Norway: It’s multiculturalism, stupid

breivikMuch has been written about the implications of the horrible massacre in Norway. After the initial automatic knee jerk assumption that the murderer must have been an Islamist terrorist, the discovery that he was one of Norway’s ‘own’ – albeit an extreme right wing white supremacist – sent shock waves throughout Norway, whose mourning was so dignified and full of quiet determination.

I want to make a three key points about the lessons of this atrocity which cost the lives of 76 people. Firstly, European states and societies need to get over their post 9/11 automatic assumptions that ‘terrorist’ acts are always perpetrated only by Islamists. Such assumptions lead to the racialization of Muslim and Arab-looking people, and to tighter immigration, asylum and travel controls throughout Europe, and, as in this case, miss the point entirely, at a heavy cost of innocent lives. Continue reading “Norway: It’s multiculturalism, stupid”

Reply to Ruth Dudley-Edwards

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/ruth-dudley-edwards/ruth-dudley-edwards-gazabound-vessel-really-a-ship-of-fools-2806080.html

Godwin’s Law. That’s what it’s called – the tendency for internet debates to degenerate into arguments where one side labels the other a Nazi. And so we have a contribution to the Israel/Palestine issue akin to an angrily typed hatemail at the fag end of one of these online brawls –Ruth Dudley Edwards saying that the people on the Irish Ship to Gaza supporting Palestinian rights are antisemites, like the Nazi-loving Irish of her youth. Continue reading “Reply to Ruth Dudley-Edwards”