GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

This essay was originally published on CNN's Global Public Square blog. It can be read here in its original form.

The twin attacks last Friday on the government quarter in Oslo and a nearby holiday camp for young political activists shocked Norway - and indeed all of Europe - like few recent events.

No one would have expected that this calm, open and safe country could ever be the target of such a rigorously planned, ideologically motivated act of terrorism. Even fewer would have thought that a Norwegian, rather than foreign, radical would declare war on his own people and its values.

As the immediate shock and mourning subside, many ask for the possible reasons behind the attack. Their search, in Norway and across Europe, has quickly zoomed in on an issue that challenges the entire continent: the rise of the far right.

Right-wing populists have made a remarkable re-entry into European politics in recent years. From the Dutch Party for Freedom to Hungary’s Jobbik, from theSweden Democrats and True Finns to the Slovak National Party, the Front National in France, and the National-Democratic Party of Germany, Europe’s right fringe has secured seats in numerous national and regional parliaments.

To be sure, extremist parties of the right have occasionally scored political successes in one or another European country since the 1960s. However, their mass political presence in so many European countries is new, as are the numbers of votes they collect, which were in the double-digits in recent Dutch, Finnish and Hungarian elections.

These political parties freely sample from the same pool of populist slogans. They typically rage against migrants and minorities, and paint the spectre of a Europe full of Islamic fundamentalists. Occasionally, traditional anti-Semitism is invoked and sexual minorities get their share of hate.

Globalization and European integration are variously blamed for the loss of jobs and the dominance of foreign capital, the waste of taxpayers’ money and the loss of sovereignty of individual European states. With their slogans, far-right populists play on real anxieties that are widespread in Europe today, and they spotlight an ineptness that has long marked Europe’s political mainstream.

European societies, on the one hand, have felt a growing uncertainty about a range of issues. European integration has lost much of its momentum to fears over an omnipotent Brussels, unfettered mobility of labour and capital, open borders and a fragile Euro.

Migration, within Europe and from without, has brought an unprecedented diversity to European societies that many adjust to only slowly. Muslims have been made, with the war on terror, general suspects that reside, in large numbers, in Europe’s midst. Insecurity over Europe’s economic future, its prosperity and social justice has been fanned by the recent financial crisis whose end hardly seems in sight. The political classes of Europe, on the other hand, have largely failed to address these anxieties. If anything, their statements and actions have fanned them even further.

This mix of social fears and political failure has created political opportunities, so far very successfully exploited by Europe’s far right.  This has had two major consequences.

First, Europe’s political culture has begun to change. Under pressure from the far right, political establishments have started to question some of Europe’s key values. Instead of asserting the openness and diversity of European societies, leaders from David Cameron to Angela Merkel have declared the end of multiculturalism. Open borders and the free flow of people have come under attack, most recently by the re-introduction of border controls by Denmark, a Schengen country.

Solidarity has been cast into doubt by Europe’s initial reluctance to help troubled EU economies and by proposals to reduce the Eurozone to a club of performing economies. However, such concessions to the very vocal populism from the far right will only undermine the entire European project.

Second, this strong political presence of the far right encourages an even greater radicalization of the rightwing fringes. Wherever far-right parties score well in elections, more militant attacks never seem to be far off, whether they involve the murder of Roma in Hungary, the assassination of an Egyptian woman in Germany or arson attacks on Dutch mosques. Although far-right parties have often been quick to distance themselves from such attacks, including the most recent one in Oslo, they are the ideological arsonists that prepare the ground for violence.

Clearly, the acts of this Norwegian madman have a broader European context, and they are of consequence throughout the continent. As an immediate result, chances are that copycats will feel “inspired” to stage similar attacks elsewhere in Europe.

Security structures will have to re-focus some of their attention to this domestic threat and away from their primary occupation with Islamic fundamentalists. As a political response, Europe’s established parties and leaders have to make it crystal clear that such attacks – be they verbal by far-right parties or physical by individual radicals – will not herald the end of the project to create an open, diverse and tolerant Europe that has thrived for so long.

Joerg Forbig is Director of the Fund for Belarus Democracy at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.