Far right’s rise ‘masked by a focus on Muslims’
The rise of the far right in North America has been largely overlooked because politicians and security services have focused primarily on Islamic extremism, scholars said.
The debate in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, organised by the Tabah Futures Initiative, heard that the rise of ISIL has been mirrored by white nationalists – but little evidence of their growth was seen until the violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, a month ago.
While there can be no let-up in the pursuit of extremists such as ISIL, the current strategy has allowed some groups to operate almost undetected.
“If we focus on specific religious groups, a lot of other groups will fly off the radar. There is such focus on Muslim radicals that no one is noticing that in the US and Canada [the far right] is growing and festering,” said Dr Naved Bakali, an analyst at Tabah Foundation, the Abu Dhabi think tank that promotes moderate discourse and teaching in Islam.
Far-right extremists in western societies echo similar ideas to those espoused by Muslim extremist groups such as ISIL. “Both promote this clash-of-civilisations thesis – that western and eastern cultures are different and they are bound to clash and cannot co-exist with one another; it totally strips conflicts of their geopolitical-historical context.”
Extremist groups promote this idea because it makes things easier to understand. They make the world appear in black and white so it becomes easier for people to follow them.
“We decide what is right and wrong, there is no grey area, and because they are wrong we should attack them,” he said.
“If you listen to far-right extremists and Muslim extremists they agree with each other.”
Moreover, they both brand themselves in a way that fulfils apocalyptic prophecies.
Dr Richard Burchill, the director of research at Trends Research and Advisory, said the far right has grown in response to fears of Muslim extremism.
“What we are seeing in the West is the far right responding to the extremist ideas being perpetuated by violent groups like Daesh, and others like the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said.
“The far right feels that their world is under threat and then rise up in violent and non-violent ways. These actions support those seeking to politicise religion, allowing claims that Islam is under threat. We end up in a violent circle.”
Dr Bakali said that far-right groups in mainstream politics are a reality. The rise of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands would have been “seen as crazy 10 years ago”, but is now influential in government policy.