In a 2005 interview with the American nationalist journalist (and editor of FrontPage Magazine) Robert Locke, Nick Griffin noted that his party is «deeply concerned about the mainly – though not exclusively – French elite project to morph the European Union, Turkey and the Maghreb into ‘Eurabia’». He continued:
Bat Ye’or is 100 per cent right about this. If this now far-advanced scheme comes to fruition then it would in turn lead to the Islamification of the whole European continent.
[...]For us, the closely linked threats of mass Third World immigration and Islamification outweigh all other considerations.
Griffin has also argued that «white nationalists» «should be positioning [themselves] to take advantage for our own political ends of the growing wave of public hostility to Islam currently being whipped up by the mass media. This is not a matter of dancing to neo-con tunes, but of finding members of the public
who are already used to the sound of that kind of music willing to cross over and dance to our tune».
It is in this light the May 2006 local election campaign of the BNP can be seen, or as their election leaflet stated:
Terrorist atrocities in London, militant marches on our streets and ‘preachers’ calling for the deaths of normal British people simply because they don’t follow Islam. This is not some nightmare vision – but the reality of Islamic extremism in Britain today, yet our government do nothing but pander to these people. The BNP say enough is enough! We are the only people speaking out against the dangers of the Islamification of Britain. If you want to make Blair and Co hear your voice, vote BNP, and use this election as a referendum on Islam.
BNP Election Leaflet, 2006
This attempt at «taking advantage of the growing wave of public hostility» does not mean that anti-Semitism has altogether disappeared from the BNP. In fact, Mark Collett, former Young BNP leader and director of publicity in the party, made the following statement in the Channel 4 documentary «Young, Nazi and Proud», believing that he was not being taped:
I’d never say this on camera, the Jews have been thrown out of
every country, including England. There’s not a single European country the Jews have not been thrown out of… When it happens that many times it’s not just persecution. There’s no smoke without fire.
Collett is also known for describing gays as «AIDS monkeys» and bum bandits» and homosexuality as a «sickening thought».
What the focus on Islam does mean, however, is that a new brand of anti-Semitism has been added to the mix, Islamophobia.
Regrettably, this term is already somewhat exhausted, as some Muslim groups and parts of the radical left have used it to brand a number of people who did not deserve it at all. As the British journalist Johann Hari points out in a 2006 article, the website Islamophobia Watch, serves as an excellent examples of this:
According to them, if you find Iqbal Sacranie – a religious leader who says gays spread disease and that death is ‘too good’ for Salman Rushdie – disgusting, you are an ‘Islamophobic bigot’».
In that very same article Hari strongly criticises the Egyptian-born writer Gisèle Littman and her supporters.
Littman, who is better known under her pen-name Bat Ye’or, «the daughter of the Nile», has written a number of books, including «Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis» (see London Review of Books for an excellent review of the book), summed up by Hari as being «very close to [a] 21st century Protocols of the Elders of Mecca», and giving the story of how Europe is «on the brink of being transformed into a conquered continent called ‘Eurabia’».
Littman’s ideas has undoubtably served as an inspiration for the central conspiracy theories of Oriana Fallaci’s «The Strenght of Reason», and has been described as «convincingly showing how the Euro-Arab Dialogue has blossomed from a minor discussion group into the engine for the continent’s Islamization» by Daniel Pipes, a presumably serious academic. The well-known historian Niall Ferguson has also given the book positive mention.
Considering its contents that is quite amazing. Over threehundred dense pages Littman hunts through summaries from meetings, conferences and political speeches, eagerly looking for signs of European submission to Islam, or rather of a grand conspiracy involving everyone from professors in literature to the Vatican:
Strong ties were forged between the OIC, the Arab and European states, as well as between various factions of the Left, the Vatican, and the World Council of Churches.
They led, under Arab threats, to Israel’s demonisation at all levels of European society as well as in international bodies.
A conference at the University of Venice in 1977 is said to have «paved the way for the large-scale Arab and Muslim immigration into Europe [and] envisioned the creation of a common culture encompassing the north and south shores of the Mediterranean»
What was actually discussed was work to spread knowledge of Arab language and culture, but according to Bat Ye’or it was «no more than a cover for da’wa (Islamic missionary work), which set the pro-Islamic and pro-Palestinian orientation of European universities».
Del Valle, Alexandre: «La Totalitarianisme Islamiste» is the central work of Del Valle mentioned in the reference list of Bat Ye'or's "Eurabia" (Source: book cover)
Intriguingly, Littman also refers to the «revealing book» of Alexandre Del Valle. This prolific writer has written much on Islamism. While of course being anti-Islamic, he is – or was – also notably anti-American, describing the United States as a «totalitarian democracy». In light of Littman’s attacks on the «anti-American animosity that exudes from every sector of activity covered by the EAD» it is somewhat of a paradox that she heavily relies on an author for which the US is a lone superpower intent on preventing any other power from emerging and determined to control Europe.
To Del Valle (a pen name), Islamism is a whip used by the United States against Europe, the Asian financial crisis was orchestrated by Washington to bring down its dangerous rival Japan, and NATO is used to control Europe against Europe’s interests: «The United States has launched a war against the Old World». Del Valle writes of American culture that it «is a culture of subversion conceived to uproot and weaken the peoples that are subjected to it passively. The moral and cultural disintegration of the European nations caused by the Americanization of the minds and mores» is seen as the fundamental problem.
On account of not being «organic», «homogenous» and «natural» the United States is a degenerate nation. The «Epicurean Occidental-American culture» is all-destructive, and fosters «the social and moral disintegration» of Europe. A «renaissance of Europe’s spiritual identity» is necessary, del Valle writes, and will be made possible since the «mcWorld culture [sooner or later] will be doomed to destruction, given its inherently anti-traditional and heterogeneous, fragile nature. Its nihilism generates sterility in all meanings of the word, it appears fundamentally as a culture in decomposition, which is organically necessary to American imperialism».
One of Alexandre del Valle's other works focuses on an alleged Islamist-US alliance to hurt Europe (Source: book cover)
This critique of America is not unique to the far right, but it should come as no surprise that del Valle has had contacts with anti-Semitic right-wing and fascist groups.
Today, he is closer to pro-Zionist Jewish rightwingers. When his past was exposed in an article in the anti-fascist magazine Ras l’Front and a courtcase instigated against the magazine backfired as the court concluded that del Valle had indeed frequented various far right circles, André Darmon, editor of Israël Magazine, wrote:
It does not matter to us if Del Valle took part in meetings of the extreme right. He is one of those who [...) has made us become aware that there exists a Protocol of the Elders of Medina.
The Protocol of the Elders of Zion is a well-known fraudulent text published in the Russian Empire in the early 20th century, purporting to describe a plan to achieve world domination by Jews. The document was a hoax by Okhrana, the tsarist secret police, used to support the wave of pogroms in the country from 1903 to 1906. It was widely circulated in the West from 1920 on, and was used as a propaganda tool by the Nazis. Hitler even refers to it in Mein Kampf:
To what extent the whole existence of this people is based on a continuous lie is shown incomparably by the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, so infinitely hated by the Jews. They are based on a forgery, the Frankfurter Zeitung moans and screams once every week: the best proof that they are authentic. [...] the important thing is that with positively terrifying certainty they reveal the nature and activity of the Jewish people and expose their inner contexts as well as their ultimate final aims.
Even today the Protocols are used as a propaganda tool both by European neo-Nazis and by anti-Semitic forces around the world, notably in many Muslim countries. It is a horrible irony that Jewish thinkers of today’s Europe accept cleverly disguised variants of the same theme.
A quote by Romani Prodi serves well as an example of the kind of the stunt Littman pulls off – sadly with considerable success.
He said that «the peoples of Europe do not believe in any clash of civilisations», and noted:
[Europeans] have learned that security does not come with higher walls or deadlier weapons, but with stronger, more stable relations based on peace and prosperity – the ’soft security’ I mentioned.
Stronger, peaceful relations and exchanges are the only form of security that is
ultimately sustainable. We in Europe have turned our backs on extremism in politics.
In Littman’s eyes this becomes «the dhimmitude of Europe, so well illustrated by Prodi’s preening about about exchanging trade and services for security». She also claims this ‘dhimmitude’ «led him to insult two democracies, America and Israel, for resisting jihadist wars».
In fact, Prodi speaks warmly of the Proximity Policy for a Wider Europe, believing it will provide new economic possibilities, strengthen the fight against common threats and «strengthen good governance, respect for human rights and individual freedoms, the rule of law and participatory institutions». He then goes on to say that «the European Union should stand ready to assist those countries willing to take up the challenge. Not only financially, but also with our full political backing and support for reform», and says that «we have chosen to put the emphasis on cooperation, not just on security» and «that rules out any one-sided, Eurocentric approach and it calls for multilateralism and persuasion, not coercion or unilateralism».
Littman comments «he fails to mention whether Arabocentrism would also be ruled out», making a less-than-subtle hint towards Arab dominance. But in his speech, the Italian minister did the opposite.
He underlined the importance of «the universal recognition of values and principles on which European
integration in particular has been based – starting with human rights, the role of women in society, the media and civil society – throughout the Mediterranean».
In other words, rather than being an example of European submission to ‘dhimmitude’, Prodi’s speech is an example of the attempt at spreading social-liberal ideas and values outside of Europe2. To many of Bat Ye’or readers, that does not matter much. To them, Prodi is a traitor and a fifth columnist.
While her own political conclusions remain unclear (towards the end of her book she does note “One may hope that America’s resolute policy has opened new perspectives and new opportunities for the world to eschew a former order of political connivance with hate and crime. Yet nothing is sure – for it is human beings who are the creators and actors of history”), and while she is widely read outside Eurofascist circles, there is little doubt about the fact that Littman – in spite of her Jewish-Egyptian
heritage – has become a major contributor to the mythos of Eurofascism.
Another important contributor is Oriana Fallaci. In addition to inspiring each other, their thinking have one thing in common: the references to the colonised Europe, Eurabia. Fallaci central claim:
Europe is no longer Europe, it is Eurabia, a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense.
Many of the supporters of Fallaci and Bat Ye’or simply repeat this mantra, and leave their political conclusions unspoken. However, conclusions in the direction of totalitarian politics are plausible.
The mythos of Fallaci and Bat Ye’or tell a story highly reminiscent of traditional fascist thinking. Europe is being occupied by a foreign cultural-religious force described solely in negative terms. This is the fault of the «liberal elites». It is no surprise that some Eurofascists support an apartheid regime based
on religious adherence, and that they want leading liberal politicians tried for «treason».
"You may never have heard of the Euro-Arab Dialogue, but that only goes to show how powerful it is", writes Thomas Jones sarcastically of Bat Ye'or conspiracy hit. (Source: Book cover)
In late 2005, for instance, a Norwegian blogger – living in one of the world’s richest countries, a country which has repeatedly been ranked as the ‘best place to live’ by the United Nations – called for a stop of all Muslim immigration. He also called for denying asylum to all asylum seekers «of Muslim faith», and for reviewing «all citizenships given by the Norwegian state for the last 40 years». In addition, he noted that «converting to Islam should be outlawed and viewed as cultural treason, and the convert should be banished». All this, of course, is only «a good beginning» and «our long term goal should be to get all Muslims nothing is sure – for it is human beings who are the creators and actors of history».
While this specific blogger was unknown even then and now is forgotten in the digital jungle, similar ideas are increasingly pushed by what could be called the brownshirts of the IT-era. Others, perhaps realising the difficulties of winning through with political demands as those above, resort to politically motivated violence and in some cases even to terrorism.
Footnotes:
* The word ‘dhimmitude’ is a neologism referring to the Arab word ‘dhimmi’. In classical Islamic teaching this is the legal status of a protected non-Muslim subject of a Muslim state. Historically, this has often been an apartheid-like system. In the context of Eurofascism, however, it is the more recent pejorative usage which is interesting. This usage divorces the words from its historical context and applies them to situations where non-Muslims in the West are allegedly championing Islamic causes, or
accepting Islamic influence. The word is often used more or less synonymously with «traitor».
** For an interesting look at this role of Europe, see Rifkin, Jeremy: «The European Dream», 2004