I’ve heard it said that everyone is a little racist. There’s even a song about it.
Whilst most of us merely jest when saying this, tongues firmly wedged in our mouths, perhaps in one of those cringe worthy moments of camaraderie that threatens to take a joke that little bit too far, only the most blinkered idealist would claim it to be completely false. We enter dangerous territory when people begin to believe that racism doesn’t continue to pose an ominous threat to modern society.
Today in Oslo, Anders Behring Breivik went on trial. Last summer on July 22nd he killed 77 people. 8 with a car bomb in the capital, the rest he personally executed in a deadly rampage on the island of Utoeya.
On the same day a 1500 page document, written by Breivik, entitled ‘2083: A European Declaration of Independence’ appeared on the internet. In it Breivik chronicles the meticulous and painstaking steps he undertook in preparation for the attacks. He also outlines his philosophy and ideology.
He rallies against what he refers to as “cultural Marxism” “multiculturalism” and “Eurabia”. He designates his sympathies to causes like “right-wing populism” and “ultranationalism” and ultimately argues for the deportation of all Muslims from Europe by the year 2083. Breivik has claimed that his acts were a “preventative attack” against a government he accuses of supporting a multicultural society to the detriment of native Norwegians.
No matter what pseudo-intellectual phraseology he employs in his ‘manifesto’ or how much the crimes are made out to be politically motivated at dinner tables across Europe, there is one word that cuts through all the haze and penetrates to the heart of the matter: racism.
Racism is an issue separate from geo-politics, economics and even theology. It concerns something that precedes all of the above. Humanity. We are first and foremost human. After that we may be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or whatever. After that we may be English, Taiwanese, Australian, Norwegian or whatever. We are all of us human and are born with the capacity to, if not love everyone, at least co-exist with them peacefully, at the very least accept and tolerate the differences between them. The case of Anders Behring Breivik should serve as a warning to us all against complacency in this matter.
Here is a man who has (most recently) been certified sane by two leading forensic psychiatrists in Norway. Here is a man with the faculties and application to plan and organise his life around a single moment for over 8 years. Here is a man who has at some stage in his life lost touch with his humanity and become susceptible to extreme racist ideologies.
He is not, and this is perhaps the most dangerous element to this whole subject, an anomaly. There are plenty of others with similar sympathies to him all over Europe. And whilst we may joke that everyone is a little racist safe in the knowledge that 99.99% of genuinely racist people lack the capacity and hell-bent dedication of an Anders Behring Breivik to do anything remotely on the same scale as him about their hate, we ought to remain vigilant about the others who are capable of acting on theirs on a smaller scale, even if it means ‘merely’ slurring someone on the street.
Hate unchecked grows. Once it grows to a certain size, it becomes uncontrollable.
I will never forget the day my sister told me, soon after giving birth to her mixed raced son, that a British National Party canvasser had visited her house and pushed a pamphlet through her letterbox. She was spitting feathers. I myself have had a run in with the BNP and have discussed it on these pages before. (The full article has been reposted. Click here to read it)
I believe that in these times; where India, China and other Asian nations are growing economically at an almost exponential rate and are beginning to travel and settle around the globe en masse, it is imperative that we remember that before everything else we are human and that we have the capacity to accept other cultures into our own.
This is the way the world is going. Being English no longer means being white, neither does being Norwegian. Anders Behring Breivik failed to come to terms with this truth and as a result 77 people are dead.
Pleading ignorance or misunderstanding toward other cultures is no longer an excuse.
Hatching Out 