“These Are Not The Terrorists You’re Looking For..”

Europol, the EU’s transnational police force, has released its first report tracking terrorism incidents and arrests within the EU and it makes very interesting reading (.pdf), especially when you compare the published figures against the perception of a Europe-wide Islamist terrorist conspiracy that’s projected by governmental spin and media presentation.

For instance, did you know that of 498 terrorist incidents reported by EU states in 2006, only 3 were Islamist-terrorism related?

Along with the failed terrorist attack that took place in Germany, Denmark and the UK each reported one attempted terrorist attack in 2006

The collected Europol data for October-December 2005 and for 2006 give a total of 549 attacks, 128 terrorist activities, 810 arrested suspects and 303 trials in the EU. From the executive summary of the report:

.In 2006, separatist terrorists carried out 424 attacks in the EU.

[…]

In 2006, left-wing and anarchist terrorists carried out 55 attacks in the EU.

[…]

Along with the failed terrorist attack that took place in Germany, Denmark and the UK each reported one attempted terrorist attack in 2006

[…]

A total of 706 individuals suspected of terrorism offences were arrested in 15 Member States in 2006. Investigations into Islamist terrorism are clearly a priority for Member States’ law enforcement as demonstrated by the number of arrested suspects reported by Member States. Half of all the terrorism arrests were related to Islamist terrorism.

Is it just me or is there an assymetry between the number of arrests and the actual incidence of Islamist terrorism? I could make any number of cheap political points about these figures but why bother, when several jump out right away by themselves, with very little coaxing?

But there are problems with the figures. This report, like any consensus report produced by the EU, is a creation of political manipulation and spin by member nations, despite the best attempts of the compilers. In the end the member countries validated their own data and picked and chose what they would release, despite having signed up to an agreed monitoring protocol.

For example, while all had lots to say on Islamist terrorism and an extensive reporting and monitoring process is in place, despite such terrorism’s admittedly low occurrence, right wing and neonazi activities are barely mentioned. That’s because some member states reported neonazi activity as terrorist and some didn’t:

Right-Wing Terrorism:

right-wing violence is mainly investigated as right-wing extremism and not as right-wing terrorism. Although violent acts perpetrated by right-wing extremists and terrorists may appear sporadic and situational, right-wing extremist activities are organised and transnational. For instance, details regarding possible targets are collected and disseminated on the Internet.

Exactly. People I know have been targeted in this way so I’m much less worried about some mythical threat from Al-Qaeda as embodied by some anonymous woman in a burqa than I am of home grown rightwing nutters in Lonsdale t-shirts and docs.

But neo-nazism and Islamism are political ideologies cut from the same authoritarian, repressive and separatist cloth, so why is the one reported and investigated but not the other? Why so many more arrests on suspicion of Moslems, and so little reporting on credible neonazi terrorist plots?

Might it have something to do with the number of quiet supporters, passive collaborationists and outright denialists – who’d rather see a threat from brown-skinned ‘others’ than from their compatriots – within the institutions of the member states and in the .eu-wide media?

So many in Europe, while condemning neo-nazism out of one side of their mouths, with the other will support the soft apologists and enablers of this kind of hatred, people like Geert Wilders or the late Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands or the right-wing theocrat Kuzcinski brothers in Poland.

Here’s one example of that passive collaborationism in the media, from Dutch writer Margriet De Moor:

Neo-Nazi movements to be taken seriously, like the ones in Germany, are practically non-existent in the Netherlands.

Non existent? No supporters? Oh, really?

Police raids led to arrest of neo-Nazis and arms finds

Serving soldiers amongst suspects
Geert Cool, LSP/MAS (CWI Belgium)

Last Thursday, after a raid by the Belgian police, 17 activists from the Neo-Nazi movement, ‘Blood & Honour’, were arrested. Amongst those held were 10 Belgian army professional soldiers. The next day, two more neo-Nazis were arrested. The main suspects organised a fascist grouping inside the army, whose activities included weekend “terrorist” training camps and trading arms.

Those arrested are part of a section of Blood & Honour that go under the name, ‘Bloed Bodem Eer Trouw’ (BBET; Blood, Soil, Honour, Fidelity). There are two different groupings using the name Blood & Honour in Flanders, both linked to rival international groupings. The Blood & Honour group that was targeted by the police regularly use the name of its paper, ‘BBET’, as its public face.

Last Thursday, when police made the raids, they found over 100 high-tech weapons, including sophisticated weapons of war. On Friday, two more raids followed, in which another 100 pistols and machine guns were recovered. The police also discovered a large quantity of munitions, explosives and a sophisticated bomb. There was even a model letter claiming responsibility for terrorist attacks.

Although the Belgian police say the group did not have detailed plans to use the weaponry, one of those arrested declared publicly that the group did have the intention to strike against the state, migrants and radical left organisations. In an interview on television, this suspect said members of the security services, soldiers in the army and politicians would be involved in the planning and execution of these plans.

No right wing terrorism? Conspiracies like the above and the Lancashire right-wing bomb plot I referred to earlier are just the visble tip of potentially viciously violent and Europe-wide rightwing terrorist movement.

I’m certainly not suggesting there is no threat from Islamist terrorism in Europe; that would be patently absurd, given what happened in London and Madrid.

What I am saying is that, as so many times before, the facts are being fixed around the policy. While our leaders ramp up the paranoia and suspicion of the Moslems in our midst and present the available data to make it appear our biggest threat is from ‘outsiders’ (thus validating the ‘war on terror’ propaganda and rhetoric we’ve been subjected to since 2001) quietly the wannabe stormtroopers on the inside are regrouping.