‘Europe will acquire a fascist political spectrum if nothing changes’
Social media is very important for these far-right groups to have contacts with each other across countries and across regions. They build organizations, they build politics, Adrian Groglopo, from the University of Gothenburg, told RT.
RT: Police in Norway say there are around 100 far-right groups. In Sweden they are also present. Why did they become so numerous?
Adrian Groglopo: … We should go back maybe 20 years ago in the beginning of the 90’s, end of the 80’s to understand the starting of the rise of the far-right in different parts of Europe. They had gained political power in different places of Europe, especially in Scandinavian countries and of course in Germany, and many other countries too - look at England, or France. This is a political power we have to analyze and be conscious about, because they are going to continue to grow. I am very sad to say this, but Europe is going to acquire a fascist political spectrum in the future, if nothing changes during these years.
But why did they become so numerous? Well, a lot of publicity – this is one of the main concerns, I think. The other one is of course is the new information technology. The social media is very important for these groups to have contacts with each other across countries and across regions. Well, they build organizations; they build politics, they know when to act, they know how to start to talk in another way that they have talked before. Now they are very political, very shaped in one way or the other saying racist things. So we have a lot of different parties that legitimize the street fascism.
RT: Do you believe violence of far-right groups should be a major concern? Why?
AG: I think that in one way the police are very anxious. In another way, I don’t think they are so anxious… For example in Sweden we had in the beginning of the 1990’s one guy terrorizing the whole population, I mean so-called Lasermannen ("the Laser Man"), who went around killing people with a laser-guided pistol. Later on we had a rise of different very racist groups… And then some years ago there was Anders Breivik in Norway…
We have the Sweden Democrats in Sweden, which is a racist and fascist political party gaining numerous votes because of the circumstances we are in: the war in the Middle East, the war in Syria that triggered migration. They are doing the politics on that. So we have a lot of different things going on.
I think that the police, as well as the government, have on one side a responsibility on this. For them it is not a security reason that the far-right is increasing. It is not a problem for the government or for the majority of the people directly... But there are very violent actions against minorities. That’s one of the questions: why is there not a focus on the terrorism that many minorities, many immigrants are experiencing today. Through politics, through violence, through discrimination at the labor market you have different parts that concern the discrimination of migrants and minority groups.
RT: What may be the consequences of their violence?
AG: The worst case scenario I would say they are normalizing their presence in society, I mean on the streets. They have done this normalizing on the streets in the political field; they have been normalizing their presence in different political and economic institutions in society. So it is now time to normalize their presence on the street. The worst case scenario is that some of these political parties, which have fascist and racist ideologies, come to power… They are going to legitimize violence much more than they do today on the streets and of course start to change the ideas of the people, the common sense of the people in society...
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
