NEO-CHRISTIAN CRUSADES AND THE THREAT OF RIGHT-WING POPULISM

Labels tend to obfuscate rather than clarify, especially political/ideological labels that are 'loaded'. The point I have tried to make is that there is a rise of right wing populism across Europe and the US, and that Breivik is part of that larger trend that gave birth to him. A neo-Christian terrorist who seeks solidarity with Israel fits into the broader Western right-wing political trend that has defined Islam as a new enemy. It is true that Breivik has denounced Hitler as the passage below indicates, but is denying orthodox neo-Nazi positions indicative of rejecting neo-Nazism in another form?

Whenever someone asks if I am a national socialist I am deeply offended. If there is one historical figure and past Germanic leader I hate it is Adolf Hitler. If I could travel in a time-machine to Berlin in 1933, I would be the first person to go – with the purpose of killing him... 
So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxists/multiculturalists.

Breivik's position is in line with that of the right wing populists in Europe and the US. The danger is that these new Christian crusaders have shed the image of anti-Semites and seek legitimacy by embracing traditional conservative values and causes, and by appearing to embrace the nation-state more than those evil liberals or Marxists who are internationalists (liberals embracing globalization; Marxists seeking international working class solidarity; both accepting of multiculturalism).

Transparent attempts to paint Breivik anything other than a right-wing populist, although he is not an orthodox neo-Nazi, will fail against the overwhelming evidence that this individual has come to earth from Mars, but from a specific European-wide right wing xenophobic movement; a movement that includes many established far right political parties that try to conceal their neo-Fascist orientation by embracing populist positions. 

 

The best among them is National Front leader Marine Le Pen who has tried through smoke and mirrors to appear as less controversial than her father who was an unapologetic neo-Fascist.  The scary thing is that many conservatives fall for the right-wing populist positions, and they try to apologize for extremists like Breivik, dismissing them as fanatics, neo-Nazis, etc. Far right movements feed off traditional conservatism and that is what is happening across Europe and US.