To paraphrase a well-known text of the 19th century, a new spectre seems to be haunting Europe. This time it is the spectre of multiculturalism. Still in line with this analogy, much of the powers of Europe seem to be entering “into a holy alliance to exorcize this spectre” by claiming a new “truth”: a “crisis of multiculturalism,” its apparent “collapse” or its “end.” This wave of doubting rhetoric has been stirred in response to and in an attempt to make sense of the terrorist massacres that took place on 22 July in Norway, leaving seventy-seven people dead and ninety-six injured. One can summarise the logic of discourses targeting multiculturalism in the wake of the tragic events in the following way: a racist man kills, but it is the “foreigners” together with supporters of multiethnic and interfaith integration who are to blame. In a somewhat bolder form, one could read this message as follows: it is “they” who “provoke” with their otherness and who do not want to integrate into “our society,” while Anders Behring Breivik - although it is acknowledged that his actions were “too extreme” - stood up to defend “us.”

This ideological turmoil is not, however, limited to commentaries by “media experts” in reaction to the Norwegian spree murders. From positions of the mainstream Right expressed in Angela Merkel’s tirades and Sarkozy’s deportation-related racist policies, to Islamophobia of “liberal” neo-fascists present on the political scene, to sneers at “multi-kulti” (including derisions thrown here and there by some in the left-of-centre spectrum), and to recent anti-Roma marches and pogroms in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria – throughout Europe a wave of xenophobia is rising and, indeed, one may start doubting the feasibility of the idea of multiculturalism. In this article, I discuss some major challenges for the anti-racist movement in Europe at a time when the line between the language of hatred and violent acts has been so manifestly crossed, and when the logic of racism is no longer confined to far right fringes. I shall focus on three aspects: the rejection of “multiculturalism” by certain sections of public opinion and political actors; the underlying theme of Islamophobia as a leading form of contemporary racist ideology; and some considerations about anti-racist strategies to reflect on challenges of the current wave of xenophobic discourse and violence. [1]

Who’s afraid of multiculturalism?

Despite rampant claims of the “fall of multiculturalism,” the problem does not lie where the most vocal commentators locate it. Indeed, as Gavan Titley and Alana Lentin note in their account of public discourse after the Norwegian massacres: “the focus on “multiculturalism” in the aftermath of the Oslo tragedy draws attention to contemporary racism’s most elastic alibi.” [2] Describing the notion of “failure of multiculturalism” as an “article of faith in European politics,” the authors argue that “[d]espite the denunciations of this “failed experiment”, there has never been a time in Europe where multiculturalism was the dominant ideology (...) [and] state practices, in the few countries that have adopted them, are characterised by a “weak” patchwork of policy initiatives and aspirational rhetoric.” So the idea of a multicultural society has been pilloried before it even found a safe and permanent home in Europe. The contrary, nonetheless, seems true: on a continent burdened with a history of religious wars, colonialism, ethnic cleansing and organised destruction of human beings based on “racial” criteria, multiculturalism has always been in deficit, not in abundance.

What is the matter then? It seems that one can interpret the stakes, firstly, in terms of European dominant classes attempting to divert the public’s attention from this bad conscience marked with a persistent history of racism. Secondly, one can observe that various political actors strive to gain credibility and legitimacy by reinventing and utilizing chauvinist schemes that until not so long ago were thought to have perished in the darkness of the past.

Right-wing discourses and campaigns in Western Europe (undertaken within a broad political spectrum from mainstream neoconservatives to the groups inspired by neo-Nazism), which both reflect and fuel the anti-multicultural backlash, have already received a good deal of attention. Some authors group and analyse them under an umbrella term “axis of Islamophobia.” [3] Yet, as Titley and Lentin note, much of the criticism directed towards “multiculturalism” takes place “in countries with small immigrant populations, with no real history of multiculturalism in practice.” [4] Poland seems to provide an illustrative example of this, being a country that because of the post-World War II border shifts and changes in population composition has a very low proportion of ethnic/religious minorities and still receives a relatively low number of immigrants. [5] Polish public debate also witnessed numerous voices of “experts” claiming the “crisis of multiculturalism” and feeling no embarrassment in blaming the alleged incongruity of immigrants for the tragic crimes committed in Norway.

Interestingly, it concerns not only notorious political ultraconservatives and nationalists and self-avowed liberal media proponents of “modernization”, but also a number of visionaries of secularism and human rights advocates coming from left-wing ranks. An example of this comes from a leader of a small party Racja Polskiej Lewicy (Reason of Polish Left, RPL) whose candidates were recently running in parliamentary elections on the electoral lists of the Movement in Support of Palikot (a new, fast-growing and successful centrist party associated with the name of Janusz Palikot, an entrepreneur and a former centre-right MP with a political agenda mixing aggressive neoliberal economic policies with some moderate proposals for institutional changes including separation of the Church from the State in the public sphere, formal recognition of gay and lesbian partnerships, extension of abortion rights and legalisation of marihuana use). In early August, in an article titled “NO to left-wing multiculturalism” on his blog, one of the leaders of the RPL praised a populist right-wing commentator who, in response to the tragedy in Norway, had written about non-European immigrants’ customs being incompatible with Europe: “The basic condition [for tolerating newcomers] is that immigrants should not be allowed to bring with them to us the whole set of their customs, because not every such custom can be easily composed into European sensibility, history, civilization. The foundations of such an approach must be that different cultures make up a coherent whole consisting of religion, tradition, history, cultural codes. They cannot be freely mixed like paint to result in a rainbow-like optimistic picture.” [6] This quote, reflecting racist differentialism (i.e. essentialising cultural/religious differences and replacing the old and discredited biological notion of “race” with “civilization”), served to bring other charges against “left-wing multiculturalism” and anti-racism. The activist of the RPL dubbed campaigns against the EU’s repressive immigration policy as “reckless” and described anti-racist attitudes as “mindless use of multi-kulti.” [7]

This example shows how unclear the situation is as far as political alliances for anti-racist politics are concerned. Indeed, such voices, often marked by less veiled anti-Muslim sentiment (and legitimised by claims and links to feminist, secularist and human rights groups) have been occurring in some sectors of the Left for some time. It was in fact the centre-left government of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) and Union of Labour (UP) that joined the “war on terror” hysteria (with the issue of secret collaboration with the CIA in the transportation, imprisonment and torture of captured Muslims on Poland’s territory still being explored and examined by international bodies) and was primarily responsible for Polish participation in the Iraqi war fuelled by anti-Arab racism (usually conveyed in a form of “anti-Islamist” discourse). It seems, therefore, that in the current climate of increasing backlash against truly pluralist visions of the world (not to be confused with racist-differentialist notions of plurality of cultures/civilizations confined to their “natural” territories), anti-racism might see its previous achievements largely undermined and the movement’s situation seems more defensive than in the late 20th century. We may, indeed, be facing a situation in which no serious mainstream political force will be interested in radical formulation and realisation of a truly multicultural agenda, leaving anti-racism to the realm of NGOs, networks of social movements, campaigns and alliances of minority groups, some educators and a few political non-conformists. Whether such a prognosis proves right or wrong remains to be seen. Two points, however, deserve a closer look. One is the emerging prevalence of Islamophobia as the most popular ideology of hatred, used to mobilise actors from various corners of the socio-political stage. Another is the lessons to be learned and possible long-term anti-racist strategies in the wake of Oslo/Utøya and in the context of the growing wave of racism across Europe.

Islamophobia: a new racist “theory” of modern times

Ideologies of hatred have a long history, at least as far as modernity is concerned. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, “anti-modernity” - as Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz wrote - “developed into a comprehensive Weltanschauung. Joined by anti-Semitism it fostered the view that Jewry was secretly conspiring through the manipulation of the various forces of modernity - from capitalism to socialism - to subvert the idyllic world of the Gentiles. (…) The conspirational view of the world led to a Manichean bifurcation of humanity into the opposing forces of good and evil. Racial theories, which associated specific moral and intellectual characteristics with somatic, anatomical and chromosomal factors of a given “race”, helped ”explain” the moral and spiritual division of humanity. Peoples, such as the Jews, affiliated with the forces of evil were members of a distinct race. (…) Hence, the warning that appeared on the title page of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion: “gentiles, Beware! The Jews are an alien bacillus that must be urgently contained and isolated”. [8]

Keeping in mind crucial differences (especially in relation to the Jewish Holocaust), one may point to certain features in contemporary Islamophobia that resemble those of anti-Jewish sentiment turned into comprehensive political, social and cultural ideology some hundred years ago. Certainly, biologically understood “race” has been replaced with “culture” (or “civilization”), where boundaries are marked primarily by differences in religion or religiously-driven traditions and habits. However, the abstract figure of the “Muslim” (or “islamist”) serves similar ideological purposes as that of what Zygmunt Bauman called the “conceptual Jew.” [9] It signals a threat to a certain imagined socio-cultural and/or geopolitical order. In this sense, just like in modern anti-Semitism, one feature of current Islamophobia is its transnational dimension, i.e. its ability to integrate various political and quasi-political actors across national lines in the presumed defence of a “common” civilization (the West). One can easily point this characteristic in the ideology expressed in Breivik’s “manifesto,” and it is symbolised by the “year 2083” - 400th anniversary of Ottomans’ defeat by European armies. Initiatives under the slogan of “counterjihad” also stress their international (and often also inter-religious) dimension in the struggle for “resisting islamisation and reviving the West.”

We are dealing here with the reactivation of an older orientalist thinking, in the context of political events and processes of the previous decade: first and foremost in reactions to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and in the international “war on terror,” Western military interventions in and the subsequent occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, “anti-terrorist” focus in political and media discourses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as “anti-fundamentalist” narratives on Muslim diaspora in the “Western world.” The key points here are the critique of Islamism or “political Islam” along with emphasizing security as a political priority. This ideological Islamophobia thus serves as some kind of “theory” interpreting or explaining contemporary socio-political reality, in a similar way to modern political anti-Semitism. Referring mainly to the French context, Vincent Geisser argues that in this “new Islamophobia (…) a fear-stirring object is not “ordinary” flesh-and-blood Muslims (…) but an “Islamic threat” heavily loaded with emotions.” [10]

Understood this way, the ideology of anti-Muslim racism is, nevertheless, far from coherent. Rather, it is a set of ideas and concepts for action characterised by varying degrees of generality, concerning diverse aspects of social processes, political conflicts and cultural-moral issues. It brings together notions of the “clash of religions” (or “civilizations”), as in ultraconservative visions of “Christian Europe” struggling against “Islamised Europe”, with secularism or religiophobia. As Geisser argues, Islamophobia is not only yet another form of racism aimed at Arabs, Maghrebians and youth of the suburbs; it is also religiophobia. [11] It certainly rests on “mere” xenophobia towards Muslims or immigrants from societies where Islam is the main religion. Nevertheless, we should perceive it as something more than xenophobia, as it provides a relatively complex conceptual apparatus and systematic knowledge explaining and interpreting the world, enabling critiques of contemporary political-cultural trends (such as we have seen in the case of the “crisis of multiculturalism”) and creating an axiological framework (“European values”) and reference point for identity construction, however abstract it may appear.

We may thus make here an analogy to Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of the “conceptual Jew” that “was a semantically overloaded entity, comprising and blending meanings which ought to be kept apart, and for this reason a natural adversary of any force concerned with drawing borderlines and keeping them watertight. (…) Construed in such a way, the conceptual Jew performed a function of prime importance; he visualised the horrifying consequences of boundary-transgression, of not remaining fully in the fold, of any conduct short of unconditional loyalty and unambiguous choice; he was the prototype and arch-pattern of all nonconformity, heterodoxy, anomaly and aberration. As an evidence of the mind-boggling, uncanny unreason of deviation, the conceptual Jew discredited in advance the alternative to that order of things which had been defined, narrated and practised by the Church. For this reason, he was a most reliable frontier guard of that order. The conceptual Jew carried a message; alternative to this order here and now is not another order, but chaos and devastation.” [12]

While the conceptual “Jew” was “located astride virtually every barricade erected by the successive conflicts that tore apart the Western society at its various stages and in various dimensions", [13] today’s “conceptual Muslim” seems to provide universal ideological material for explaining contemporary conflicts. The “Jew” could be condemned as “capitalist” by anti-capitalists, “rebel” or “communist” by adherents of the conservative-bourgeois order or “rootless cosmopolitan” by nationalist chauvinists. The figure of the conceptual “Muslim/Islamist/Arab” or his/her actual or alleged ally (anti-racists, human rights activists, journalists criticizing the “war on terror” etc.) serves to organise discourses and practices legitimising anti-Muslim or anti-Arab components in contemporary Western politics. The conceptual “Muslim” can be too traditionalist for proponents of “progress,” but also too left-leaning or dangerously anti-imperialist for neoconservative advocates of the “West’s” interests. The conceptual “Muslim” is blamed for nurturing terrorism when s/he targets Western politics, but is also considered a threat to cultural cohesion when - perfectly in line with ideas treasured by the same Westerners - s/he demands tolerance, recognition and the full range of democratic rights in the societies declaring these values (as seen in the opposition to wearing the hijab in public spaces). The conceptual “Muslim” has a gender dimension, when she is depicted as “religious Muslim woman” seen all at once as an alleged victim of religious domination, a silent ally of a terrorist (or a terrorist herself) or a mysterious (because veiled) “menace” to moral and sexual liberties attributed to Western women. All these elements are intertwined by themes of security and anti-terrorism. As Alana Lentin argues: “One of the greatest similarities is between anti-Semitism and present-day Islamophobia (…) [I]n the context of the war on terror, the scapegoating of Muslims today mirrors that of Jews in the run-up to the Nazi Holocaust. This is not to say that the outcome will be the same. Merely, it points to the fact that racism invents itself constantly under the conditions of modernity, nationalism, and capitalism. The parallel between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia is a good example of this observation for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of racism.” [14]

All this should be considered against the background of the current economic and financial crisis hitting in particular core and semi-peripheral areas of the world and the crisis of the US-led geopolitical domination of the West and its allies (most notably embodied in aggressive military interventions under the banner of NATO). It is in this context that Muslims (both newcomers and citizens of EU states), along with groups such as Roma, are placed in the position of scapegoat at a time when neoliberal policies are pursued as a form of attack on the remains of the welfare state model. Anti-Muslim (or anti-Arab) argumentation refers to the alleged dependence of immigrants/minorities on social benefits, which is too extensive and therefore leads to overloading welfare systems in Europe. Much of anti-Left rhetoric is also linked to Islamophobia. It constitutes, it seems, a form of critique of the anti-racist and anti-imperialist agenda (which includes solidarity with the Palestinians) of the radical Left which is seen as threatening the integrity and interests of the “West". [15]

While Islamophobia as a set of discourses, practices and policies targets a minority population, as an ideology it can also be seen as an attempt to seduce the “majority” by providing - as we have seen, much in the way anti-semitism did - a means of diverting lower and middle-class public’s attention from various contradictions in and injustices of the present economic and political system. By pointing a finger on a Muslim “stranger within” or an “enemy out there”, Islamophobic ideologues provide certain parts of society with a substitute for participation in a social struggle that changes nothing to the latter’s situation except for allowing them their share in cultural domination (“we” may suffer from militarism, austerity, privatisation of the public sector and precarity, but at least there is someone - immigrants, Muslims etc. - over whom “we” still might be better-positioned if only “we” undertake necessary and efficient action). This mechanism of “ideological exploitation,” where frustrations, fears and discontent are utilised through racism to secure the interests of the dominant groups and ruling classes, shows that Islamophobia as an ideology is not only a structure of thought. It is also a set of social relations engaging, in complex ways, diverse collective social/political actors holding varying positions and interests in the context of producing, instrumentalising and absorbing anti-Muslim ideology. In this sense, we might, therefore, categorise non-Muslim “majorities” in Western societies: (1) majority members as beneficiaries of ethnic/cultural/religious domination that in Islamophobia serves as a kind of “ideological pay” (or “public and psychological wage” in Roediger’s or W.E.B. Du Bois’s terms [16]), i.e. a sense of belonging to a dominant imagined national or civilisational community; (2) division among majority members between beneficiaries and victims of ideological exploitation - while all adherents of Islamophobia might share dominant identity (ethnic, cultural, religious etc.), the very process of disseminating and inculcating Islamophobic views to the “masses” is by no means that of equal positions and interests; (3) majority members who actively or passively, overtly or silently, take the position of solidarity with Muslims and oppose Islamophobia. The last group is not homogenous as far as positions, concrete views, strategies and capacity to act are concerned. Let us now turn to some questions concerning anti-racism at a time when Islamophobia and anti-multicultural backlash seem to be gaining momentum in the wake of the racist terrorist acts in Norway.

Anti-racism today

Numerous authors and commentators from different corners of the ideological spectrum have attempted to account for Breivik’s murderous acts. Many of them seemed to approach the topic to explain the unthinkable. However shocking and depressing the Norwegian massacres, a frequent flaw in many of those analyses lies in that they, indeed, tend to concentrate on the perpetrator himself, but largely overlook broader ideological structures and socio-political circumstances around the tragic events. It seems, therefore, that one of the major challenges of contemporary anti-racist thought and activity lies in undertaking comprehensive analyses of Islamophobic ideology and related forms of racist and xenophobic pseudo-theories of our times, and constructing long-term strategies for organised collective action to ward off the current “anti-multiculturalist” backlash. As for the analytical aspect, one may point the following patterns:

1. There is a need for systemic analysis of racist structures instead of mere psychologising of perpetrators’ motives and mental condition. Whether Breivik and his acolytes are “insane,” socially “rejected” or have individual biographic episodes leading to racist resentments might be no more than a starting point for making sense of their words and actions, which always reflect broader social and political contexts that provide ideological “resources” for crystallising certain visions of the world.

2. It seems crucial to go beyond decent anti-racist “moralising” and to make an effort to dissect, interpret and explain the ways racist ideologies, such as contemporary Islamophobia, work, especially how the relation of ideological exploitation of positions and attitudes as well as how “threatened” dominant identities are constructed. Moving beyond moralising (i.e. beyond simple condemnation of the very act of hating) by no means implies that there is no ethical dimension to racism/anti-racism, but that a mere moral standpoint against hatred is not enough to understand and combat hate-based ideologies and undermine populist politics that use them.

3. For the same reasons, it seems necessary not to fall into the trap of condemning murderous acts or other forms of physical violence while overlooking the symbolic violence of verbal acts and various non-physical forms of exclusion based on ethnicity, “race,” religion and so on. It is not only Breivik’s terrorism that constitutes an example of aggression, but the whole ideological structure of Islamophobia along with state practices in the framework of the EU’s repressive immigration policies that should be seen as institutionalised racist violence.

4. A question also arises as to whether mainstream forms of education for tolerance and multiculturalism, whereby anti-racist principles are taught as manifest truths, are sufficient to challenge racist ideological structures and maintain a long-lasting shift in attitudes, patterns of thinking and action. If school students rebel against oppressive education, should we not see rejection of multiculturalism by some of them as part of a resistance against abstract concepts? Anti-racist education seems to need, more than ever, programmes engaging students, teachers, community activists, neighbours and so on, across ethnic/cultural/religious lines but also drawing attention to interethnic or interfaith activity around issues that are not directly linked to anti-racism (such as environment, welfare aid, jobs, housing, cultural activity etc.) but can integrate people of diverse identities and backgrounds and thus serve as practical field of activity where anti-racism is not an end but a point of departure. This could help prevent ideological exploitation of economically disadvantaged people by dominant-identity groups and ensure that “ideological pay” of racism would not be attractive as a substitute for social struggles around problems generated by contemporary neoliberal capitalism.

5. Last but not least, anti-racism should no longer remain in the realm of small specialised factions such as militant subculture(s) or an “enlightened” version of human-rights liberalism, but should become a “connective tissue” of all progressive forces. In other words, it requires finding common ground between different collective actors (for instance, Muslims and feminist movements) while making anti-racism a common and permanent feature of all kinds of political and organised social activities - not by means of “tokenism” but as a constant critical reflection and practice within the very groups and movements considered.

With the last point a related question concerns possible models or strategies for combating contemporary Islamophobia (and other forms of racism). One may therefore outline at least four possibilities:

Ecumenical dialogue might, especially in countries with a strong and serious Christian presence, involve large sections of the population by referring to values of mutual respect of believers, treasuring a common monotheistic heritage (in particular among believers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) or merely adhering to the official teaching of the Church. However, this kind of bridge-building always takes place in the name of religious communities, usually the main ones, leaving other believers, agnostics, declared atheists or secularists out of its scope. Moreover, ecumenism is often, practically speaking, not much more than cooperation of leaders or the most committed members of a denomination. It risks being superficial and occasional, without having a deep effect on regular members of religious communities.

Defending cultural difference and identity could be an expression of the idea of multiculturalism as a counterbalance to exclusivist notions of the nation and a realization of the right to difference (including recognition of diasporic links and multiple “loyalties”) and ethnic-cultural autonomy within a broader state-territorial community. Such an approach risks, however, slipping into ethnic or ethno-religious particularism and maintaining inter-community divisions in spite of the ambivalence towards the nation-state and despite diversity of positions, interests and interpretations of identity within the given community itself. As Paul Gilroy noted two decades ago, this position “has become a multi-culturalist or anti-racist orthodoxy which can be shown to replicate in many ways the volkish New Right sense of the relationship between race, nation and culture – kin blood and ethnic identity. (...) At the end of the day, an absolute commitment to cultural insiderism is as bad as an absolute commitment to biological insiderism (...) [because] no single culture is hermetically sealed off from others. (...) Culture, even culture which defines the groups we know as races, is never fixed, finished or final. It is fluid, it is actively and continually made and re-made.” [17]

Transforming the mainstream would be a strategy to increase the “visibility” of Muslims, Arabs and other targeted groups to disseminate neutral or positive images of them in the media, show the problems of people subject to new forms of racism (including Islamophobia), and highlight the hate-speech nature of anti-Muslim rhetoric by making analogies to those forms of hatred and discrimination which have received more attention in the public debate. However, this kind of approach, due to the prevalent logic of media functioning and their middle-class orientation, may not be efficient in pursuing in-depth analysis of structural-ideological dimensions of Islamophobia, its relationship to neoliberal capitalism as well as its institutional and geopolitical forms.

A pluralist social coalition may be a way to universalise difference (i.e. promoting a radical approach to human rights including the right to identity) while struggling for more just and egalitarian social-economic redistribution and rejection of politics of war and imperialism. This model can be observed in a number of initiatives from various grassroots protests and campaigns to events such as the European Social Forum, where diversity of identities coexists with attempts to pursue common visions of transformative radical politics for deeper democracy and social justice. This strategy seems the most time-consuming and requires much effort in political organising per se, as it needs constant reworking of relationships between identities (always hierarchised in the broader social context) and negotiating different communal and partisan interests.

One can roughly call the four types of strategy subsequently: interfaith, communitarian, liberal-democratic and libertarian-socialist. They do not necessarily mutually exclude each other, but they might involve different social actors on individual, organisational or institutional levels. In a longer perspective, one should expect that the most successful strategy would be the one that is able not only to reduce racism and its effects but also to minimise or eliminate its root causes and problems that constitute fertile ground for new forms of chauvinism and right-wing populism. In any case, active participation of Muslims and members of other stigmatised communities and/or groups as integral agents of transformative action is as crucial as the “majority’s” support for making the goal of defeating racism possible.

Marcin Starnawski teaches sociology at the Pedagogy Institute of the University of Lower Silesia (Dolnośląska Szkoła Wyższa) in Wrocław, Poland; he is a member of the editorial team of the journal and web site Recykling Idei and co-author of the book Hate Crime Monitoring and Victim Assistance in Poland and Germany (Berlin 2009).