How to manufacture fear of the ‘other’

By Anthony Painter / @anthonypainter

Let us be clear at the outset. The guilty parties in the Oslo attack and Utoya massacre are Anders Behring Breivik and whoever may have assisted him. That is it. There is no excuse and there should be no attempt to deflect any blame elsewhere.

It is not sufficient, however, as Boris Johnson implored us yesterday morning in the Telegraph to simply dismiss him as a ‘narcissist and egomaniac who could not cope with being snubbed.’ So a girl he was chasing fell for a Muslim guy. He seems like the sort who would have been snubbed by many girls to me. Why was this one the trigger? Why wasn’t he then motivated to go after the guy or the girl as would seem logical if we were just dealing with a simple revenge pathology? What happened between the snub (if indeed that was the stimulus!) and him setting off bombs in Norway’s capital and killing 68 innocents at a political camp? What inspired him to write a 1500 page manifesto of hate? That it was assembled from the normal sources available online is neither here nor there. It would seem that there is quite a lot of explaining to do.

Breivik latched on to a number of arguments that are freely articulated – hence legitimised – in the mainstream media. That is one of the major differences between Al Qaeda and far right terrorism. There is no one making any subtle arguments in favour of ‘Islamic’ cultural resistance to securalism or ‘crusaders’ on the pages of the Daily Mail. There are people who call for a cultural resistance to Islam in the mainstream media, however.

This is absolutely not to argue that Al Qaeda or other extremist Islamic organisations and networks who peddle hate and seek to murder and maim should not concern us. They absolutely should. They should concern us intensely. It is possible though to worry about and respond to extremisms and not only one form of extremism or another. In fact, the two extremisms are feeding off one another in quite frightening ways: a plague on both their houses.

The first means of combating the far right is to cut off its feeding supply. That involves a greater degree of responsibility in the mainstream media. Again, this is not to say that the people making the arguments are responsible for violence. There is very long distance between casual or politically/journalistically motivated misinformation, misunderstanding, sensationalism or wrongful analysis about Islam and violent action. But there is a funnel and a feeding tube. It should be cut.

Inevitably, we turn to Melanie Phillips. She is an easy target but often with good reason I’m afraid. Sorry to be cliché. Take this piece: ‘This country to so [sic] pro-Muslim that it is giving succour to the extremists who would destroy us’ It is definitive of the genre of ‘othering.’ This involves one or more of the following elements: defining a group by a single characteristic, ie their religious affiliation; assigning this characteristic an intrinsic negative characteristic, eg violent extremism;
calling the wider community to act now as they have been duped by their weak or perfidious political leaders to allow this cultural crisis to occur (a largely mythical of ‘state multiculturalism’ is often articulated at this point); and then elevating the cultural conflict to a definitive status.

The following sentence from that piece is an exemplar of ‘othering’:

“Believing that Islamic terrorism is motivated by an ideology which has ‘hijacked’ and distorted Islam, [the last Government] will not acknowledge the extremism within mainstream Islam itself.”

Islam by definition contains the seed if not the sapling of extremism according to this argument. This will sometimes be backed by a whole series of things including quotes from the Koran. I have no doubt such a message could be constructed from the Bible if one was so inclined – you can waste your time if you want to. Imagine if you were called Smith and a terrorist called Smith struck and then the following day a newspaper columnist said there was something intrinsic to Smiths that tended towards terrorism. You’d be pretty angry and confused right? Smith is just one part of your identity. Besides, Smiths generally are peace loving and law-abiding – why tar them all with the same brush?

As we’ve seen from the latest act of horrendous far right extremist terror, we must now be alert to the potential for more. It is now necessary to be more rigorous in cutting off their life support system: a greater intelligence and police response; realising that the threat is from extremisms rather than one source; and draining the ideological and mythological pool. The point is that it is not far right terrorism alone that is corrosive. It is street fighting, attacks on innocents,
intimidation, and aggression that are of equal concern. The EDL are most definitely in this category. And yes, there are some Muslim groups and individuals who engage in this too: a plague on the houses of anyone who psychologically or physically threatens another human being.

Those responsible for acts of terrorism are the perpetrators and their accomplices. We have to say no to more than just violence though. We have to say no to the process by which groups within our society are turned into the ‘other’: for all our sakes. The centre must hold and defend what it values: our freedom and democracy.