WORLD VIEW: Terrorism a tactic not ideology
AS THE WORLD reacts to the horror of the Friday the 13th massacres in Paris, Professor Anis H. Bajrektarevic gives his analysis of European strategies and Islamofacism.
THERE IS a claim constantly circulating the EU: ‘multiculturalism is dead in Europe’. Dead or maybe d(r)ead?… That much comes from a cluster of European nation-states that love to romanticize – in a grand metanarrative of dogmatic universalism – their appearance as of the coherent Union, as if they themselves lived a long, cordial and credible history of multicul-turalism.
Hence, this claim and its resonating debate is of course false. It is also cynical because it is purposely deceiving. No wonder, as the conglomerate of nation-states/EU has silently handed over one of its most important debates – that of European anti-fascistic identity, or otherness – to the wing-parties. This was repeatedly followed by the selective and contra-productive foreign policy actions of the Union.
Paris shootings, terrible beyond comprehension, will reload and overheat those debates. However, these debates are ill conceived, resting from the start on completely wrong and misleading premises. Terrorism, terror, terrorism!! – But, terror is a tactic, not an ideology. How can one conduct and win war on tactics? – it is an oxymoron. (In that case, only to win are larger budgets for the homeland security apparatus on expenses of our freedoms and liberties, like so many times before.) The January assassins in the Parisian Satirical Magazine (and subsequent hostage crises) as well as these of bloody Friday of November are Islamofascists. The fact that these individuals are (again) allegedly of Arab-Muslim origins and seemingly clero-indoctrinated does not make them less fascists, less European, nor does it abolish Europe from the main responsibility in this case. How do we define that challenge will answer us whether we live the real democracy or are blinded by the formal one.
Fascism and its evil twin, Nazism are 100% European ideologies. Neo-Nazism also originates from and lately unchecked blossoms, primarily in Europe. Some would say of today; an über-economy in the center of continent, surrounded from all sides by the recuperating neo-fascism.
The Old continent tried to amortize its deepening economic and demographic contraction by a constant interference on its peripheries, especially meddling in the Balkans, Black Sea/Cau-casus and MENA (Middle East–North Africa). What is now an epilogue? A severe democratic recession. Whom to blame for this structural, lasting civilizational retreat that Europe suffers? Is it accurate or only convenient to accuse a bunch of useful idiots for returning home with the combative behavior, equipped with the European guns and homegrown anger of the misused?
My voice was just one of the many that included notables like Umberto Eco, Bono Vox and Kishore Mahbubani –foster moderation and dialogue, encourage forces of toleration, wisdom and understanding, stop supporting and promoting ethno-fascism in the former Yugoslavia and Ukraine. These advices were and are still ridiculed and silenced, or in the best case, ignored. Conversely, what the EU constantly nurtured and cherished with its councils, boots and humanitarian aid starting from Bosnia 25 years ago, Middle East, until the present day Ukraine was less of a constructive strategic engagement and lasting-compromise, but more of a history-rewriting, cult of death, destruction, partition, exclusion and fascism.
(Some of the most notorious regimes on this planet are extensively advertised and glorified all throughout the EU– including its biggest sports events and the most popular sports. No matter, that one of these hereditary theocracies considers as a serious criminal offence– brutally coercing like European Nazis did in 1930s – if the prescribed state religion is not obeyed as the only existing one). On the other side, European temple of multiculturalism – Sarajevo, was barbarically sieged and bombed for 1,000 days – all that just a one-hour flight from Brussels. Still, 20 years after falling a victim of unthinkable genocide, Bosnia remains the only UN member state in the world that does not exercise its sovereignty. It is administratively occupied by the opaque and retrograde international bureaucracy – predominantly overpaid European apparatchiks that institutionalized segregation in this, victimized then criminalized, country.
Illuminating cradles of multiculturalism – some of the brightest verticals of entire human civilization such as Jerusalem, Bagdad and Damascus still suffer unbearable horrors of externally induced, rather ahistorical destruction, hatred and perpetuated purges. With such a dismal ‘export’ record, universal claim of the European political system or even its historic perspective does not hold water anymore.
Europe still defies the obvious. There is no lasting peace at home if the neighborhood remains restless. Ask Americans living at the Mexican border, or Turks next to Syria. The horrific Paris massacre (and related shootouts that did not fade away even days after the initial assault last time in January, as it might be unfortunately the case this time, too) is yet another a painful reminder of how much the EU has already isolated itself. For unreasonably long, Europe promoted in the Middle East and Africa everything but the stability and prosperity of its own post-WWII socio-economic model. No wonder that today, instead of blossoming neighborhood, the EU is encircled by the ring of politico-military instability and socio-economic despair – from Ukraine, Balkans to MENA, and countless refuges pouring from there. (How many times is history to repeat itself? – The colonial overstretch/economic chauvinism, yesterday abroad – means a moral overkill, today at home. In this context, one should understand also the recently released Oxfam study ‘Wealth: Having it All and Wanting More’, /January, 2015/. It documents into a detail, all the enormous wealth accumulation on the side of 1%, as well as the further acceleration of wealth gap. Rather mistakenly, many would consider 99% as a principal victim, although 99% themselves are primarily, sustained and for years, responsible for this cleavage by ignoring and silencing it.)
As the saying goes, when there is no opportunity, give at least a lame hope. That is what Europe keenly helped with in the Middle East: The very type of Islam Europe supported in the Middle East yesterday, is the version of Islam (or better to say, fascism), we are getting today in the Christian Europe as well as in the Christian neighborhoods of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
Thus, in response to the Balkans, MENA and Ukraine crises, the EU repeatedly failed to keep up a broad, single-voiced consolidated agenda and all-participatory basis with its strategic neighborhood. The EU missed it all – although having institutions, WWII-memory, interest and credibility to prevent mistakes – as it did wrong before at home; by silently handing over one of its most important questions, that of European identity, anti-fascism and otherness, to escapist anti-politics (politics in retreat) dressed up in the Western European wing-parties. (It leads the so-called western democracies into the deadlock of perpetuated cycles of voters’ frustrations: elect and regret, vote against and regret, re-elect and regret again… A path of an ongoing trivialization of our socio-political contents or formalization of substantive democracy.)
Eventually, the ‘last world’s cosmopolitan’ – as the EU is often self-portrayed – compromised its own perspectives and discredited its own transformative power’s principle. The 2012 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, EU did so by undermining its own institutional framework: the Nurnberg principles and firm antifascist legacy (UN and CoE), Barcelona Process as the specialized segment of from-Morocco-to-Russia European Neighborhood Policy (EU) and the Euro-Med partnership (OSCE).
The only direct involvement of the continent was ranging between a selective diplomatic de-legitimization, satanization in media, false-flag or proxy assaults, and punitive military engagements via the Atlantic-Central Europe-led coalition of the willing (the Balkans, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine).[1] This naturally results in a massive influx of refugees, a consequence to which Europeans usually respond by criminalizing migrations and penalising the immigrants’ way of life. Confrontational nostalgia prevailed again over both that is essential for any viable future: dialog (instruments) and consensus (institutions).
The consequences are rather striking and worth of stating once more: The sort of Islam that the EU supported (and the means deployed to do so) in the Middle East yesterday, is the sort of Islam (and t he means it uses) that Europe gets today. Small wonder, that Islam in Turkey (or in Kirgizstan and in Indonesia) is broad, liberal and tolerant while the one in Atlantic-Central Europe is a brutally dismissive, narrow and vindictively assertive.
Our urgent task – if we are any serious about Europe– is denazification. Not a one-time event, but a lasting process. Let’s start from Bosnia, Ukraine and Paris at once.
Anis H. Bajrektarevic is chairperson and professor in international law and global political studies, Vienna, Austria. He authored three books: FB – Geopolitics of Technology,Geopolitics – Energy – Technology by and . No Asian century is his forthcoming book, scheduled for publication mid2016.
