As I posted at the end of my last diary about how the attack in Norway was not a surprise, but the predictable result of a right nativist subculture that gives moral sanction to extremism, I wrote that I had no idea what we could do to break this escalating pattern of violence. I still don't really know, but I've been thinking and trying to come up with some ways we can respond. I'm going to lay them out below, and I hope that some of the smart folks around here will add their own two cents. Here's four things I think we can do in the wake of Anders Breivik.
1) I'm an American. I'm a European.
We're all probably familiar with the success of the "It Gets Better" Project. It's a stunningly simple way to counter the narrative of isolation that many gay young people hear. Well, what about a similar project where folks from different backgrounds could explain why they consider themselves an American or a European?
Breivik and his ilk rely on the natural tribal instinct we all have as human beings to regard those who we see as different with suspicion. A web-based project could humanize us to each other, remind us of our shared values. Naturally, there are those who choose to define their nationality in the right nativist way; but there are so many of us who don't. Let's organize to get those voices heard.
2) The Breaking Bread Project.
Over the years pollsters have followed the gay civil rights issue closely in the US. They have found a strong correlation: people who say they know an out gay person are far more likely to support the fight for equal rights. As the number of out gay people in American society has grown, more and more folks have come around. Similar polling found similar results in the fight for racial civil rights in America a generation ago. You don't hate so easily those you know.
If you are a non-Muslim living in the West, how many Muslims do you actually know? I mean more then just someone you might say hello to across a desk, a driveway, or a counter; for me, I have a simple rule about whether I know someone. If we have sat down and shared a meal, they count. How many of us have broken bread with our Muslim brothers and sisters? Could we organize an outreach, a simple meal, nothing more? Let's break bread with each other.
3) Change the terror story.
Since September 11th, there have been many more right nativist terror plots uncovered in the US then there have been Islamist terror plots. The same holds true in Europe.
This isn't to say that there aren't Islamist terror cells; there are. It's just that there are more right nativist terror threats in the Western world. This fact needs to be repeated and repeated until it sinks in. Right nativists pose just as grave a threat in the "war on terror" as Islamists; potentially a far greater threat, given their residence in Western countries, their ability to pass through screens based on racial and cultural profiling, and their access through positions in the military and government to weapons of mass destruction. Sooner or later a right nativist will get their hands on a military WMD and use it inside the US or Europe. This poses at least as much a threat as WMD in the hands of Islamists.
4) Don't move on.
In one of Philip Kerr's great Bernie Gunther detective novels, there is a scene set in Landsberg Prison in Germany in 1954. In it, two old Nazis, both still behind bars for their war crimes, are expressing amazement that their American captors, nine years later, are still so fixated on just one of the many atrocities of the war; the comparatively minor massacre of 84 American prisoners of war at Malmedy, Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. After the war Malmedy had become a symbol for the American public of the many (and many far greater) crimes of the Nazi regime, a proxy for the otherwise inconceivable evils committed during the war. By focusing like a laser on that one incident, that one slaughter of unarmed prisoners of war, the American post-war public was doing what we all naturally do; breaking down a complex phenomenon into one digestible narrative. Malmedy became shorthand for Nazi war crimes, a story that everyone knew and that carried important symbolic weight. It's far easier to hold one atrocity in your heart then a thousand.
Anders Breivik murdered more then the Nazis did at Malmedy. Breivik's isn't the only, or even the largest, act of right wing terrorism in recent years. But it is unique in both its viciousness and its straightforward political motivation. We should resist the attempts in the media to cloud what Breivik did in the pop psychology of madness. We should equally resist the urge to simply put aside this atrocity and move on. Moving on is maybe the most emotionally healthy response to tragedy, but it can place a pall of forgetfulness upon us. Let's not move on. Let's remember what happened in that peaceful little nation, and use it as the template of the narrative we all tell ourselves and each other about the right nativist subculture. I'm not talking about stroking grievance. I'm talking about framing the discussion. Let's never think of right nativism without remembering Utøya.
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I know that some of these propositions sound naive in their simplicity and their reliance on and faith in moral suasion. But there is no silver bullet against hate; there is only the daily work, step by step, to dismantle the structure of ignorance that haters build up to give sanction to their behavior. Let's shine the spotlight secondly on who these haters are, but firstly on who we are, the people who make up the West in all its openness and pride.
So what are your ideas? How can we make sure that those folks who died at the hands of Anders Breivik did not leave this world in vain?