Europe’s radical right focuses on fighting Islam
As daylight broke on June 4, worshippers found a mosque in southern Denmark defaced with drawings of the Prophet Muhammad and slogans urging Muslims to “go home.”
In late October, a dismembered pig was buried on the planned construction site of a planned mosque on the outskirts of Copenhagen.
Both acts were the work of the Danish Defence League, a year-old far-right group that claims it’s not opposed to foreigners in general, just Muslims.
“We are not racists. We are not Nazis,” insists Bo Vilbrand, the group’s 24-year-old spokesman. As if to prove his point he says the Danish Defence League welcomes blacks and Jews.
The group and its larger English forebear represent a new crop of right-wing radicals who don’t fit the mold of the boot-stomping, Jew-hating neo-Nazis. This movement claims its fight is against Islam, and uses crusader symbols instead of swastikas. It frames its mission as a cultural struggle, although opponents say it is little more than old-fashioned xenophobia hiding beneath anti-Islamic rhetoric.