Feedback between militant Islamism and right-wing extremism on the example of the migrant crisis

Abstract

The ongoing long-term migrant crisis still significantly affects the geopolitical context of the European continent. Nevertheless, the numbers of migrants moving on the three migrant routes to Europe are much lower, but the consequences of these movements and the fragile stability on porous migrant routes call for caution. As for the consequences of this situation, they are numerous - demographic, cultural, economic, religious and others. In this paper, the relationship between militant Islamism, as one of the drivers of migration to Europe, and rightwing extremism on the soil of the oldest continent, is analyzed. Specifically, on the one hand the paper deals with the question of the extent to which these two forms of manifestation of political violence are antagonizing and exclusive. On the other hand, the extent to which they are characterized by a certain capillarity is explained. The mutual dependence shows the extent to which the strengthening of political Islam at the source, course and confluence of the migrant waves leads to the strengthening of far-right responses based on the narratives of (neo-)Christian Europe. Undoubtedly, militant political Islam has changed the image of the countries of the Islamic world, specifically in the regions of North Africa and the Middle East. Islamic societies which started the transition at the beginning of the Arab Spring did not suddenly "wake up" to find themselves in a democracy. On the contrary, the transition to more organized societies has been replaced by civil wars, i.e., the continuous instability and disintegration of already fragile institutions of the system. All this resulted in the economic and social devastation of these societies. The role of Islamists, especially their militant wings, as a tsunami that produced a strong wave of migrants to Europe, is significant. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that key players in the West, primarily the United States and the most powerful EU countries, also contributed greatly to this development. It is impossible that the crisis could not have been foreseen, that is, that interventionists did not know that effective democratization of these areas is a long-term process. The revolutionary introduction of democracy and the absence of assistance to those forces that could be called more or less democratic opened the door to those who have been biding their time - militant Islamists. The echoes of this development at the "source of migration" had a clear extremist equivalence at the "migrant confluence" - in Europe. The extremization of the European continent is marked in two ways. On the one side, with the wave of migrants there was a danger of strengthening the already established organizations of militant Islamism in Europe, and on the other side, there was an explosion of homegrown resistance to everything that has an Islamic connotation. Europe's far-right and extremist organizations have been given what they have wanted for years - an alibi for their anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim views. Pandora's box has been opened.