European xenophobes support Breivik

This video is called A witness describes how he survived Utoya shooting.

By Kumaran Ira in France:

French neo-fascist officials endorse Norway atrocities

29 July 2011

Members of far-right parties across Europe have endorsed the mass killing last Friday carried out by a right-wing anti-Islamic extremist in Norway, Anders Breivik. At least 76 people were killed in a bombing in Oslo and at a youth camp of the social-democratic Labour Party on nearby Utoya Island.

Two prominent members of France’s neo-fascist Front National (FN), Jacques Coutela and Laurent Ozon, published blog posts defending the mass killings carried out by Breivik, a former member of the fascistic Progress Party in Norway. Prior to the killings, Breivik posted messages expressing hatred of Muslims and immigrants. He also denounced “cultural Marxism” and “multiculturalism,” as obstacles to the defence of national culture.

Coutela, who was an FN candidate in the Yonne district in the March 2011 cantonal elections, praised Breivik on his blog as a “resistance fighter.” He added that Breivik was “the first defender of the West” and “Charles Martel II”—a reference to the medieval Frankish king Charles Martel, who repelled Muslim armies invading southern France through Spain at the battle of Poitiers in 732.

Coutela wrote, “He’s not an icon, but simply a visionary facing the rising Islamization of Europe, with the complicity of our governments and of [European Union authorities in] Brussels.” He called for the mass expulsion of “these miscreants who want to impose hallal meat, mosques, paedophilia, and the occupation of our streets.”

Similarly Ozon, who was appointed by FN leader Marine Le Pen to the FN’s political committee, posted messages on Twitter supporting Breivik’s action. He wrote that to “explain the drama in Oslo” one had to cite “the explosion of immigration: it went up by a factor of six between 1970 and 2009.”

In Italy, the Berlusconi government’s conservative coalition partner, the far-right separatist Northern League, also defended Breivik’s fascistic views. Francesco Speroni, a leading member of the Northern League, said “Breivik’s ideas are in defence of western civilization.”

The defence of Breivik’s views and of his terror attack by the FN and other European extreme right-wing parties are a serious warning to the working class. They express the neo-fascists’ violent hostility to immigrants and to any organization they perceive—however incorrectly, in the case of Norway’s Labour Party—as having socialist policies.

In the aftermath of the mass killing in Norway, the FN has cynically tried to distance itself from the killing. On Sunday FN leader Marine Le Pen declared, “The National Front obviously has nothing to do with the Norwegian massacre, which is the work of a solitary unbalanced person that will have to be mercilessly punished.”

On Tuesday, the FN announced that Coutela had been temporarily suspended from party activities. FN general secretary Steeve Briois told AFP that Coutela had been “suspended today from his position, pending appearance before a disciplinary commission.” Ozon has not been subjected to any sanction so far, however.

In suspending Coutela, the FN is trying to win support in the media and the political establishment by posing as a “responsible” party. This strategy has had some success in the official media, which has sought to promote the FN since Marine Le Pen took over as party leader in January. (See “French media gives glowing coverage of new National Front Leader”).