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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ibnanv" data-source="post: 10736032" data-attributes="member: 218596">Norway attacks: Norway's tragedy must shake Europe into acting on extremismI share the fear and pain of my country – but in Norway this kind of insane act has always had its origins in the far right<img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/7/24/1311508261501/Jens-Stoltenberg-embraces-007.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /> Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg embraces a survivor of the Utoeya island shooting. Like every other citizen of Oslo, I have walked in the  streets and buildings that have been blown away. I have even spent time  on the island where young political activists were massacred. I share  the fear and pain of my country. But the question is always why, and  this violence was not blind.The <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/jul/24/norway-attacks-live-updates" target="_blank">terror of Norway</a>  has not come from Islamic extremists. Nor has it come from the far  left, even though both these groups have been accused time after time of  being the inner threat to our "way of living". Up to and including the  terrifying hours in the afternoon of 22 July, the little terror my  country has experienced has come from the Cristian <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/far-right?INTCMP=SRCH" target="_blank">far right</a>.For decades, political violence in this country has been  almost the sole preserve of neo-Nazis and other racist groups. During  the 1970s they bombed leftwing bookstores and a May Day demonstration.  In the 80s two neo-Nazis were executed because they were suspected of  betraying the group. In the past two decades, two non-white Norwegian  boys have been died as a result of racist attacks. No foreign group has  killed or hurt people on Norwegian territory since the second world war,  except for the Israeli security force Mossad, which targeted and killed  an innocent man by mistake on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair" target="_blank">Lillehammer</a> in 1973.But even with this history, when this devastating terror  hit us, we instantly suspected the Islamic world. It was the jihadis. It  had to be.It was immediately denounced as an attack on Norway, on  our way of life. In the streets of Oslo, young women wearing hijabs and  Arab-looking men were harassed as soon as the news broke.Small wonder. For at least 10 years we have been told  that terror comes from the east. That an Arab is suspicious, that all  Muslims are tainted. We regularly see people of colour being examined in  private rooms in airport security; we have endless debates on the  limits of "our" tolerance. As the Islamic world has become the Other, we  have begun to think of that what differentiates "us" from "them" is the  ability to slaughter civilians in cold blood.There is, of course, another reason why everybody looked  for al-Qaida. Norway has been part of the war in Afghanistan for 10  years, we took part in the Iraq war for some time, and we are eager  bombers of Tripoli. There is a limit to how long you can partake in war  before war reaches you.But although we all knew it, the war was rarely mentioned  when the terrorist hit us. Our first response was rooted in  irrationality: it had to be "them". I felt it myself. I feared that the  war we took abroad had come to Norway. And what then? What would happen  to our society? To tolerance, public debate, and most of all, to our  settled immigrants and their Norwegian-born children?It was not thus. Once again, the heart of darkness lies  buried deep within ourselves. The terrorist was a white Nordic male; not  a Muslim, but a Muslim hater.As soon as this was established, the slaughter was  discussed as the deed of a mad man; it was no longer seen as primarily  an attack on our society. The rhetoric changed, the headlines of the  newspapers shifted their focus. Nobody talks about war anymore. When  "terrorist" is used, it is most certainly singular, not plural – a  particular individual rather than an undefined group which is easily  generalised to include sympathisers and anyone else you fancy. The  terrible act is now officially a national tragedy. The question is,  would it have been thus if the killer was a mad man with an Islamic  background?I also believe that the killer was mad. To hunt down and  execute teenagers on an island for an hour, you surely must have taken  leave of your senses. But just as 9/11 or the bombing of the subway in  London, this is madness with both a clinical and a political cause.Anyone who has glanced at the web pages of racist groups  or followed the online debates of Norwegian newspapers will have seen  the rage with which Islamophobia is being spread; the poisonous hatred  with which anonymous writers sting anti-racist liberals and the left is  only too visible. The 22 July terrorist has participated in many such  debates. He has been an active member of one of the biggest Norwegian  political parties, the populist right party until 2006. He left them and  sought his ideology instead among the community of anti-Islamist groups  on the internet.When the world believed this to be an act of  international Islamist terrorism, state leaders, from Obama to Cameron,  all stated that they would stand by Norway in our struggle. Which  struggle will that be now? All western leaders have the same problem  within their own borders. Will they now wage war on homegrown rightwing  extremism? On Islamophobia and racism?Some hours after the bomb blast, the Norwegian prime  minister, Jens Stoltenberg, said that our answer to the attack should be  more democracy and more openness. Compared to Bush's response to the  attacks of 9/11 there is good reason to be proud of this. But in the  aftermath of the most dreadful experience in Norway since the second  world war I would like to go further. We need to use this incident to  strike a blow to the intolerance, racism and hatred that is growing, not  just in Norway, nor even only in Scandinavia, but throughout Europe.</blockquote>

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