Common Culture: The European Far-Right and the Middle Ages

Anders Behring Breivik is responsible for killing 77 people in Norway in July 2011. He claims to have been a member of the Knights Templar, a neo-medieval brotherhood that, according to Breivik, is an “Indigenous Rights Movement and a pan-European Crusader Movement.” In his scattered, sprawling manifesto, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, Breivik’s radical ideas about Europe’s contemporary situation – in which Muslims will soon outnumber “native” Europeans in certain countries – pivots on the medieval past as both exemplum and a warning.

In the last two decades, the far-right has increasingly looked back on the medieval past for common cultural origins. There is a growing sense on the European far-right of an inherent incompatibility between European and Islamic peoples, but instead of balkanized "ethnic" nationalisms or biological exclusivity, which are often associated with the far-right, what has emerged since the 1990s are defenses of a European community built on its common traditions: religion, culture, history. In this paper, I will explore the "clash of civilizations” between a Europe united by shared history and traditions and an alien Islamic culture, espoused in Breivik, the far-right in general, and even some mainstream rightist voices. As a medievalist, I am interested in how the specter of the past is renewed in contemporary discourse and, as important, how our perception of the past is changed by that rhetoric.