Norway's loss of innocence

A peaceful, prosperous, generous land, Norway is one of those countries where bad things aren't supposed to happen. And the way Norwegian police responded to the recent terror attack - piling into a leaky boat and finding they couldn't move, then calling for a helicopter, only to find the pilots were on holiday - it seemed nobody was prepared for anything bad to happen.

The reports immediately after the attack drew a picture of something from Europe's dark underside. The attacker, believed to have set off bombs in Oslo before going on a killing spree at a youth camp, claimed to be acting in defence of European civilisation. He articulated views from the extreme right, insisting that Europe's Christian identity was threatened by Muslim hordes.

Reports emerged of a deeply religious man who saw himself on a divine mission. However, the picture which subsequently emerged showed there was more to it than that. Politics makes strange bedfellows, and the one thing that unites Islamic extremists and European neofascists is that both see acts of terror as part of an epic struggle between a Christian West and Muslim East.

Yet their respective constituencies disagree. On one side, public-opinion research consistently reveals that clear majorities in Muslim countries repudiate the tactics of Islamic terrorists. On the other side, the depiction of a singular act of terror as a strike in defence of Christianity is equally unfounded.

Religion and tolerance

I recently built a simple scatter-plot which compared church attendance in European countries with support for far-right parties, those which oppose Muslim immigration. As I expected would happen, the trend line which resulted sloped downwards. That is to say, the higher the degree of attendance at church in a given country, the lower the support for extremist parties.

On the face of it, this flies in the face of extremist claims. The stronger a country's Christian identity, the more tolerant it is of minorities. However, this shouldn't surprise us. Whatever one makes of one's religious heritage, it is a large part of the cultural endowment passed to us by our ancestors. And when a country turns its back on its religious heritage, it is that much more likely to feel culturally insecure.

It is perhaps to be expected that in a country like Norway, where religious attendance has dwindled to insignificance, an individual who fits the profile of a mass killer - an economically marginalised young male with a complicated personal and family history - would gravitate towards extreme assertions of identity. In a successful country, when you fail as an individual, you seek to cling to what makes you feel somehow superior to those around you.

Sense of power

The Norwegian terrorist joined the Norwegian Protestant Church, but left because he found it too moderate. His religion was a delusional one that gave him a sense of power.

This doesn't mean that religious societies are necessarily more tolerant. In some European countries where church attendance is high, far-right parties are not needed because their views are articulated in the mainstream. Particularly in parts of Eastern Europe, religion and ethnicity have gone hand in hand in sometimes very ugly ways.

Nonetheless, in an age of increased human migration, issues of identity become more salient where identity is itself more fragile. Sadly, we are not likely to have seen the last of European extremism. As the global economy goes through a painful transition into a post-Keynesian state, where the assurances of prosperity and security of a previous generation give way to conflicts over scarce resources, economic marginality will continue to rise. And disaffected young men will continue to gravitate towards secure bastions, which some will find in racism and fear.

That is among the great challenges facing the political parties of the West. The threat is not from without, but from within. Finding a way to provide a sense of security in a rapidly changing world will be the pressing imperative of this century.

John Rapley is Bradlow fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and rapley.john@gmail.com.