承前*1
ROSS DOUTHAT “A Right-Wing Monster” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/opinion/25douthat.html
Ross Douthatという人のコラムはこれまで読んだことがなかった。NYTに加わる前はAtlanticの編集者であり、現在National Reviewの映画批評家も兼ねている*2。Atlanticはリベラル系の雑誌だし、National Reviewは老舗の右派雑誌。日本でいうと、『世界』と『正論』という感じか。
どうしてこんなことが気になったのかというと、「右翼モンスター」というタイトルが意味深長だからだ。このテクストは結論として、Anders Behring Breivikを「怪物」化することによって、オスロ虐殺事件で気落ちしているだろうヨーロッパの右派に対して、こんなことが起こったからってめげることはないよとエールを送っている。
それはともかくとして、最初から読んでいくことにする。先ずTheodore Kaczynski aka Unabomber*3が喚起される。曰く、
次いで、諾威の警察当局がAnders Behring Breivikを「基督教原理主義者」だと呼んだことに対する異議。この異議は妥当だと思った。
Judging by the manifesto’s contents, Breivik has roughly the same relationship to the cultural right that Kaczynski had to certain strains of environmentalism. The darkest aspects of his ideology belong strictly to the neo-fascist fringe. But many of his beliefs and arguments echo the rhetoric of mainstream cultural conservatives, in Europe and America alike.
たしかに。
Despite what the Norwegian authorities suggested over the weekend, those beliefs probably aren’t a form of Christian fundamentalism. Breivik’s writings bear no resemblance to the theology of a Jerry Falwell*4 or an Oral Roberts*5, and his nominal Christianity (“I guess I’m not an excessively religious man,” he writes at one point) seems to be more of an expression of European identity politics and anti-Islamic chauvinism than any genuine religious fervor.
そして、 Breivikはアリゾナ州で上院議員を銃撃したJared Loughner*6のような「精神が異常な右翼イデオローグ」だというJohn Podhoretzの主張*7が紹介される。しかし、それに続く文章は、
とかなりまともである。そして、これはこの事件がヨーロッパの左派にとっては「政治的チャンス（political opportunity）」だということである。では、この危機に「保守」はどう対応すべきなのか；
His compendium quotes repeatedly from conservative writers on both sides of the Atlantic, and it’s filled with attacks on familiar right-wing targets: Secularism and political correctness; the European Union and the sexual revolution; radical Islam and the academic left.Indeed, stripped of their context, some of his critiques of multiculturalism and immigration resemble arguments that have been advanced, not just by Europe’s far-right parties, but by mainstream conservative leaders such as David Cameron in Britain, Angela Merkel in Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy in France.
最後まで読んで脱力。
Not with the pretense that there’s somehow no connection whatsoever between Breivik’s extremism and the broader continental right. While his crimes should be denounced and disowned, their ideological pedigree has to be admitted.But this doesn’t mean that conservatives need to surrender their convictions. The horror in Norway no more discredits Merkel’s views on Muslim assimilation*8 than Ted Kaczynski’s bombs discredited Al Gore’s views on the dark side of industrialization. On the big picture, Europe’s cultural conservatives are right: Mass immigration really has left the Continent more divided than enriched, Islam and liberal democracy have not yet proven natural bedfellows and the dream of a postnational, postpatriotic European Union governed by a benevolent ruling elite looks more like a folly every day.
For decades, Europe’s governing classes insisted that only racists worried about immigration, only bigots doubted the success of multiculturalism and only fascists cared about national identity. Now that a true far-right radical has perpetrated a terrible atrocity, it will be easy to return to those comforting illusions.
But extremists only grow stronger when a political system pretends that problems don’t exist. Conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have an obligation to acknowledge that Anders Behring Breivik is a distinctively right-wing kind of monster. But they also have an obligation to the realities that this monster’s terrible atrocity threatens to obscure.
ところで、今回のオスロ虐殺事件からオクラホマのTimothy McVeighを思い出した人も少なくないようだ*9。
*1:http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110723/1311433720 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110724/1311507595
*2:http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/rossdouthat/index.html
*3:See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski
*4:See also http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20070519/1179578117 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20070727/1185475783
*5:See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_Roberts http://www.tulsaworld.com/specialprojects/news/oralroberts/
*6:See http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110111/1294690248 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110112/1294806492 http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sumita-m/20110114/1295033611
*7:“Re: Evil in Norway” http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/07/23/re-evil-in-norway/
*8:Matthew Clark “Germany's Angela Merkel: Multiculturalism has 'utterly failed'” http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/1017/Germany-s-Angela-Merkel-Multiculturalism-has-utterly-failed
