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ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the Norwegian terror attacks of 22 July 2011, the question of agency with regard to the convicted perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik, has frequently been discussed. Did he really act on his own? Were his actions self-directed? Was he, as a typical ‘lone wolf’, inspired by the prevalent far-right concept of ‘leaderless resistance’ or, simply, a blind tool, a string puppet pushed and pulled by dark forces, as some commentators have claimed? His cut-and-paste manifesto points to inspiration from ideas circulating in the European Counter Jihad Movement (ECJM), in itself a contradictory mix of ideological positions. A number of these ideas were given new life when the so-called ‘populist right-wing movement of indignation’, the Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (PEGIDA) took to the streets of Dresden in the autumn of 2014. The driving force behind PEGIDA, Lutz Bachmann, with a past as petty criminal and doorman, is an unlikely front man for one of the most successful political initiatives in post-unification Germany. Comparing Breivik and PEGIDA, Önnerfors argues that the ECJM is part of the ‘third generation’ of right-wing discourse that is without a consistent world view, dominant leaders and prolific ideologues. Instead, in a new atmosphere of ‘politics of passion’ and ‘post-politics’, fuzzy ECJM ideology turns into a screen upon which diffuse uneasiness with current political affairs can be projected and channelled. Outside the scope of Önnerfors's article but worth noting is the considerable impact these developments have had on electoral support for right-wing populist parties such as the Front National in France, the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and the Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden.
Notes
1 For definitions and a thorough discussion of the concept, see Matthew Feldman, ‘Comparative lone wolf terrorism: toward a heuristic definition’, Democracy and Security, vol. 9, no. 3, 2013, 270–86.
2 Ibid., 277–9.
3 Hans Vorländer, Maik Herold and Steven Schäller, PEGIDA: Entwicklung, Zusammensetzung und Deutung einer Empörungsbewegung (Springer: Berlin 2016), 139. All translations unless otherwise stated are by the author.
4 Elisabetta Brighi, ‘The mimetic politics of lone-wolf terrorism’, Journal of International Political Theory, vol. 11, no. 1, 2015, 145–64 (147, 154).
5 See the entry ‘anti-politics’, in Noel Castree, Rob Kitchin and Alisdair Rogers, A Dictionary of Human Geography (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013), 20.
6 For a definition of the ‘politics of passion’, see Chantal Mouffe, ‘By way of a postscript’, Parallax, vol. 20, no. 2, 2014, 149–57 (155).
7 Hans Brun and Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, A Neo-Nationalist Network: The English Defence League and Europe's Counter-Jihad Movement (London: International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence 2013), 45–7; Øyvind Strømmen, Det mörka nätet: Om högerextremism, kontrajihadism och terror i Europa (Stockholm: Molin & Sorgenfrei 2012), 11.
8 A. P. Schmid, Radicalisation, De-Radicalisation, Counter-Radicalisation: A Conceptual Discussion and Literature Review, ICCT Research Paper (The Hague: International Centre for Counter-Terrorism 2013), 15, in which terrorism is defined as the use of violence by non-state actors against non-combatants or ‘de-individuated murder, a term chosen to indicate that the victim matters mostly as a message generator’; see also Feldman, ‘Comparative lone wolf terrorism’, 278, in which Breivik's attacks are interpreted as ‘murderous deeds intended to draw attention to far-right propaganda’, mainly to his manifesto and online video.
9 Feldman, ‘Comparative lone wolf terrorism’, 282.
10 Harvey W. Kushner, ‘Leaderless resistance’, in Harvey K. Kushner (ed.), Encyclopedia of Terrorism (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications 2003), 214–15 (214).
11 Paul Joosse, ‘Leaderless resistance and the loneliness of lone wolves: exploring the rhetorical dynamics of lone actor violence, terrorism and political violence’, Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 29, no. 1, 2017, 52–78 (66, 69).
12 Feldman, ‘Comparative lone wolf terrorism’, 273–5.
13 Brun and Meleagrou-Hitchens, A Neo-Nationalist Network, 2.
14 Mattias Gardell, ‘Anders Behring Breiviks politiska hemvist och motivbild: Sakkunnigrapport inför rättegången i Oslo, 4 juni 2012’, in Det vita fältet II: Samtida forskning om högerextremism, special issue of Arkiv. Tidskrift, no. 2, 2013, 185–219 (202).
15 The term ‘conspiracism’ and its derived adjective ‘conspiracist’ are used, for example, in Chip Berlet, Toxic to Democracy: Conspiracy Theories, Demonization, and Scapegoating (Somerville, MA: Political Research Associates 2009), see esp. 13; see also Larry E. Sullivan, ‘Conspiracy theory’, in Larry E. Sullivan (ed.), The SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications 2009), 104–5; and Joosse, ‘Leaderless resistance and the loneliness of lone wolves’, 19. For an almost surreal debate in Norway on Breivik's alleged links to his fictional organization of European Knights Templar, see John Færseth, ‘Blaming Israel for Oslo's bomb’, 4 February 2014, available on the Hate Speech International website at www.hate-speech.org/blaming-israel-for-oslos-bomb (viewed 26 January 2017), in which the author meticulously traces the spread of two conspiracist interpretations of Breivik's actions.
16 Kristian Steiner, ‘Vem är min nästa? Bilden av Islam och muslimer i den kristna nyhetstidningen Världen idag (Uppsala: Swedish Science Press 2010), 91–120. Gardell, ‘Anders Behring Breiviks politiska hemvist och motivbild’, 207–9.
17 Brun and Meleagrou-Hitchens, A Neo-Nationalist Network, 35–7.
18 Strømmen, Det mörka nätet, 11, 54, 72, 82–104, 126.
19 For a comprehensive analysis of Breivik's manifesto in regard to the use of the term and idea of ‘Europe’, see Therese Einerborg and Andreas Önnerfors, European Identity in the Imagination of the Counter Jihad Movement, CFE Working Paper Series (Lund: Centre for European Studies, Lund University 2017). See also Andreas Önnerfors, ‘Så försöker Breivik kapa Europa-begreppet’, 27 April 2012, originally published on the Newsmill website at www.newsmill.se/artikel/2012/04/27/topp-s-f-rs-ker-breivik-kapa-europa-begreppet (viewed 22 July 2012; at present, since a change in ownership of Newsmill in 2013, the issue of access to the published material posted remains unresolved).
20 See the SIOE website at sioeeu.wordpress.com (viewed 26 January 2017).
21 Katie Engelhart, ‘The rise of the far right in Europe’, Maclean's, no. 126, 30 November 2013, 26–30.
22 Gravers quoted in ibid.
23 Rasmus Fleischer, ‘Two fascisms in contemporary Europe? Understanding the ideological split of the radical right’, in Mats Deland, Michael Minkenberg and Christin Mays (eds), In the Tracks of Breivik: Far Right Networks in Northern and Eastern Europe (Vienna and Münster: LIT 2014), 53–70 (54).
24 Carol C. Mukhopadhyay and Peter Chua, ‘Cultural racism’, in John Hartwell Moore (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Race and Racism, 3 vols (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA/ Thomson Gale 2008), I, 377–83; Feldman, ‘Comparative lone wolf terrorism’, 274.
25 ‘Active Citizen’, ‘The UK and Scandinavia counterjihad summit’ (blog), 14 April 2007, available on the Gates of Vienna website at gatesofvienna.blogspot.se/2007/04/uk-and-scandinavia-counterjihad-summit.html (viewed 1 February 2017).
26 Gardell, ‘Anders Behring Breiviks politiska hemvist och motivbild’, 202–3.
27 Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-first Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2008).
28 See Berlet, Toxic to Democracy, 40. One of the more moderate reviews of Sageman's book was written by Christopher Boucek, ‘Leaderless jihad: terror networks in the twenty-first century’, Middle East Policy, vol. 15, no. 3, 2008, 155–6.
29 Sageman, Leaderless Jihad, 145.
30 Strømmen, Det mörka nätet, chapter ‘Den tredje vågen’, 38–64.
31 Matthew Feldman, ‘Broadband terrorism: a new face of fascism’, History & Policy (online), 10 September 2009, available at www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/broadband-terrorism-a-new-face-of-fascism (viewed 1 February 2017).
32 Andreas Önnerfors, ‘Breiviks egen orden’, Kurage: idétidskrift för det civila samhället, vol. 4, 2012, 32–5.
33 Raffaelo Pantucci, A Typology of Lone Wolves: Preliminary Analysis of Lone Islamist Terrorists, Developments in Radicalisation and Political Violence Series (London: International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence 2011), 25–9.
34 Kristofer Mark Allerfeldt, ‘Masons, Klansmen and Kansas in the 1920s: what can they tell us about fraternity?’, Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, vol. 2, no. 1, 2011, 109–22 (109); Adam G. Kendall, ‘Freemasonry and the second Ku Klux Klan in California, 1921–1925’, Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, vol. 2, no. 1, 2011, 123–43 (143); Susanne Jacobsson, ‘En tydlig likhet med Ku Klux Klan’, interview with Andreas Önnerfors, Dagens Nyheter, 24 July 2011, 1 and 4.
35 Gardell, ‘Anders Behring Breiviks politiska hemvist och motivbild’, 204, 207.
36 Eric S. Raymond, ‘The cathedral and the bazaar’, in Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media 1999), 19–64.
37 Unsigned introductory note to Graham Dawson, ‘On networks: a brief essay’ (blog), 10 July 2011, available on the Gates of Vienna website at gatesofvienna.blogspot.se/2011/07/cathedrals-bazaars-and-counterjihad.html (viewed 2 February 2017).
38 Jeffrey Kaplan, ‘Leaderless resistance’, Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 9, no. 3, 1997, 80–95.
39 Dawson, ‘On networks’.
40 Ibid.
41 Baron Bodissey, ‘Building a distributed counterjihad network’ (blog), 1 June 2009, available on the Gates of Vienna website at gatesofvienna.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/building-distributed-counterjihad.html (viewed 26 January 2017).
42 Sebastian Hennig, Pegida: Spaziergänge über den Horizont. Eine Chronik (Neustadt an der Orla: Arnshaughk 2015), 178, also 96. In English, the title is ‘Pegida: Walks across the Horizon. A Chronicle’.
43 The most comprehensive biography of Bachmann is Lars Geiges, Stine Marg and Franz Walter, PEGIDA: Die schmutzige Seite der Zivilgesellschaft? (Bielefeld: transcript 2015), 13–14. See also Vorländer, Herold and Schäller, PEGIDA, 5 and 10–11.
44 Simon Shuster, ‘Meet the German activist leading the movement against “Islamization”’, Time, 15 January 2015.
45 Some insights into Bachmann's biography are provided through his Facebook account, which was used in Issio Ehrich, ‘Lutz Bachmann—der Selbstgerechte: Das Geschicht der Pegida-demos’, n-tv (online), 23 December 2014, available at www.n-tv.de/politik/Lutz-Bachmann-der-Selbstgerechte-article14204751.html (viewed 3 February 2017).
46 Schuster, ‘Meet the German activist leading the movement against “Islamization”’.
47 Raheem Kassam, ‘Exclusive—founder Lutz Bachmann gives rare interview to Breitbart London's Raheem Kassam’, Breitbart (online), 5 April 2016, available at www.breitbart.com/london/2016/04/05/exclusive-pegida-founder-lutz-bachmann-rare-interview-breitbart-london (viewed 3 February 2017). The interview was conducted after Bachmann attended the establishment of PEGIDA UK in Birmingham.
48 Ibid.
49 Hennig, Pegida, 34, 57, 135 (where his rhetorical clarity is praised).
50 Ibid., 183, 184.
51 Ibid., 62, 69; Schuster, ‘Meet the German activist leading the movement against “Islamization”’.
52 Hennig, Pegida, 70, 115, 146, 184.
53 Ibid., 70, 74.
54 Ibid., 183.
55 ‘Lutz Bachmann wegen Volksverhetzung zu Geldstrafe verurteilt’, Spiegel Online, 3 May 2016, available at www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/lutz-bachmann-pegida-gruender-wegen-volksverhetzung-verurteilt-a-1090653.html (viewed 3 February 2017).
56 Hennig, Pegida, 53, 173.
57 Kassam, ‘Exclusive’.
58 Ibid.; Hennig, Pegida, 53.
59 ‘Der lange Atem der PEGIDA: ein Gespräch mit Lutz Bachmann’, Sezession (special issue on PEGIDA), March 2015, 18.
60 Vorländer, Herold and Schäller, PEGIDA, 53, 57, 61, 63, 138.
61 Ibid., 67.
62 Hennig, Pegida, 178.
63 Kassam, ‘Exclusive’.
64 Hennig, Pegida, 196.
65 Ehrich, ‘Lutz Bachmann—der Selbstgerechte’.
66 Mouffe, ‘By way of a postscript’, 156.
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Andreas Önnerfors
Andreas Önnerfors is Associate Professor in the History of Sciences and Ideas at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. He has published widely on the history of Swedish and European Freemasonry, secret societies and the mythologies surrounding such organizations. Between 2011 and 2014 he was senior lecturer at the Department for Global Political Studies at the University of Malmö and has taught the history of ideas, human rights, European studies and peace and conflict studies. His latest book is Expressions of Radicalization: Global Politics, Processes and Performances (Palgrave 2017). E-mail: [email protected]