded by clean-cut poster boys. Or girls. Not the basement=dwelling troglodytes with nazi-tattoos of old, but smart, clean, rhetorically gifted career politicians. Sometimes, one does wonder where form follows content, where fascism turns into social-fascism, the way socialism and reactionarism have been tamed into social-democracy and Christian-democracy.
Two, European mainstream is becoming de-sensitivied towards hardright issues. Things are now said openly, even by non-hardright parties, which were considered 'incitement to hatred' fifteen years ago.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I think most people here on this forum are smart enough to realise that the idea of a clean-cut left-right spectrum is not in fact very helpful, and is the cause of much pointless debating on the definitions of terms, as well as a convenient source for attacking people through the 'guilt by association' route.

Mr. Brevik has been labelled frequently as being "extreme right". And in the post above, Louis calls the fascists "extreme right". And yet, Mr. Brevik was not by any stretch of the imagination a fascist, or a neo-Nazi for that matter.

Brevik was of the vienna school of thought, he championed laissez-faire economics, not the corporatism/national socialism of the fascist movements. In fact its clearly the opposite. He wasn't less or more extreme than the fascists in this respect, he was something completely different (got to emphasise that).

He certainly wasn't a neo-Nazi. He was banned from Stormfront for not being anti-semitic enough. The alliance between the NSDAP fanboys and those that focus on immigration as a more contemporary issue was always going to be an uneasy one. It's about the Muslims now and not the Jews, but some people just can't let go. This leads to weirdness when the far-left jumps into bed with radical Islamists and has them doing Nazi salutes towards Jewish protesters at their rallies. I always found the ways these particular issues got conflated into grander ideologies to be interesting.

tbh the only thing we can say that the so called "far-right" has in common is that they don't like immigrants. But this is just one issue and doesn't justify any sort of attempt at creating a single left-right spectrum when there are so many dimensions to things. When the BNP are placed to the left of Labour on the economy, you start to realise just how meaningless and unhelpful a single spectrum is (I believe this is what PVC was getting at when he called the Nazi's left wing and Adrian thought he was trolling him).

And as Louis pointed out, even just using the issue of immigration for left-right divides is unhelpful, since the centre-right has always supported immigration for economic reasons, and of late the centre-left supported it for cultural reasons.

So maybe we need to stop labelling so much.

[Fragony]

' However, what society have we wrought in which the only way people can express their opinions through the means of violence? Even if this was indeed the act of a lone wolf, a single person that in his crazy mind decided the best way to help society is by the cold execution of several dozens of young people who came together to find a way to improve their country in their own way, doesn't it tell us something about the way how we have collectively alienated certain people from society, by automatically refusing to consider their opinions, even if they may be of a controversial nature.'

Such reflections will turn out to be too much to ask for I'm afraid. While the usual suspects have been remarkably quiet, the Norway shootings are a powerful political weapon to sabotage debate. Argument of doom 'that's what he also said', opportunists like Alexander the Great and C-c-c-ohen are low enough to do that

[Furunculus]

I mean the fascist, extreme right.

There is a dilution of the term, of the political current, coming from two directions. One, succesful hardright parties have developed a 'fascism with a human face'. A kind of fascism-lite. Spearheaded by clean-cut poster boys. Or girls. Not the basement=dwelling troglodytes with nazi-tattoos of old, but smart, clean, rhetorically gifted career politicians. Sometimes, one does wonder where form follows content, where fascism turns into social-fascism, the way socialism and reactionarism have been tamed into social-democracy and Christian-democracy.
Two, European mainstream is becoming de-sensitivied towards hardright issues. Things are now said openly, even by non-hardright parties, which were considered 'incitement to hatred' fifteen years ago.

fair enough, but i believe the populist right is a far more significant force, now and in the future, for european politics.

re ther european mainstream is becoming de-sensitivied towards [[hard]]right issues - this to me is all part of the normal tangent away from socialism that has been happening for nearly a generation now, and will continue to occur for another generation, until there is no real difference between what people claim to be social-liberalism and social-democracy.