Last week a post-doctoral researcher at a major British university emailed me to ask whether I was willing to be interviewed as part of “a cross European project looking at populist politics”. As he described it, “the project is looking at different manifestations of populism across Europe, and as part of the UK section we’re hoping to interview some writers from a number of conservative websites that deal with the UK and Europe more widely.”
After an exchange of emails, I consented to do a written interview. My conditions were that I would not answer any questions until any potentially loaded terms were defined to my satisfaction, and that I would publish the questions and my responses at Gates of Vienna. He agreed, provided that I refrain from identifying him, or his university, or the sponsors of his project.
I was expecting the usual terminology employed by leftist academics — “Islamophobia”, “xenophobia”, “racist”, “right-wing extremist”, etc. — which is why I insisted on having any such terms defined in advance. But when the questions finally arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to find them largely neutral in tone. The only phrase that needed to be defined was “far-right”, as used in the following question:
“GoV has been criticised in the past as promoting a counter-jihadist narrative that in turn promotes far-right violence (see attached report: Kundnani, 2012: 6). Do you think this is a valid or fair criticism? How would you respond to claims like these?” [emphasis added]
I wrote back and asked the interviewer: “What do you (or your sponsoring organization) mean by ‘far-right’?”
While I’m waiting for his definition (and working on the answers), let’s take a look at the attached report to get an idea of the quagmire into which the baronial boot has just stepped.
“Kundnani 2012” refers to a research paper entitled “Blind Spot? Security Narratives and Far-Right Violence in Europe” by Dr. Arun Kundnani. It is similar to other papers discussed in this space, such as the report the by International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR), which has been dealt with at length here previously.
But this one seems to be even further to the left than the ICSR report. The author is a former fellow at the Open Society Foundations, that is, the heart of George Soros’ operations. The sponsoring organization is International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague, which describes itself as “an independent knowledge centre that focuses on information creation, collation and dissemination pertaining to the preventative and international legal aspects of counter-terrorism.”
In his abstract of the paper, Dr. Kundnani says this:
This paper discusses the challenges of countering far-Right political violence in the wake of the terrorist attack carried out by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway in July 2011. With brief case studies of Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium, it argues that classic neo-Nazi groups are being supplemented by new ‘counter-jihadist’ far-Right movements, which use various modes of political action, including participation in elections, street-based activism and terrorist violence. Building on recent interest among scholars and practitioners in the role of narratives and performativity in counter-terrorism, this paper argues that official security discourses tend to hinder efforts to counter far-Right violence and can unwittingly provide opportunities for counter-jihadists to advance their own narratives. When leaders and officials of Western European governments narrate issues of multiculturalism and radical Islamism in ways that overlap with counter-jihadist ideology, it suggests a need for reflection on the unintended side-effects of their security discourse. The paper concludes with a discussion of how governments can rework their security narratives to oppose far-Right violence.
As you can see, standard mind-numbing academic jargon pervades the script, with “narratives” and “discourse” playing important roles. Not to mention “performativity” — whatever the heck that is.
The obvious intention is the same one that has become so drearily familiar to us over the past two years: to make non-violent opponents of Islamization somehow responsible for the deeds of Anders Behring Breivik, no matter what intellectual gymnastics are necessary to shoehorn the facts into the desired “narrative”.
Continue reading →
At least thirty-seven people were killed when a mile-wide tornado swept through the suburbs of Oklahoma City. Many of the deaths occurred in the suburb of Moore, which bore the brunt of the destruction. A number of people are missing, and the death toll is expected to be rise as rescuers comb through the rubble.
This is the fifth in a series of subtitled videos of an interview from Germany (originally posted at 
