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Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence in Western Europe

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Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence in Western Europe Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis Jacob Aasland Ravndal Department of Political Science Faculty of Social Sciences University of Oslo © Jacob Aasland Ravndal, 2017 Series of dissertations submitted to the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo No. 667 ISSN 1564-3991 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. Cover: Hanne Baadsgaard Utigard. Print production: Reprosentralen, University of Oslo. Contents Preface and acknowledgements ................................................................................................. v Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1 Research questions and outline .................................................................................................. 3 Synthesis of articles .................................................................................................................... 5 Concepts and definitions ............................................................................................................ 6 Left versus right ideas ......................................................................................................... 6 Criminal versus terrorist violence ....................................................................................... 7 Radical versus extreme actors ............................................................................................. 8 Existing theory and literature ................................................................................................... 10 Related fields ..................................................................................................................... 11 Existing explanations ........................................................................................................ 13 Shortcomings ..................................................................................................................... 17 Research design ........................................................................................................................ 19 Philosophy of science ........................................................................................................ 19 Methods ............................................................................................................................. 20 Data ................................................................................................................................... 24 Article summaries .................................................................................................................... 26 Article I ............................................................................................................................. 26 Article II ............................................................................................................................ 28 Article III ........................................................................................................................... 30 Article IV .......................................................................................................................... 32 Summary of main findings ....................................................................................................... 33 Research question 1 ........................................................................................................... 33 Research question 2 ........................................................................................................... 35 Research question 3 ........................................................................................................... 36 Implications for research and policy ........................................................................................ 39 Contributions to existing research ..................................................................................... 39 Future research .................................................................................................................. 42 Policy implications ............................................................................................................ 44 Concluding remarks ................................................................................................................. 46 Literature .................................................................................................................................. 48 Article I: Thugs or Terrorists? A Typology of Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence in Western Europe ...................................................................................................................................... 61 Article II: Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence in Western Europe: Introducing the RTV Dataset ...................................................................................................................................... 99 Article III: Explaining Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence in Western Europe: Grievances, Opportunities, and Polarization .............................................................................................. 113 Article IV: Right-Wing Terrorism and Militancy in the Nordic Countries: A Comparative Case Study .............................................................................................................................. 139 Appendices to Article III ........................................................................................................ 165 v Preface and acknowledgements This PhD project follows in the wake of a national disaster: the 22 July terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011. These attacks – prepared and carried out by a single perpetrator – left 77 mostly young people dead, 46 severely wounded, and hundreds of victims and relatives injured or traumatized. The attacks also exposed important gaps in our present knowledge about the characteristics, extent, and dynamics of right-wing terrorism and violence in Western Europe. Without such knowledge, it is difficult to place events such as the 22 July attacks in a larger picture and to determine whether they should be seen as an outlier event, or as signalling an emergent threat. A key motivation for this PhD project has therefore been to generate new knowledge that may help answer such questions. I first learned about the 22 July attacks upon arrival at my parents’ house in Italy, where I was going to spend some time together with my wife and a couple of Norwegian friends. As we arrived at the house in the early afternoon, my father came running towards us, telling us that something terrible was happening at home. We spent the next hours and days dumbfounded in front of the TV, watching the events unfold. Norway is a small country. It soon turned out that one of my friends who was there with us knew one of the people killed by the bomb in the Government Quarter. I remember a feeling of helplessness and a strong desire to return to Oslo. I immediately downloaded the compendium distributed by the terrorist shortly before the attacks (later to become known as his Manifesto in the media), which I read intensely for days, trying to figure out what was going on. I was puzzled by the facts that he grew up in the same part of Oslo as I did, that we were almost the same age, and that we had frequented some of the same places (perhaps at the same time?). Little did I know then that this event would also change my life when, a few months later, Thomas Hegghammer (then Director of Terrorism Research at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, FFI) called to ask me if I would consider applying for a PhD scholarship on right-wing terrorism. Despite having no prior experience of researching terrorism, or the extreme right for that matter, I realized that this was a unique opportunity that I could not miss out on. Because this project started as a blank slate entitled “Something about right-wing terrorism”, it would have never materialized without the help of many others. First, I would like to thank my two outstanding supervisors Tore Bjørgo and Jon Hovi for carefully shepherding this project to its final destination. I had to persuade Jon into doing it, because he was initially vi uncomfortable supervising a topic he was unfamiliar with. In hindsight, making Jon change his mind about this project was the best investment I could have made, as his stringent and experienced advice on structure, methods, and language has proven invaluable to me. Tore was not unfamiliar with the topic, to put it mildly, and having him by my side throughout this process has been a privilege. His steadfast encouragement and support, not to mention his excellent homebrewed beer, has given me the necessary confidence to bring this project into new territories left largely unexplored by existing research. I also owe special thanks to Thomas Hegghammer, who in many ways has served as my third supervisor. This entire project was Thomas’s idea, as he quickly realized that this type of knowledge would be in demand after the 22 July attacks. Having an experienced and distinguished terrorism scholar such as Thomas by my side during the project’s initial phase was of critical importance, as my own immature thoughts and ideas were floating all over the place, and I needed someone who could pull them together
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