BERLIN (JTA) -- The confessed perpetrator in the attack in Norway that killed as many as 98 people espoused a right-wing philosophy against Islam that also purports to be pro-Zionist. Anders Behring Breivik is charged with detonating a car bomb outside Oslo’s government headquarters, which houses the office of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, and of shooting and killing at least 85 mostly young people at a political summer camp on nearby Utoya Island. The July 22 massacre reportedly was the the worst attack in Norway since the end of World War II.
In numerous online postings, including a manifesto published on the day of the attacks, Breivik promoted the Vienna School or Crusader Nationalism philosophy, a mishmash of anti-modern principles that also calls for "the deportation of all Muslims from Europe" as well as from "the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."
According to the manifesto, titled "2083: A European Declaration of Independence" and published under the pseudonym Andrew Berwick, the Vienna School supports "pro-Zionism/Israeli nationalism."
Breivik listed numerous European Freedom Parties and neo-Nazi parties as potential allies because of their anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim stance, and mentioned that right-wing populists like Dutch politician Geert Wilders "have to condemn us at this point which is fine. It is after all essential that they protect their reputational shields."
Among the potential allies he listed for Germany were the three largest neo-Nazi parties -- the National Democratic Party, Deutsche Volksunion and Republikaner. In Holland, Wilders' Freedom Party topped the list, and the British National Party topped a long list of potential supporters in the United Kingdom.
European right-populist parties increasingly have been waving the flag of friendship with Israel, as well as expressing vehement opposition to Europe’s multicultural society.
Last month, after it emerged that German-Swedish far-right politician Patrik Brinkmann had met in Berlin with Israeli Likud Party lawmaker Ayoub Kara, who is deputy minister for development of the Negev and Galilee, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that Kara be prevented from making further trips abroad. According to Ynet, Lieberman accused Kara of meeting with neo-Nazis and causing damage to Israel's image. Brinkman said he had reached out to Israeli rightists hoping to build a coalition against Islam.
In postings on the website Document.no that appear to be by Breivik, the poster pondered whether one could "accept the moderate Nazis as long as they distance themselves" from the extermination of the Jews.
The words of right-wing populist politicians "are dangerous, it allows them to radicalize," Hajo Funke, an expert on right-wing extremism in Europe and the Holocaust at Touro College Berlin and the Free University Berlin, told JTA in a phone interview.
"It is a tactical viewpoint of the rising populist right-wing to use this kind of identification, or forced identification with Israel, to be accepted," he said. "They say, 'Our enemies are not any more the Jew ... the real enemy as you can see all over the world is Islam, and not only Islam, but the Islamic person.' This is the new, great danger."
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