Extreme Right Wing Political Violence and Terrorism by Max Taylor & P. M. Currie & Donald Holbrook

Author:Max Taylor & P. M. Currie & Donald Holbrook [Taylor, Max]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Tags: Terrorism, Political Science
ISBN: 9781441151629
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2013-01-17T06:07:06+00:00

YOUTH ENGAGEMENT IN RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

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involved in a demonstration against a mosque in Aken in September 2010.

In May 2011 German far-right activists joined an NVU-sponsored protest in Enschede near the German border, carrying a banner that read ‘Kein Islam in Europe’. In September 2010 NVU party members were advised to vote for the PVV in the next elections.7

This development could provoke further growth of Islamophobia in the traditional right-wing extremist movement, spreading this ideology of enmity, hate and fear. In this respect it is also remarkable that some of the youngsters interviewed for the aforementioned Anne Frank House study warned about support for Islamophobia amongst the younger generation of extremists and the Dutch people in general:

(…) If it were now it would have been Wilders. Why? That man says what you think, that is the danger of that man, why he has so many followers.

Because there are now an awful lot of people who are against Moroccans or against Muslims more generally. That man says what people think. But those people don’t know about politics, they follow blindly. (…) I think Wilders is dangerous, I am concerned. I think that Wilders is an obstacle for our beautiful society and that worries me, what will happen if that man comes to power. (…) And Wilders says that we have democracy but we can be clear: he presents a dictatorship (…).

Different manifestations of Islamophobic radical street groups, however, developed in recent years but have disappeared again following a lack of mobilizing support. This was the case, for instance, of Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE Nl) that did not succeed in mobilizing more than forty people during 2008 demonstrations. In July 2011 the Dutch Defence League (DDL), related to the English Defence League (EDL), decided to disband too.

Violence against mosques

The rise in prominence of Islamophobic discourse within traditional and nascent far-right movements coincided with the proliferation of violent incidents directed against the Muslim community. Some youngsters who were interviewed as part of the study participated in organised actions against Islamic targets. The number of documented cases of Islamophobic violence in the Netherlands has been steadily increasing over the years, peaking in the aftermath of specific contextual events such as the 9/11 attacks and the murder of Van Gogh in November 2004 (Bovenkerk 2006: 95–7; Van der

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EXTREME RIGHT WING POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND TERRORISM

Valk 2012; Van Donselaar and Rodrigues 2002: 23–6). Much of the violence against Islamic targets is directed at centres of worship, mostly mosques as the most visible symbol of Islam. As Lambert observed in this volume within the UK context, violent acts against mosques in the Netherlands mainly consist of arson (or arson attempts), targeted graffiti, vandalism and threats.

This author’s data on violence against mosques were collected from a variety of sources such as the Dutch National Police Services Agency, the National Anti-Discrimination Agencies, specialized research groups and the media.

Despite this variety of sources there are good reasons to assume that the figures are an underestimation of the actual number of incidents of islamophobic violence.

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