Foto: Johnny Soderberg
One week has passed since the massacre of a christian fundamentalsti in Norway. Today we can clearly overlook the reactions. The vast majority of the reactions of the “official politics” is maintaining at the surface. Only the consquent left is reflecting the full importance of the events and makes adaequat progressive conclusions.
Though today the far right background of the massacre is documentadet tries the official politics and the boulevarde to ignore or play it at least down . They speak of an “uncomprehensive action”, “running of a crazy man”, and simular nebulous things.The Austrian cardinal Schönborn wrotes in his coolumne in the newspaper “heute” (“today”) that christian funfametalism “cannot exist” (has he never heard anything of the crusades or the teaparty in the USA ?) and argues that it was the “evil” ( das “Böse”) what we have seen.
It is just infam when governments – also the Austrian one- are using the massacre as pretext to produce even harder “Anti-Terror”-laws . In Austria the conservatives are the forerunners , but the socialdemocratic leadership agrees : Chancellor Faymann said that only about “details” there will be negotiations with the coalitionpartner…
Only the left did not participate in this mascerade . The left insisted that it was not an “isolated, crazy single person” but that the negative neoliberal development in the society plays an important role. All over Europ – we can even say: all over the world- farright populism and farright extremism is gaining ground and the events in Norway have to be seen as the peak of an icemountain.
We can be sure that the international bourgeoisie and their governments – after there is some grass on the graves of the victims- will go on with their “normal agenda” . They demand “verbal disarment ” and “acting together” (!) . And at the same time- as the leader of the Austrian conservatives Spindelegger- they do not “exclude” a coalition with the der far right brown-blue FPÖ !
As activists in the movements and as consquent Left we have to state:
– To feel with and to be in solidarity with the victims means also to problematisize the social basis which made the horrible events in Norway possible
– the open crises of capitalism, the ” situation without hope” lead to the enourmous crescendo of rightwing populism and rightwing extremism
– the international labourmovement and the social movements have to understand fully “the signs of the time”: against the far right we need claear arguments, consequent left, anticapitalist politics and forms of selfdefence .
So the parole NO PASARAN will become reality!
Hermann Dworczak is activist in the Austrian Social Forum/ ASF