Subsequent raid on squat scores explosives
An “unofficial” summit of NATO foreign ministers in Oslo led to crowd violence Friday between police and “youths” protesting Norwegian involvement in Afghanistan. In the aftermath there were 260 arrests and one policemen was injured. Masked thugs broke off from the main, legal protest, smashing police barricades and showering cops with eggs and rocks. The “youths,” who are mainly native Norwegians, are connected to the Blitz squat, which has long served the government as a source of “anti-fascist” street fighters who carry out protected violence against anti-immigration and patriotic activists. In exchange, the squatters pay only a nominal rent to the city for the house, though Oslo has recently announced the intention of shutting the place down.
The 800-strong mob scene is an embarrassment to the Norwegian government, which was hoping to use the meeting to explain to visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice why it has broken NATO ranks and recognized the democratically-elected Palestinian government, against US wishes.
A follow-up police raid on the squat uncovered low-level explosives and projectiles, which the “anti-fascists” say was only intended to be used against “racists” and, they claim, has been in their possession since the 1990s with no police interference.However, government agents feared that the Blitz violence at the summit may have signalled a change in ideological direction for the collective, which has limited its violence mainly to dissidents: police feared that the explosives might be used against the summit site, which was ringed with machinegun-toting SWAT teams. Over 70 crates of explosives and projectiles were taken out of the squat. The US and Israeli embassies also saw a heavily armed, large police presence.
Interestingly, considering the past links between Blitz and the state, no arrests were made at the squat, which was empty when the raid went down just after midnight Saturday morning. Therefore no one has been charged with possession of the explosives.
The demonstration was supposedly meant to be against Norwegian participation in the Afghan war, which the pseudo-anarchist punkers feel is “racist” and harms Muslims. Like the left in general, they have expressed obsequious “support” for Islamic immigrants and Third World immigration in general, though the Muslims remain unimpressed.
The squat Blitz is widely seen as a drug den/crash pad with a scene too extreme even for the well-entrenched Norwegian Marxists, whose youth group condemned the demonstration and tipped police off about potential violence. The Marxist sellout of the Blitz kids is in line with similar attempts across Europe by many leftists who seek to separate themselves from the legacy of political correctness, which has destroyed their standing in the eyes of the European working class. Less than a week before the Oslo violence, the once-powerful French Communist Party polled a derisory 1.94% of the vote in presidential elections.
Squats like Blitz are an anachronism, with roots in the lifestyle politics of the hippie scene of the 1970s. Usually set up in abandoned buildings, their denizens set up elaborate “self-governing” systems and seek to live collectively. As “intentional communities” they have long been out of fashion, however some still persist in the Nordic nations. Drawing as they do mainly from privileged children of the bourgeoisie hoping to shock their parents, and serving the anti-dissent agenda of the state, squatters have been given a lot of consideration. However, official impatience with the petty criminality of the “scene” has led to recent crackdowns. In December, 2006, a plan to close down the Copenhagen Ungdomshuset squat after court decisions led some of the largest mass arrests in postwar Danish history, when Ungdomshuset partisans invited rioters to help them resist the police with the slogan “Troublemakers of the World; We bid you Welcome!” A mob of about 2000 launched attacks on cops and pillaged local shops, leading to 300 arrests. Fresh violence broke out in March, 2007, when police finally shut Ungdomshuset down.
The association of the “autonomist” squatting movement with unofficial terrorist networks is worrisome, especially in the Nordic nations, where a long unofficial relationship with government has emboldened many of them in carrying out violence against patriots. In June 2005, the home and car of Denmark’s immigration minister Rikke Hvilshoj were bombed, endangering the lives of herself, her husband and two young children. In August, 2005, Swedish domestic terrorists attempted to murder David Duke at a patriotic festival, planting two bombs with timing devices that would have decimated the crowd. Then, in the Spring of 2006 explosives were planted aboard a Swedish train in an assassination attempt against British National Party leader Nick Griffin. The explosion would have potentially killed Griffin, his wife, and activists from the Nationaldemokraterna (National Democrats) who were hosting Griffin, along with regular commuters. Outside of Nordic Europe, populist politician Pim Fortuyn was murdered in the Netherlands by Volkert van der Graaf, a man ideologically close to the “anti-fascist” movement.
In Europe, mob violence mainly comes from immigrant populations, such as those who rioted across France and other parts of Europe for weeks in late 2005, and who recently shut down the Gare du Nord station in Paris. However, “autonomist” and “anarchist” white youth (usually going through a phase and basically apolitical) have made appearances in both the United States and Europe, helping to disrupt antiwar and antiglobalism protests with acts of vandalism. Often called the “Black Block” for their uniform appearance of hooded sweatshirts (with matching band patches) and ski masks, their random actions have no effect on anything while showing just how ideologically demoralized their generation is.