Domestic Extremism in Europe - Athena Institute

Tamás Berecz - Kristóf Domina 

Domestic Extremism in Europe 

Threat Landscape 

A Report

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Authored by Tamás Berecz and Kristóf Domina 

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support of the 

Domestic Extremism in Europe - Threat Landscape 2

Tamás Berecz - Kristóf Domina 

Domestic Extremism in 

Europe - Threat Landscape 

A Report 

November 2012 


“Having an enemy is important not only to define 

our identity but also to provide us with an obstacle 

against which to measure our system of values and, 

in seeking to overcome it, to demonstrate our own 

worth. So when there is no enemy, we have to invent 

one. Look at the generous flexibility with 

which the skinheads of Verona would, just to identify 

themselves as a group, choose anyone not belonging 

to their group as their enemy.” 

Umberto Eco, Inventing the enemy, 2008 

“I do not want to be sitting before this panel in a 

modern day version of a Pearl Harbor post-mortem 

as to who didn’t do what, when, where and why. 

None of us would want to have to be back here going 

through that agony.” 

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld 

two months before the 9/11 attacks, Rumsfeld 

Papers, July 23, 2001 


Table of Contents 

FOREWORD 7 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 11 

DOMESTIC EXTREMISM - EMERGING DEFINITIONS 15 

KEY POINTS OF COLLECTED DATA 16 

THE STRATEGIC LANDSCAPE 28 

Challenges posed by extremism and misconceptions 

surrounding the issue 28 

The myth of the great recession 29 

They will never be able to ignite war, why care? 34 

Effects of domestic extremism on mainstream politics – 

securitization and reification of societal issues 37 

West vs. East - no two Europe 49 

A not so special case: Greece 52 

THE TACTICAL LANDSCAPE 56 

Groups that kill 56 

Groups with direct links to parliamentary parties 61 


The myth of the lone wolf 65 

Key trends in organizational structure 69 

Internet use 74 

CONCLUSION 76 

REFERENCES 80 

THE DOMESTIC EXTREMIST GROUPS IN EUROPE 

PROJECT 86 

ABOUT THE ATHENA INSTITUTE 87 


Foreword 

Rather than consolidation, the first decade of the XXI. 

century brought upheaval in Europe. In terms of the po- 

litical elite, opportunism sets the tone – the Kohls, 

Mitterrands, Schmidts, Thatchers were replaced by 

Schröders, Sarkozys and Berlusconis. 

What they left is a Europe with immense systemic vulnerabilities 

ranging from failed immigration policies – 

the key issue in light of demographic facts – and rigid social 

structures eliminating mobility – and now youth un- 

employment of 25 to 50 per cent in Southern-European 

countries. Anomalies and unsolved issues brought by a 

half-finished European integration, widespread corrup- 

tion and nepotism in Southern and Eastern countries, isolationism 

in Northern ones; not to mention fiscal or eco- 

nomic problems and dysfunctions. 

Many of these challenges could be ignored in an 'end of 

Cold War' euphoria followed by the 'reunification of the 

Continent' – the process of EU and NATO enlargement 

involving former Communist Eastern countries. At the 

same time, from the mid-90s an era of cheap money – 

cheap and easily available credit throughout the world 


mostly as a result of American monetary policy – ‘helped’ 

European elites and societies to avoid facing tough 

choices. 

Then, Europe suffered its most severe external shock 

since the end of the Cold War: the 2008 financial crisis ba- 

sically halted economic growth and aggravated political 

tensions on the continent. 

Since then, disillusionment was followed by anger. Then 

came those willing to exploit and build on this anger. Far- 

right and far-left parties are gaining strength and using 

coded language to direct this anger to re-invented 'enemies'. 

Sub-national, organized domestic extremist groups 

are more pronounced in re-defining immigrants, the 

Roma, the Jewry or the LGBT community as the enemy. 

Some of them went further and did carry out lethal at- 

tacks against these communities. 

At the same time, many dismiss the current relative wave 

of domestic extremism as a temporary side-effect of the 

above external shock (the economic crisis). They could 

not be more wrong. 

As we argue in this study, the phenomenon is new in its 

current form, therefore it cannot be understood in terms 

of the '68 far-left extremism or of the far-right Nazi 

movement of the '30s. The main reasons for that are the 


level of constitutional freedoms and rights European 

countries guarantee to their citizens (that organized ex- 

tremist groups are turning to their advantage), affluent 

European societies (meaning also that extremist elements 

themselves have the necessary resources to operate) and, 

lastly, the establishment of the internet making information 

freely available, but also serving as a communica- 

tions tool much more effective than anything in human 

history. 

In this report we describe many aspects of the phenome- 

non that in the past few years both produced spectacular 

attacks – from the Hungarian and German serial killer 

cells to Anders Breivik – but was also heavily involved in 

distorting the mainstream political process and did 

achieve at least partial success in some key policy areas 

(immigration and Roma inclusion most evidently). 

The groups themselves are quite different with one core 

similarity: they define themselves against something or 

somebody. And as we point out, they will not go away, 

but are here to stay in the coming decades. 

Chances are that in case the issue remains unaddressed, it 

has a fair chance to become another systemic vulnerabil- 

ity of Europe. A systemic vulnerability that will not stop 

harming European interests including blocking good 


governance, degrading core values or play a role as proxies 

of potential non-EU hostile powers. 

The Athena Institute launched the Domestic Extremist 

Groups – Europe project to identify high-risk active 

groups on the continent and to describe key aspects of 

the phenomenon. Concluding the project, this report aspires 

to provide a broader framework to understand the 

phenomena as a key emerging threat of the the 21st century 

with the aim of supporting policy responses. 

Kristóf Domina 

Director 

Athena Institute 


Executive Summary 

This paper is an addendum to the Athena Institute’s 

‘Domestic Extremist Groups – Europe’ project, an exten- 

sive study that mapped more than a hundred far-right 

and far-left extremist groups in thirteen European coun- 

tries. It is also the next step in the Institute’s efforts, after 

our ‘Major Domestic Extremism Incidents – Europe 1990- 

2010’ study, to help key players in the field of security 

and human rights by exploring and analyzing the everchanging 

modern-day threat environment. 

The Institute’s experts found 115 domestic extremist 

groups in the examined thirteen countries. The mapped 

groups are all active organizations that score 4 or above 

on the FBI Seven-Stage Hate Model. Most of the identified 

organizations fall into categories 4 (large-scale 

propaganda, symbolic violence) or 5 (physical violence) 

on the aforementioned scale, but the Institute found that 

there are 30 seriously violent groups amongst them. 

There are twenty-six that score 6 (violence amplified by 

the use of weapons) and four that score 7 (carrying out 

murderous attacks purposefully). Indeed there are only 


three countries from the thirteen that are devoid of such 

groups: Austria, Romania and Slovakia. The four active 

level 7 groups reside in two countries: one in England 

and three in Italy. 

The paper also explores the strategic landscape, insofar 

as it describes the challenges that domestic extremism 

poses and the fundamental misconceptions that hinder 

the fight against it. The study debunks the idea that domestic 

extremism stems solely from the great recession 

by showing that almost 43 per cent of identified groups 

had already been active before 2008. It also argues that, 

even though domestic extremist groups may seem less 

than fierce at first glance, they pose a plethora of threats 

that are still mostly ignored or downplayed by key ac- 

tors. Such groups cause shocks in the mainstream politi- 

cal arena and in societies in general. They also distort the 

mainstream political process on their own as well as via 

their connections to newly emerged extremist parties that 

are gaining ever-bigger footholds on national and local 

parliaments/municipalities. They are also capable of 

blocking sound policies about immigration, criminality 

and minority rights by securitizing, reifying and redefin- 

ing socioeconomic and other societal issues and turn 

them into security problems. 


Countries in Western Europe still comfort themselves by 

thinking that extremism is mostly an Eastern European 

problem, a region that is less developed both economically 

and socially. However, the Athena Institute’s find- 

ings show that 67 per cent of the identified groups reside 

in Western countries. Moreover there are more groups of 

every threat level in Western-, than in Eastern Europe 

and level 7 groups can only be found in the West. Even 

level 6 groups can only be found in half of the examined 

Eastern countries while all scrutinized Western countries 

have at least one, but usually more. 

According to this paper, Greece is a good example of how 

socioeconomic issues, political crises, corruption, high 

number of non-integrated immigrants and other system- 

atic weaknesses can lead to an explosion in the popular 

support for extremist groups and parties when given 

country is hit by an internal or external shock, such as the 

great recession. Such issues can be discovered in all 

European countries; therefore the Hellenic Region should 

be looked upon not as an exception, but as the writing on 

the wall. 

The study also examines the tactical theatre as it de- 

scribes the threat environment, formed by extremist 

groups that constantly pose newer and newer challenges 

whilst continuously adapting to their metamorphosing 


surroundings. Domestic extremist organizations fully 

utilize the possibilities provided by the boom in social 

media. 86 per cent of the identified groups have their 

own websites and/or social media sites that make it pos- 

sible for them to reach large audiences with little effort. 

They also use modern mass communication to organize 

themselves in novel ways that make the job of law en- 

forcement agencies much harder. 38 per cent of the 

groups use leaderless resistance and 10 per cent of 

groups can be classified as being pseudo cells. These or- 

ganizational structures diminish the chance of infiltration 

or arrests, whilst make it easier for the groups to be active 

locally with less funding and manpower. 

The recent developments in communication have also 

enhanced the importance of extremist sites/blogs/ 

forums and given them greater influence. Thus, online 

radicalization has become an issue that cannot be ig- 

nored. Hence, as far as this paper is concerned, lone 

wolves (e.g. Breivik) do not exist in a broader sense, in- 

asmuch as all known extremists that carried out serious 

attacks in the past years had some kind of connection to 

extremist groups or visited extremist sites regularly. 


1 

Domestic Extremism - 

Emerging Definitions 

A HUMAN RIGHTS APPROACH 

“Domestic extremist groups are organized, formal or in- 

formal groups that in the name of an ideology carry out 

symbolic or physical aggression or call for such acts 

against certain people or a definable community of peo- 

ple based mostly on - real or perceived - characteristics 

such as national or ethnic origin, race, religion or sexual 

orientation.” 

A POLITICAL APPROACH 

“Domestic extremist groups are organized, formal or in- 

formal groups on the fringes of politics struggling for 

power or political influence on a national scale exploiting 

constitutional rights and freedoms of modern democra- 

cies and technology to a maximum possible extent in or- 

der to pursue extremist agendas.”

2 

Key Points of 

Collected Data 

Before getting into specifics and discussing the issues 

surrounding domestic extremism and the challenges this 

phenomenon poses, let us introduce the key points of the 

Athena Institute’s findings, to give a general idea about 

the number, membership, ideological background, year 

of formation and the threat level of the presently active 

extremist groups in the thirteen European countries we 

examined. 

These points of our findings are important on several 

levels: first to give a generic overview about the situation 

and the threat environment in Europe, and second to give 

our later arguments a factual foundation. Since this paper 

is basically an addendum to the Institute’s ‘Domestic Extremist 

Groups – Europe’ project in which we try to pro- 


vide a more detailed and in-depth analysis of given phenomenon, 

it is self-evident that all the data that is going 

to be shortly summarized in this chapter can be found 

online, amplified with very useful and easily useable 

comparative data visualizations that help the inquirer to 

get a fuller picture without having to go through all 

groups in the database. 

The Athena Institute, with the help of experts of diverse 

background, identified 115 active extremist groups that 

operate in the 13 countries that were examined. It has to 

be stressed that the Institute only sought for groups that 

score 4 or higher on the FBI Seven-Stage Hate Model 

1 (Symbolic violence [4], physical violence [5], use of 

weapons [6], murder [7]), i.e. groups that carry out sym- 

bolic violence (hate speech, hostile propaganda against 

certain groups of people). However, this also means that 

these groups are the most active and most violent organi- 

zations that are capable of distorting the mainstream political 

processes and of posing major challenges that are 

needed to be faced by key players (politicians, experts, 

authorities). 

1 This study originally appeared in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, the 

monthly publication of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of 

Justice. The Athena Institute would like to thank the FBI as well as the authors 

for their permission to translate and republish the study. 


Let us start with the geographical distribution of the 

groups that the Institute identified. Contrary to widely 

shared perceptions, 67 per cent of the groups operate in 

Western European (WE) countries and only 33 per cent in 

Eastern European (EE) ones. 

Distribution of extremist groups based on their region 

of origin 

Source: Athena Institute 

It is also noteworthy that there are more groups of every 

threat level (threat levels will be discussed in detail later 

in this chapter) in WE than in EE. This difference becomes 

much more prevalent when it comes to high risk 


groups. There are 18 level 6 groups in WE and only 8 in 

EE, whilst there are no level 7 groups in EE and there are 

4 in WE. Level 7 groups are very rare in general and there 

are only two countries on the continent (Italy and the 

UK) where they can be found at the moment. 

Distribution of extremist groups in Western and Eastern 

Europe based on their threat levels 


The membership numbers of the identified groups were 

estimated, thus they are not exact, but give a very good 

general idea about the size of these organizations. The 

Institute classified all groups’ membership numbers as 

being between -10, 10-50, 50-500 and 500 and above. Most 

extremist groups have low membership numbers; hence 


there are only a few that have more than 500 members. 

Also the category below that is very wide, so it can be 

said that most organizations’ membership numbers are 

far below five hundred and mostly involves couple of 

dozens of people. 

However, the number of members has no effect on the 

violent or “docile” nature of extremist groups or their 

level of activity. Even small groups can be able to carry 

out murderous actions or very effective hostile propa- 

ganda campaigns that might be capable of altering the 

mainstream political arena or have an effect on some 

policies. 

Threat levels are very varied in general. Although, there 

is a clear trend: The lower the score on the Seven-Stage 

Model, the more numerous the groups become. In other 

words most groups fall into the level 4 threat category 

and as we go higher and higher on the threat level scale 

we find less and less groups. The Institute identified 58 

groups with a threat level of four, 32 with a threat level of 

five, 26 with a threat level of 6 and only 4 groups with a 

threat level of 7. These numbers include both far-right 

and far-left groups. This means that amongst the identi- 

fied 115 groups there are 30 groups that carry out severely 

violent attacks. Although, it has to be highlighted 

that groups with a lower threat level can be just as dan- 


gerous via radicalization through hostile propaganda. 

This argument will be discussed in detail later. 

Distribution of extremist groups based on their threat levels 


The treat domestic extremist groups pose are closely related 

to their ability to affect and distort mainstream political 

processes. Thus these groups’ relations and ties to 

political and sometimes even parliamentary parties is a 

very important factor. 

Approximately 33 per cent of all identified extremist organizations 

maintain some kind of cooperation with political 

parties. They share some members, they support 

each other, or they use each other for their own [political] 

agenda. 


Distribution of extremist groups based on their ties to 

political parties 


34 per cent of groups have no direct links or ties to politi- 

cal parties at all. There can be several reasons for that. 

Some groups like extreme animal rights activists do not 

necessarily feel the need to work together with parties. 

On the other hand, several far-right groups completely 

reject democracy and the parliamentary system; ergo 

they try to destroy it from outside and would never participate 

in it. Still it is alarming that one third of the iden- 


tified extremist groups have some kind of relationship 

with political parties, especially since some of these par- 

ties have MPs and MEPs right now and other delegates 

in important offices. 

There is also a clear trend when it comes to the ideologi- 

cal backgrounds of extremist groups. The Institute used a 

very simplified classification that forced all groups into a 

far-left – far-right dichotomy. This simplification is 

needed because the array of ideologies and the large 

amount of groups that amalgamate right wing and left 

wing ideas (ideological cherry-picking) would have 

forced us otherwise to use myriad categories that would 

have led to a chaotic arrangement with no real additional 

value. Therefore we classified radical environmentalists 

(Earth Liberation Front 2 ), radical animal rights activists 

(Animal Liberation Front 3 ), anarchists, communists, etc. 

and any other group with no tendency towards racism, 

xenophobia, homophobia, etc. as far-left; all other groups 

fell into the far-right category. 

Based on this division, the Institute found that there are 

thrice as many far-right groups in the examined 13 countries 

than far-left - even though the more specific ideo- 

2 Detailed information: www.athenainstitute.eu/en/europe/map#/groups/14 



logical backgrounds of groups in the generalized far-left 

category show a much bigger variegation than in the far- 

right one. This is especially true about the (Central) Eastern 

European (EE) region where there are only two far- 

left groups, one in Hungary (radical animal rights activ- 

ists) and one in Croatia (a Marxist-Leninist group). The 

exact reason for the lack of far-left groups in the EE re- 

gion is unknown, but it is very likely that communist 

ideas had been discredited during the four decades be- 

hind the Iron Curtain. 

There is only one country that is exceptional in this aspect: 

Greece. Located in South-Eastern Europe (SEE), 

Greece has several far-left groups operating on its soil, 

even very violent ones. However, Greece’s history differs 

vastly from other countries in the EE region. It never be- 

longed to the Soviet sphere of interest and the country 

was mostly ruled by right wing/conservative dictators 

and military juntas after World War II and the bloody 

and catastrophic civil war between the communists and 

anti-communists (CIA, 2012). Thus, far-left ideas were 

not discredited as in most other EE or SEE countries. 

All in all, it is indisputable that far-right extremist groups 

are far more numerous, especially if we take the fact into 

consideration that the Institute’s far-left category contains 

many organizations that have nothing to do with Marx- 


ism, Maoism or Anarchism for instance; i.e. there is a 

much wider array or groups in the latter category. 

In our modern times the use of the internet is also a very 

important factor. The massive changes is mass communi- 

cation in the past decade and the social media boom in 

the last five years or so have had a huge effect on the way 

these groups spread their propaganda and organize 

themselves. The Institute’s findings show that a whopping 

86 per cent of groups use the internet in some way 

(have their own sites, blogs, forums, Twitter accounts, 

Facebook pages or YouTube accounts, etc.). 

Modern means of communication and other factors such 

as the activities of authorities have also had an effect on 

the organizational structure of domestic extremist 

groups. A completely separate chapter will be dedicated 

to organizational structure later in this paper; however it 

has to be noted here that horizontally organized leader- 

less resistance- and cell-based groups are on the rise. 

Only 37 per cent of the groups have a strictly hierarchical 

structure, whilst 48 per cent of groups use leaderless re- 

sistance or a cell-based structure. It is also very interesting 

that from this 48 per cent, 10 per cent can be classified 

as pseudo cells that are even more loosely organized than 

leaderless resistance groups. 


Distribution of extremist groups based on their organiza- 

tional structure 


According to our findings most groups had already been 

active before 2008, i.e. the credit crunch and the beginning 

of the great recession. (The importance of this 

statement will be scrutinized in later chapters). Almost 43 

per cent of the groups had been already active before 

2008 and only 32 per cent were established after that. It 

has to be mentioned that 24 per cent of the groups have 


an unknown year of establishment, but it can be assumed 

that the bigger part of them had been founded before the 

economic recession. It is also clear that in countries that 

were hit hardest by the economic downturn and that are 

also torn by political crises new groups started emerging 

after 2008. Up until that year a couple of new groups 

were founded almost every year in the 1990s and every 

year in the 2000s. However, since 2008 a larger number of 

groups were formed: 5 in 2008, 9 in 2009, 7 in 2010 and 6 

in 2011. Hence, it is perfectly clear that such immense 

turmoil like the great recession works as a catalyst for extremism. 

As a golden rule though, it is certain that the 

economic crisis was not/is not the sole cause of extremist 

activity on the continent, but it definitely makes the situa- 

tion more sombre. 


3 

The Strategic 

Landscape 

CHALLENGES POSED BY EXTREMISM AND 

MISCONCEPTIONS SURROUNDING THE ISSUE 

Domestic extremist groups pose a plethora of challenges 

that have to be faced. With the internet and social media 

exploding in the past five years or so, far-right and far- 

left groups have it easier than ever before to carry out a 

full-spectrum of operations (ranging from recruitment, 

vetting, communicating and propaganda, to planning 

and implementing attacks, etc.) with very little effort or 

financial investment and to deliver their message to a 

greater audience. Therefore it is of importance that the 

public, authorities and decision makers understand the 


threats and challenges these groups represent towards 

European governance – including values, traditions and 

maintaining basic functions of society and government. 

That is why it is worrying that politicians’, experts’, na- 

tional security agencies’ and local authorities’ concep- 

tions of domestic extremist groups are still tainted by 

deeply rooted misconceptions about the nature of ex- 

tremist groups, the fundamental reasons behind the de- 

velopment of such groups and the general rise in sub- 

national level extremist group activity in Europe. 

THE MYTH OF THE GREAT RECESSION 

The argument that big economic downturns like the eco- 

nomic hardships the whole world is facing nowadays; 

often called “the great recession” by Krugman (2012), are 

the only root of extremist ideas is probably the most no- 

torious and persistent misconception. This is not to argue 

that economic problems, especially such cataclysmic ones 

as the great recession, do not have any effect on radicali- 

zation or the popularity and the level of general accep- 

tance towards far-right/left ideas and extremist tenden- 

cies. 


Recessions, however protracted or sombre they might be, 

are never the sole cause of extremism. As long as one can 

believe that growing extremist activity is exclusively 

caused by the economic downturn the world is facing 

right now, they can also delude themselves into the belief 

that once the recession is over extremist groups will also 

wither and thus the problem in a way solves itself with- 

out having much to do about the phenomenon and the 

societal effects that follow it. That is why it is crucial for 

key actors to understand that, even though serious eco- 

nomic problems make the phenomenon more serious and 

acute, they are not the ultimate reason for it hence it will 

not go away either when the economy regains its 

strength. 

The Institute’s findings that come from the research con- 

ducted for our ‘Domestic Extremist Groups – Europe’ 

project, and for our ‘Major Domestic Extremism Incidents 

– Europe 1990-2010’ project, show that the above de- 

scribed train of thought is a fallacy. Both of these projects 

were conducted on a European level with different fo- 

cuses on the same phenomenon: domestic extremism. In 

the first project (that this paper is mainly based upon) the 

Institute concentrated on active extremist groups that op- 

erate in thirteen countries residing in Europe and have a 


level 4 or higher threat level based on the Seven-Stage Hate 

Model, developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

In the latter study our Institute focused on incidents, i.e. 

symbolically or physically violent attacks carried out by 

domestic extremist groups between 1990 and 2010 in 

Europe. 

During both of these thorough inquiries the Institute 

found that extremist groups were just as active, if not 

more active, before 2008 (i.e. the beginning of the great 

recession), and also that the number of groups operating 

in European countries had already been high before the 

collapse of the international financial market. 

Real Growth Rate in the European Union (%) 

Source: Central Intelligence Agency 


Cumulative Group Formation Timeline 


The Institute’s data show that most active high-risk ex- 

tremist groups had been established and active before the 

economic downturn. The data also show that, even 

though the 1990s were definitely an era of economic 

growth and prosperity for most in the Western hemisphere, 

this era was also much more plagued by serious 

extremist attacks than the 2000s. 4 

4 Detailed attack numbers are portrayed here: 

www.athenainstitute.eu/en/key_trends_an_observations#!prettyPhoto/1/ 


The number of victims (people murdered, injured or 

taken hostage) claimed by domestic extremist attacks was 

much higher both between 1990-1995 and 1996-2000 than 

between 2000-2005. There has been an increase in the 

number of people falling victims to extremist violence 

between 2006 and 2010 but those numbers stay far below 

the numbers our Institute found in the 1990s. It is also 

worth noting that these trends are true for both Western 

and Eastern Europe. 

The data the Institute amassed for the ‘Domestic Extrem- 

ist Groups – Europe’ project show that, although there 

has been a definite increase in the number of new extrem- 

ist groups since 2008, most extremist groups had been 

established and active before that time. It also has to be 

noted that the increase in the number of victims between 

2005 and 2010 is mostly due to an increase in Eastern 

Europe, whilst their number was still decreasing in 

Western-Europe. 5 

“For the most part the actions of domestic extremists 

pose a threat to public order, but not to national security. 

They are normally investigated by the police, not the Se- 

curity Service.“ 

Security Service, MI5, Great Britain 

5 Detailed victim numbers are portrayed here: 

www.athenainstitute.eu/en/key_trends_an_observations#!prettyPhoto/2/ 


Hence, it is very likely that serious economic problems 

have an effect on extremist activity and on public 

support/acceptance of extremist activity. However, the 

causal link between the two is highly arguable; and de- 

picting the current economic hardships of European Un- 

ion countries as the sole raison d'être of domestic extremism 

is misleading and counterproductive. Extremism has 

been a part of democratic societies in the West (and since 

the fall of the Iron Curtain in the East too) for many dec- 

ades; even during economic prosperity. Consequently, 

the phenomenon will not magically go away as soon as 

things change for the better economically. The groups’ 

activity may decrease, societies’ acceptance or support 

for them may fall, but extremism will be here to stay. 

THEY WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO IGNITE WAR, WHY CARE? 

The second misconception this paper tries to scrutinize 

and debunk is the conceived limited danger extremist 

groups epitomize. There is a glimmer of hope nowadays; 

since there has been a significant rise in the support for 

far-right/left parties and extremist ideologies within the 

general public in the EU and other non-member states 

(Walker, 2009; Hamilton, 2012), policy makers, authori- 

ties, experts and the public have started to take this phe- 


nomenon more and more seriously. There have been 

crackdowns on far-right/neo-Nazi extremists in Ger- 

many (Diehl & Jüttner, 2012); special police units have 

been established specifically to fight extremist groups like 

in the United Kingdom (ACPO, 2011), etc. However, the 

fundamental attitude towards extremism is still one that 

sees it as a lesser danger that can be partially ignored or 

handled with nonchalance. 

Western countries’ main focus is still based on the per- 

ception that the most dangerous phenomenon to their 

security is international/state-funded terrorism. This 

perception is completely understandable in the light of 

the past decade when radical Islamist terrorism swept 

over the Western cultural community as a tsunami; start- 

ing in Indonesia, on Bali with an attack on mostly Austra- 

lian tourists and peaking with the 9/11 attacks in America, 

the Madrid train bombings and the 7/7 bombings in 

London. All these occurrences led politicians to designate 

vast resources to fighting international terrorism. 

The situation has changed again, however, and the ele- 

vated level of concentration on Islamist terror groups like 

al-Qaida has led to the negligence of domestic extremism. 

The results of this laxity are already showing both in 

America and Europe and they prompt one to draw dire 

conclusions (Potok, 2012; Beirich, 2011). One only has to 


think about Anders Breivik in Norway, the group in 

Germany that killed several immigrants during a long 

period of time, the so-called Roma Death Squad in Hungary 

that killed six civilians of a Roma origin. Beyond the 

lives lost, all these attacks had dire political effects, too. 

Most extremist groups have financial difficulties, the 

number of their members is usually low, many times they 

are badly organized and they do not have the support of 

rogue states as international terrorist organizations do, 

thus they are considered to be less dangerous. 

However, this type of evaluation of the situation ignores 

several features and aspects of extremist activity. This 

chapter will not go into details about extremists who carried 

out violent and deathly attacks in the past couple of 

years, such as Breivik or the Roma Death Squad, because 

they will be discussed in detail in another segment. Still 

they have to be mentioned here as a reminder that ex- 

tremism has elevated to a level where it is just as dangerous 

and deathly as international terrorism. Even groups 

that do not commit violent acts themselves per se (e.g. 

level 4 groups) can nurture certain individuals on their 

fringes that are more than capable of committing serious 

offences, even deadly attacks. 


On the other hand, the effects of these incidents on mainstream 

politics must not be downplayed or disregarded 

as minute or non-existent either. Therefore, even if extremist 

groups are arguably unable to ignite war, they are 

still able of wreaking havoc, cause suffering to civilians, 

weaken the reputation of the state and pressure mainstream 

politicians to slowly adopt illiberal policies. 

High-profile state-sponsored Jihadi terrorism indeed 

showed that it is more than capable of threatening the 

lives of Europeans. However, its political effects on 

Europe were/are minimal, not to mention counterproductive. 

On the other hand, domestic extremist groups 

are already affecting mainstream European politics. They 

are distorting policies in key fields, block or counter good 

governance, thus – in the long run – has a potential to de- 

stroy Europe at least as we now understand it. 

EFFECTS OF DOMESTIC EXTREMISM ON MAINSTREAM 

POLITICS – SECURITIZATION AND REIFICATION OF 

SOCIETAL ISSUES 

There are several societal issues and hardships that 

emerged in the past sixty years or so in European coun- 

tries. Western, democratic societies have gone through 


whopping changes since the middle of the 20th century: 

immigration, urbanization, the development of 

multicultural/multi-ethnic societies, repeated techno- 

logical revolutions etc. all pose new cultural and moral 

challenges while make many uneasy. 

Cities with 100,000 or More Foreign-Born Residents 

Source: Migration Policy Institute 

Mainstream politics had an answer to social issues dur- 

ing the second half of the last century: the welfare state. 

After World War II, countries on the western side of the 


Iron Curtain developed some kind of insurance for their 

citizens to fall back on if something bad happened. Bene- 

fit systems, free and universal healthcare, child support, 

etc. Throughout this era of sustained economic growth, 

prosperity and baby boom the financing of the system 

was not an issue (Lowe, 2005; Bartholomew, 2006). 

However, the whole scenery has changed slowly since 

the 1980s. Cutting back on welfare expenditure became a 

trend and this trend has become even more rapid since 

the credit crunch induced the great recession. Austerity is 

the catchword of the 2000s and people see the welfare 

system thawing away in front of their very eyes (Lowe, 

2005; Bartholomew, 2006). Economic hardships combined 

with the social frictions that are spawned by the multi- 

ethnic/multicultural/poly-religious societies most west- 

ern people live in, inevitably lead to anxiety and a feeling 

of insecurity (Cohen, 2002; Hall, et al., 1980). 


Population Increase of EU-15, 1960-2000 

Source: Eurostat 

Noting the aforementioned phenomena is important be- 

cause these, and the inadequate responses given to these 

issues by mainstream politicians and experts, provide fer- 

tile soil to extremists to plant their seeds and then reap 

the fruits of their work. In other words, they can securi- 

tize, redefine and reify societal problems and use them 

for their own avail. 


Manuel Mireanu, Athena Institute Non-resident Fellow 

Domestic Extremism - A Political Analysis of 

Security and Violence (Excerpt) 

Securitization 

Security is always connected to threats; it is always 

security from something. These different threats are 

not just military in nature, they are not just tanks and 

guns, but they can very well be natural disasters, 

drugs, terrorism, epidemics or global warming. Thus 

it is not just national security that is crucial, but also 

the security of the society, of groups within society, 

and of individuals. 


The main arguments of the Securitization theory are: 

first, security threats do not just exist ‘out there’. 

Threats are social products. A thing becomes a 

threat only when social agents construct it as such. A 

special case of securitization is societal security, 

which is concerned with threats to identity. The 

referent of security is not the state, but social groups 

that have a common ‘we’ feeling that they feel is 

under existential threat. In the case of societal 

security one can clearly see a basic mechanism of 

security, the drawing of boundaries between ‘us’ and 

‘them’. Whatever threatens that ‘we’ is an enemy 

that needs to be eliminated or neutralized before it 

‘kills us’. 

People need security, as much as they need the 

feeling that they belong to a bigger collective. Thus, 

there is a certain demand for security from the 

population. If the state loses its credibility as a 

provider for that demand, the door is open for 

other voices to securitize on behalf of society. 

Leading members of political extremist groups 

articulate speech acts that speak on behalf of the 


society, they attempt to securitize threats taken from 

the social imaginary and then propose urgent 

measures to tackle these threats. They motivate 

extremist violence as an urgent measure that needs 

to be taken immediately, otherwise the identity of the 

larger group will disappear. 

Extremist groups use a mechanism of security – 

securitization - to gain legitimacy for their actions. 

The complete study is available via the website of the Athena 

Institute: www.athenainstitute.eu/en/context/read/34 

Securitization, however, is not something exclusively 

used by domestic extremists or far-right/far-left parties/ 

movements. The states themselves regularly securitize 

issues or other states in order to reach their goals. States 

can and have securitized other states 6 and their citizens 

6 E.g. US President George W. Bush securitized Saddam Hussein and Iraq. 

The US government claimed that Saddam had WMDs and that he posed an 

imminent existential threat to the US and its citizens to gain support for attack- 

ing the country and to develop a public rationale for a regime change in Iraq. 


during wars, or certain social phenomena such as the 

rave/drug culture during the early 1990s, recreational 

drug use, violence in video games, inner city youths, etc. 

These issues all caused moral panics in several countries 

in the west, and these moral panics were mainly caused 

by states describing them as existential threats to the way 

of life people were used to (Hall et al, 1980; Guest, 2009). 

Domestic extremist groups use the exact same methods 

to reify issues via securitization. There are several societal 

issues that have been picked up by these groups both in 

Western-, and Eastern Europe. 

Due to the large number of (Muslim) immigrants, the 

impact that the Islamist terror wave has had on countries 

in the West and the rise of multicultural/multi-ethnic so- 

cial formations, extremist groups generally try to securi- 

tize Islam, Sharia Law, immigration, asylum seekers and 

even more interestingly pedophilia (this will be discussed 

in more detail shortly). 

On the other hand, in the East, immigration rates are still 

fairly low and Muslim communities are still rare and 

miniscule. However, there are a couple of minorities who 

have lived in Eastern European countries for centuries 

now, whilst they are still surrounded by prejudice and 

discrimination. Such groups, especially the Roma com- 


munities in post-communist countries constitute a big 

part of the population in these countries (e.g. 6-7 per cent 

in Hungary) and most of them live far below the poverty 

line, with high unemployment rates and exceptionally 

high long-term unemployment rates (Tanner, 2005). Be- 

cause of these (and several other) circumstances, they are 

“perfect” for extremist groups to securitize them. Other 

very prevalent communities that are being targeted by 

domestic extremist groups in Eastern European countries 

are the Jewry and the LGBTQ community. 

There is one thing that is common in these groups of 

people; they are being portrayed by extremists as existen- 

tial threats. This existential threat can be cultural (they 

are destroying our culture), physical (they are all violent 

criminals) or moral (they are eroding our fundamental 

values). This in itself is already a problem. If many people 

hold such beliefs in a society then vulnerable minori- 

ties become marginalized and their civil liberties and 

human rights can become infringed. 

However, it is even a bigger problem that when so many 

people start agreeing with such sentiments, even mainstream 

politicians cannot ignore them. Party Politics is a 

race, a race for votes, and many times politicians cannot 

or will not be overly choosy when it comes to the maxi- 

mization of votes. If they believe that certain policies will 


gain them popularity they will run with them. So, when 

extremist groups conduct successful securitizations on a 

large level against certain communities within a society, 

they also push mainstream politicians towards the far- 

right or the far-left. 

Probably the best example comes from Greece, a country 

ridden with political and economic crisis. Both far-left 

and far-right movements, extremists and parties are gaining 

ground with Golden Dawn (GD) amongst them. 

Golden Dawn had used to be a tiny party on the fringes 

with no real electorate support whatsoever. The political 

and economic crises changed that however and right 

now GD is the 5th biggest party in the Greek Parliament. 

It is also very likely that they will become the 3rd biggest 

after the next general elections (CIA, 2012). 

GD is a deeply racist, xenophobic and anti-immigrant 

party. Their policy’s main focus is on pushing out both 

legal and illegal immigrants from the country at any costs 

and they have no real scruples when it comes to the 

methods they are willing to use. They organize neigh- 

borhood watches that challenge the monopoly of the 

state to use violence and regularly intimidate immi- 

grants. For instance, they harass immigrant shopkeepers 

and vendors by going to marketplaces and act as authori- 


ties, demanding their papers, and if they cannot show 

any, they force them to leave (Alderman, 2012a; 2012b). 

A couple of months after GD got into parliament and the 

mainstream political parties who govern the country real- 

ized the rapidly growing popularity of GD and its mes- 

sage, they commenced a huge nationwide crackdown on 

illegal immigrants and started “repatriating” them 

(Smith, 2012). In the meanwhile, several human rights 

NGOs (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, 

etc.) warn that racially aggravated assaults have started 

to become common place and the police are turning a 

blind eye to them. 

The situation in Greece shows how, especially in difficult 

times, extremist groups and far-right/left parties can gain 

popularity via securitizing issues, creating moral panics 

and thus pushing centre-left/right parties more and more 

towards the radical. 

Other fairly successful instances of securitization come 

from the United Kingdom where more and more extrem- 

ist groups try to portray the alleged Islamization of the 

country or the introduction of Sharia Law to the British 

legal system as a real and present danger that threatens 

the majority culturally, morally and physically. They also 

try to reify and depict pedophilia as a Muslim crime. 


There are hundreds of articles on the internet that try to 

extrapolate a few recent cases of Muslim men grooming 

and pimping underage girls as a generally Muslim issue 

that comes from Muslim culture and values. 

One can also think about extremist groups in Eastern 

Europe (esp. in Hungary and Slovakia) coining highly 

successful catchphrases like “Gypsy criminality/terror” 

that managed to securitize and reify a socioeconomic issue 

as an ethnic one. This has also led the government of 

Hungary to introduce tough new measures where people 

who live on benefits have to do a certain hour of community 

work; otherwise they are denied all benefits or 

child support. 

These examples clearly show how extremist groups or 

far-right/left parties can tilt public perceptions, distort 

them and present particular socioeconomic, or other societal 

issues as existential threats. These perceptions of 

voters then affect mainstream politicians who feel 

obliged to respond, and many times they respond in 

ways that are irrespective of human rights or democratic 

values. Hence, even if domestic extremist groups are very 

unlikely to be able to start a war, they still pose great 

challenges to Western democratic governance and the 

liberal political system, in which mainstream parties have 

to realize that they are being pushed towards the edges 


where human rights, civil liberties and democratic values 

are being slowly eroded and extremist agendas are being 

fulfilled even though extremists are not the ones holding 

the wheel (Popham, 2012). 

WEST VS. EAST - NO TWO EUROPE 

In the last chapter of this segment, the Institute tries to 

shine a light on the misconception Western politicians 

and experts have about the differences between East and 

West. Here, the East means the former communist coun- 

tries, and the West means the countries that were outside 

the Soviet sphere of interest. 

In several ways, historically, culturally, developmentally, 

politically, etc., westerners see Eastern Europe as being 

beneath them. The historical era after the Second World 

War ripped Europe into two parts. This division was not 

necessarily new; these two parts of Europe had had their 

differences even before the Iron Curtain came down. 

However, many argue that after the fall of the USSR and 

the democratic transition of the East, there were still very 

strong cultural and historical misconceptions that led to 

the emergence of certain discursive trends and processes 

that portrayed and still portray the relation and the dif- 


ferences between the East and West as an East-West 

slope. In his book Melegh (2006) for instance argues that 

on this discursive slope Eastern European countries are 

located near the bottom, climbing up towards the top 

where western liberal democratic countries are located. 

This persevering discursive tradition is also weighed 

down by western historical traditions that build mostly 

on stereotypes as pointed out by Norman Davies (2007). 

Decades spent under Communist rule as well as the hur- 

dles and bumps on the road of democratic transition in 

the East led westerners believe that easterners are somewhat 

half-Europeans, with very different traditions and 

priorities. The disintegration of Yugoslavia and the brutal 

war that followed it, furthermore the nationalistic notes 

hit by many politicians in the East have led westerners to 

think of easterners in a condescending manner. On the 

other hand, the western discourse about the East contrib- 

uted to the rise of a discourse in the East that describes 

the West as a mental and economic colonizer (Melegh, 

2006). 

All these cultural and historical stereotypes still fuel this 

discursive trend on both sides and it leads many to per- 

ceive certain societal issues as solely eastern issues that 

do not plague the West anymore. Domestic extremism 

falls within these issues. 


However, based on the Institute’s findings 7 , and recent 

trends that show the rise of far-right/left parties and 

movements in Europe, the aforementioned perception is 

nothing but a persistent myth. 

The Athena Institute found that there are more active ex- 

tremist groups operating in western countries, moreover 

most of the groups that are engaged in actual weapon use 

to carry out attacks, or commit murder reside in western 

countries, with very few exceptions (1 group in Hungary, 

2 in Serbia, 6 in Greece). This is not to say that Eastern 

European countries are completely devoid of extremism, 

or that extremism is less of a threat in the East than in the 

West. It is only to highlight that key players and authorities 

in the West cannot depict the problem of extremism 

as an issue that can only plague less developed countries. 

The evidence shows that there are many active groups in 

western countries; moreover most of the groups with the 

highest threat levels operate in western countries (the 

UK, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, and Germany). 

The challenges posed by these groups can only be faced 

adequately if politicians, authorities and experts realize 

that domestic extremism is a Europe wide issue and a 

7 www.athenainstitute.eu/en/key_trends_an_observations#!prettyPhoto/2/ 


threat both to national security and to the integrity of the 

democratic political process. 

A NOT SO SPECIAL CASE: GREECE 

The Hellenic region is almost a laboratory right now for 

different social scientists and economists, because it pro- 

vides an almost unheard of example of political, eco- 

nomic, social and socioeconomic crisis combined with 

high levels of immigration – a sad but unique example of 

modern state meltdown. 

Greece was hit very hard by the great recession for which 

the population is blaming the political elite that they be- 

lieve to be deeply corrupt while also seems to be unable 

to manage the crisis on the national level. The country 

has been led by two big parties that are led by two or 

three big politician families. These families gave most of 

the prime ministers of Greece in the past decades. While 

the state is being run as a family enterprise, the Greeks 

think that the huge loans taken by their country were 

used to finance corruption and nepotism (Rigamonti, 

2012). 

The standard of living and both the real and nominal 

wages have been plummeting for the past few years. 


Strikes, protest and riots have become common place. 

This special mixture of deep political, societal and eco- 

nomic crisis has led to a rise in the support for extremist 

movements and far-left/right parties. Even though it is 

still the centre-left/right parties that give the government 

(there have been several election in Greece since 2008), 

the far-left SYRIZA gained a huge foothold in parliament 

and Golden Dawn (GD) also won 18 mandates, furthermore, 

experts say that GD can become the 3rd biggest 

party in the parliament after the next general elections 

(CIA, 2012). 

However, this is only one side of the crisis’ consequences. 

The other side is the growth in extremist activity and the 

emergence of several new groups since 2008. As we have 

argued before, economic hardships and recessions are 

most definitely not the sole causes of extremism. However, 

economic problems can make extremism worse, and 

such a deep political crisis paired up with such a big economic 

collapse that Greece has experienced lately can 

turn into a hazardous combustive compound that can 

explode anytime – and in Greece’s case it is dangerously 

close to explosion. 


Active Domestic Extremist Groups - Greece, 2012 


There are several far-left and far-right extremist groups 

that are active in Greece at present, many of them was 

founded after 2008 and many ranks 5 or above on the FBI 

Seven-Stage Hate Model. They usually carry out incendi- 

ary attacks against symbolic targets, like bank branches, 

ATMs, government buildings, offices of media outlets, 

etc. Most of them have not targeted actual people yet, but 

incendiary attacks have led to unintended losses of lives. 


Greece is, however, a ‘not so special case’ because it is not 

alone when it comes to systematic weaknesses such as 

corruption, disillusionment of society with the political 

elites (e.g. Spain, Italy, etc.), rise in the popularity of ex- 

tremist ideas or societal issues emerging from high levels 

of immigration and low level of integration. 

The far-right, for instance, has been on the rise for a dec- 

ade now in Europe (e.g. Austria, Hungary, Denmark, 

Sweden, etc.) and immigration seems to be a problem 

that no European country is able to “swallow or spit out” 

(e.g. Germany, England, France, etc.). Similar systematic 

social, economic and political weaknesses can be easily 

found all around Europe. 

Greece is simply a sad example of how the amalgamation 

of a long-term and deep political crisis, a closed society, a 

low level of integration of immigrants and other systematic 

weaknesses in a country can lead to an explosion in 

the extremist scene when given country is hit by an external 

shock - this shock for Greece was the great reces- 

sion. Many countries on the continent share some of the 

problems of the Hellenic region, if these problems deepen 

and the countries are hit by big internal or external 

shocks, the results can be just as sombre as they have 

been in Greece. 


4 

The Tactical 

Landscape 

GROUPS THAT KILL 

There are not many active extremist groups that score 7 

on the Seven-Stage Hate Model of the FBI, i.e. that pur- 

posefully kill people to reach their goals. However, there 

are several formations that are willing to use violence 

and already have used violence to fulfill their agenda, i.e. 

they score 6 on the Seven-Stage Model. 

This stems from the fact that after a group killed or com- 

mitted mass atrocities authorities will act. This is a rea- 

son why there are only a handful of groups with high 


threat levels, while this also highlights the fact that most 

groups intent to kill are organized covertly (obviously 

the Institute does not monitor covert groups). On the 

other hand, this also means that while the most notorious 

groups are blocked or dismantled by law enforcements 

and justice systems, but they are blocked or dismantled 

after they have killed, thus the damage has been done (e.g. 

German Brown Cell, Hungarian Roma serial killers, etc.). 

Let us start with groups that carried out murderous at- 

tacks, or their activities led to people’s death. There are 

only four active extremist groups in Europe that score 7 

on the Seven-Stage Model. Combat 18 8 in England and 

CasaPound Italia 9 (CPI), Nuove Brigate Rosse 10 (BR) and 

Federazione Anarchica Informale 11 (FAI) in Italy. 

Combat 18 was mostly active during the 1990s and after 

its establishment it soon spread to several European 

countries like Germany or Serbia. C18 is a neo-Nazi 

group that has a violent past. In the '90s their ex-leader 

killed one of the members of the group, because he 






thought that man had given information to the police. 

After this incident, the police cracked down on the 

group, arrested and charged several members with mul- 

tiple crimes. Following the crackdown the group got 

weakened and less agile. 

In Italy the scenery is a bit grimmer. Amongst the three 

groups that are mentioned above, there are two that ac- 

tually carry out purposeful murderous attacks, or at- 

tempted to kill certain targets. Most people know Brigate 

Rosse since they were a very active far-left extremist 

group during the so-called Years of Lead in the 70s and 

early 80s when they, besides many other violent attacks, 

kidnapped and murdered Aldo Moro, then Prime Minis- 

ter of Italy. The police cracked down on BR several times 

and the group became inactive until the 90s. They reap- 

peared and took responsibility for the murder of two 

government advisers between 1997 and 2002. After these 

attacks the police arrested ten members of the group 

weakening the organization one more time. They resur- 

rected again and carried out a letter bomb campaign in 

2007 amongst other attacks. 

FAI is an umbrella organization of five anarchist/ 

communist extremist groups. The presumed member 

groups of the organization are the Five Cs (Cellula contro 


Capitale Carcere e i suoi Carcerieri e le sue Celle), the In- 

ternational Solidarity and the Brigata XX Luglio - a group 

that has taken responsibility for several bomb attacks; the 

Cooperative of Hand-Made Fire & Related Items and the 

May 22nd group. These groups have carried out several 

incendiary and letter bomb attacks against specific tar- 

gets or symbolic ones, jointly or separately. 

The last group is CasaPound Italia, a neo-Fascist network 

of cells that spreads out all over Italy. CPI mostly spreads 

hostile, racist, xenophobic, homophobic and anti- 

immigrant propaganda and they do not carry out violent 

attacks per se. However, a man who was identified as a 

follower of the group; and a regular reader of their web- 

sites killed two Senegalese immigrants in Florence in 

2011 and then committed suicide during the fire fight 

with law enforcement agents. 

There are 26 groups right now active in Europe that score 

6 on the Seven-Stage Model meaning they were engaged 

in weapons use while carrying out attacks. Amongst the 

thirteen countries the Institute examined there are only 

four (Austria, Slovakia, Croatia and Romania) without 

active groups that score 6. 


These groups are very varied; there are organizations that 

were categorized by the Institute as far-left and they op- 

erate in almost all European countries, such as the Ani- 

mal Liberation Front (ALF); and there are several far- 

right groups that have cells/branches/subgroups in 

many countries, like Blood and Honour. There are also 

local groups that might have international connections 

with other like-minded organizations, but only have 

branches within their country of origin. 

The high number of seriously violent groups (30) that are 

active in Europe shows that besides the challenges that 

were specified in the previous segment, domestic extrem- 

ist groups also pose physical danger to EU citizens and 

they are also capable of causing huge financial and eco- 

nomic damages to both public property and private en- 

terprises - not to mention the emotional and psychologi- 

cal effects of such attacks on the victims. 

The above is static a description of the extremist scene 

and incidents in the examined European countries. How- 

ever, it would be unwise not to take steps against these 

groups right now before the threat environment evolves 

into something even more dangerous. Besides, extremist 

groups frequently target government buildings and per- 

sonnel and newly emerging groups like the Anonymous 


hacker group target governmental computer networks 

and websites of authorities. Therefore, critical infrastruc- 

ture defense and cyber security should be also amongst 

the priorities of authorities. 

Similarly important is the threat potential in extremist 

groups that are used by hostile states as proxies to further 

their agenda. They can retaliate and carry out attacks in 

Europe via these groups. Hence, domestic extremist or- 

ganizations must be monitored, handled and fought ac- 

cordingly. 

GROUPS WITH DIRECT LINKS TO PARLIAMENTARY 

PARTIES 

The far-right, and in a few countries even the far-left 

lately, are on the rise. They have been on the rise for al- 

most a decade now (esp. the far-right) (Walker, 2009). In 

the beginning of this rise, only a couple of MPs, mayors, 

MEPs or local officials were representing radical parties. 

This trend has gone through a massive shift, however, 

and right now many far-right parties are amongst the 

bigger parties in their country of origin with substantial 

factions in their national Parliaments. 


There is a multitude of examples: Golden Dawn (GD) 

and SYRIZA in Greece, the National Front (NF) in France, 

the British National Party (BNP) in the UK, Jobbik in 

Hungary, the Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria, the North- 

ern League (NL) and Tricolour Flame (TL) in Italy, the 

National Democratic Party (NPD) in Germany, the Swe- 

den Democrats (SD) in Sweden, etc. All these parties 

have fairly strong presence in local or national legisla- 

tures. 

This trend is important because many of these parties 

maintain formal or informal, stronger or looser links to 

extremist organizations. In a few cases, political parties 

and extremist groups worked in tandem in election cam- 

paigns to achieve a shared goal (see below). Other parties 

will break off these links and deny their connections to 

extremist groups as soon as they enter the mainstream 

political sphere, but they still import extremist ideas into 

the political arena. 

Probably one of the most obvious examples is the Jobbik 

party in Hungary. Jobbik founded the Hungarian Guard, 

a racist, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-Roma and anti- 

Semitic extremist group, then, after the Hungarian Court 

disbanded the group, they established the New Hungar- 

ian Guard with exactly the same ideology and goals. (The 


party also has close ties to other, less influential extremist 

organizations such as the Sixty-four Counties Youth 

Movement, the For a Better Future Civil Guard, the Out- 

laws’ Army, etc.) The Jobbik party based its 2010 national 

election campaign mostly on the campaigns of the Hun- 

garian Guard. In an almost identical fashion, Golden 

Dawn in Greece combined and continue to combine tra- 

ditional campaign elements and extremist activities (uni- 

formed marches and other intimidation tactics, “neigh- 

borhood watches”, etc.) in 2012. 

As it has been shown in this paper, domestic extremist 

groups pose challenges both to national security and the 

mainstream democratic political system. They pose this 

threat through the reification and securitization of issues 

that redefine socioeconomic and cultural problems as ex- 

istential threats. They also manage to affect the main- 

stream political sphere and catapult their ideas into the 

centre by forcing mainstream parties to adopt arguably 

anti-democratic policies about immigration, policing, mi- 

nority rights, state aid, etc. – as described in detail above. 

Extremist organizations were able to achieve these politi- 

cal objectives without connections to or being opposed 

by center parties. One can imagine the level of influence 

they now have on national political agendas if far-right/ 


left parties that establish/fund/support/direct them or 

just sympathize with them actually have several MPs and 

MEPs, as it has become the reality in the past six years or 

so. 

To continue with the example of Jobbik, several incidents 

and scandals have happened in the past six months 

(2012) that shone a light on disturbing facts and allega- 

tions. It seems, for instance, that one of the party’s MEPs 

employed people, and paid them with funds from the 

European Parliament, who are suspected by the media to 

run kuruc.info (the most influential extremist group in 

Hungary). Also, the chairman of one of the Parliamentary 

Committees, who is a member of Jobbik, employs a man 

as an assistant who is a veteran of the Yugoslav war, an 

ex-member of the Hungarian Guard and a present mem- 

ber of the Outlaws’ Army. Moreover, one of the party’s 

MPs is the actual vice-president of the Sixty-four Coun- 

ties Youth Movement. 

Such close ties directly channel extremist groups’ ideolo- 

gies and policies into the mainstream political arena via 

far-right/left parties that then affect parties in the centre 

too. This trend presents acute and manifold dangers, 

threats and challenges that mainstream politicians and 

key players in national security ought to deal with. 


THE MYTH OF THE LONE WOLF 

As it has been seen in the previous chapters, formal ex- 

tremist groups rarely attack civilians, members of minor- 

ity communities or people in general with intent to kill. 

Most groups use symbolic violence - i.e. verbal violence, 

inciting racial/ethnic hatred and intimidating their tar- 

gets. There are only a few extremist groups that actually 

attack groups of people whom they consider as being a 

threat and even fewer that attack such groups of people 

with murderous intent. 

However, there is one more aspect of extremist activity 

that has to be scrutinized since it has proven to be a seri- 

ous phenomenon – offline and online radicalization. Sev- 

eral murderous attacks have been carried out in the past 

couple of years in different countries that have shown 

Europe that extremism is a danger to be reckoned with. 

These attacks were not carried out by actual extremist 

groups that have a clear online and offline presence in 

society, but so-called lone wolves who did not belong 

formally to any known extremist organization. 


Extremist websites and groups that incite hatred and vio- 

lence could not be fast enough to distance themselves 

from these perpetrators by arguing that they were only 

(crazy) lone wolves who had nothing to do with them, 

and it is not their responsibility if someone is so dis- 

tressed and desperate due to the “situation of Europe” 

(i.e. the situation of Europe as depicted by extremist sites 

and groups) that they have been reduced to extremes. 

However, as much as the aforementioned groups would 

like people to believe that they are not in the least at 

fault, evidence shows otherwise. Causality is always a 

tricky thing in social sciences, something that is very 

hard to prove, but to ignore the myriad of facts that show 

how violent extremist perpetrators were connected to dif- 

ferent extremist sites/blogs/forums/groups would be 

ignorant. 

Several examples could be mentioned to substantiate the 

above. First, the case of Anders Behring Breivik, the 

Norwegian who killed 77 people; many teenagers 

amongst them. It is not just Breivik that became famous 

but his monumental manifesto: ‘2083 - a European Decla- 

ration of Independence’. This manifesto only contained 

miniscule contributions from Breivik himself and it was 

mostly copied from different books and well-known anti- 


Islam (“counter-jihad”) writers and blogs, such as the 

Gates of Vienna, Fjordman, Robert Spencer, Bat Ye’or, etc. 

Drawing on these Islamophobic and far-right extremist 

blogs and writers Breivik blamed feminism, multicultur- 

alism, liberalism and Muslim immigrants for the demise 

of “Fortress Europe”, in other words European culture, 

Christianity and the white race. These beliefs led him to 

struck at, what he believed was at the heart of these 

“evils”, the Norwegian Labour Party (Arbeiderpartiet). 

Another case, this one from Italy, is the one of Gianluca 

Casseri a writer, editor and journalist who went on a kill- 

ing spree on the streets of Florence in 2011, killing two 

and wounding three vendors of African origin then 

committed suicide during the fire fight with Italian law 

enforcement. It came to light during the investigation 

that Casseri was a right-wing extremist with strong ties 

to CasaPound, the biggest neo-Fascist extremist group in 

Italy. It is still unclear whether he was an actual member, 

or just a regular visitor at their local centre and a frequent 

reader of their website. What is absolutely clear is that he 

was a strong supporter of CasaPound and drew on their 

ideas about immigration and race. 

These - and several other - examples clearly signal that 

the idea of the lone wolf is a very misleading one. Sure, 


these extremists carried out their attacks alone or in a 

small group, independently of any formal or informal 

known extremist groups. However, they were all influ- 

enced and radicalized by materials and ideas propagated 

by these groups and that radicalization led to violent ac- 

tions. 

Extremist groups change the threat environment, insofar 

as they manage to groom violent extremists on their 

fringes, hence the dangers and threats they pose do not 

necessarily resides only within the group but they can 

obtain an external locus in the form of individuals who 

completely internalize their message or become angered 

by them for being too soft. 

This becomes even more problematic with groups pro- 

viding paramilitary training to interested individuals - 

groups like the Hungarian National Front in Hungary, 

the Patriotic Civil Guard 12 in Greece or the Förbundet 

Nationell Ungdom 13 (National Youth Association) in 

Sweden. These groups provide weapons and close com- 

bat trainings and also theoretical courses on warfare, 

leadership and extremist ideologies to their members and 




sympathizers. This poses a special challenge, as Euro- 

pean internal security agencies might be able to infiltrate 

and monitor the organized extremist groups themselves, 

but they are certainly unable to follow-up on each indi- 

vidual sporadically participating in such trainings. The 

threat posed by radicalized and somewhat trained “lone 

wolves” seems another ignored or downplayed chal- 

lenge. 

KEY TRENDS IN ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE 

Another aspect of the threat environment is the swift 

metamorphosis and adaptation extremist groups can go 

through in order to survive, grow and stay able and ca- 

pable. As it has been already mentioned in this paper, ex- 

tremist groups have never had it easier than nowadays to 

get their message through. The internet and especially 

social media sites made it very cheap and easy for any- 

body to express their ideas in front of a worldwide audi- 

ence. It is not surprising that extremist groups rushed to 

put these new technologies in mass communication to 

“good use”. These developments also had huge effects on 

the organizational structure of the groups and the way 

they operate. 


The other factor that has made an arguably huge impres- 

sion on the organizational structure of extremist groups 

is the activities of the authorities. 

A centralized organizational structure is considered quite 

outdated nowadays, mainly due to its vulnerability to 

infiltration by the authorities and its slowness because of 

its rigid nature. These types of groups are slower to adapt 

and to react; hence they are much easier for the authori- 

ties to dishevel; also they are slower to regenerate when a 

key figure of the organization is taken out by the authori- 

ties. 

Extremist groups have come to understand the dangers 

of a centralized structure and the benefits of the internet 

that makes it so easy to maintain a loose cell structure. 

Therefore, there are very few extremist organizations at 

present with an overly centralized organizational struc- 

ture. Most groups rely on leaderless resistance, which is 

not a novelty amongst social movements at all. Many ex- 

tremist groups have been using this form of organization 

building for decades. The Animal Liberation Front (ALF), 

the Earth Liberation Front (ELF or Elves), the Animal 

Rights Militia 14 (ARM), Stop Huntingdon Animal Cru- 



elty 15 (SHAC), etc. are all groups that are based on a very 

scattered cell structure with no leaders or larger organiza- 

tional levels, but only a credo/manifesto to adhere to. 

However, the aforementioned revolution in mass com- 

munication and the repercussions of the actions the 

authorities have taken against domestic extremism, or- 

ganically led/forced extremist groups to take the above 

mentioned precautions to another level. Probably the best 

example comes from Germany. In the 1990s, the neo-Nazi 

scene was flourishing in the country with traditionally 

organized skinhead/neo-Nazi/far-right extremist groups 

that were fairly strictly structured and centralized. Small 

local groups belonged to bigger state-wide groups that 

belonged to the main nationwide/federal level group, 

with a strict chain of command. At the end of the 90s, 

however, German authorities carried out a huge crack- 

down on neo-Nazi groups all over the country and com- 

pletely shattered the structure that had been in place. 

Furthermore, they made several arrests and banned 

countless groups. 

After recovering from the blow, extremists realized that 

the organizational structure they had had in place was no 



longer viable. It was too easy for the authorities to surveil 

and very inefficient on several levels – thus came the Free 

Comradeships 16 ([FC] Freie Kameradshaften). The FCs 

are a network of very loosely connected extremist cells 

with a highly fragmented cell structure. They are not reg- 

istered formally as civil society organizations, their 

membership is very small and they work independently 

from one another. They do have weak ties to one another 

and they are capable of organizing propaganda actions 

together, but they are not part of a behemoth organiza- 

tion where everybody knows everything about everyone. 

The internet and social media are means that enable this 

type of organizational structure via making communica- 

tion easier between the cells. 

Similar processes have run their paths in Greece too. It is 

less about the authorities in the Hellenic region than in 

Germany and probably more about social media. Al- 

though, averting authorities and arrests are always on the 

agenda of extremist groups. Since 2008 many new ex- 

tremist groups were founded in Greece and most of them 

can be arguably classified as pseudo cells. The Conspir- 

acy of Fire Nuclei ([CFN] also translated as Conspiracy of 

Cells of Fire/Conspiracy of Fire Cells), the Informal An- 



archist Federation 17 , The Revolution First and Always 18 , 

Zero Tolerance 19 , etc. are all structured, or unstructured 

rather, in the same way. We call these groups pseudo 

cells because their membership is constantly in flux and 

even the names they use change continuously. They carry 

out an attack under one name with a certain group of 

people and then carry out another one with slightly dif- 

ferent people and a completely different name. They use 

social media outlets very intensively and they are im- 

mensely hard to catch. It is not impossible though, sev- 

eral members of the CFN have been arrested and con- 

victed in the past couple of years, however many extrem- 

ists who had had ties to them are still active and regu- 

larly carry out, mostly, incendiary attacks. 

This fairly novel rise of pseudo cells makes the job of the 

authorities much harder. It is one thing to map the struc- 

ture and membership of an extremist group when it is 

centralized and hierarchical; it is a completely different 

task to do the same when there is no stable structure or 

membership to map. Therefore, this shift in organiza- 

tional structure causes huge alterations in the threat envi- 





onment that law enforcement agencies have to deal 

with, which makes the dangers and challenges posed by 

these groups even fiercer. 

INTERNET USE 

The Arab Spring provides a great example how useful 

Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites can be in 

organizing huge masses of people or to even run a fullscale 

revolution. However, technology is ideology neutral. 

It can be used just as much for evil as for good. That 

is why it is such an important factor in the ever-changing 

threat environment. Just a bit more than a decade ago, 

extremist groups had to publish newspapers, hand out 

leaflets, regularly organize events or concerts, etc. in their 

efforts to reach their audiences. These methods of reaching 

people are quite expensive, time-consuming and 

need a lot of manpower. 

Nowadays, extremist groups can reach much more people 

with lot less effort or financial cost. They can maintain 

websites and social media pages, sometimes even in 

several languages, and reach hundreds of thousands of 

people. Thus, they can disseminate their hostile propaganda 

very effectively. 


Moreover, they can utilize this technology on the full 

spectrum of their operation. They can recruit new mem- 

bers, vet prospective recruits, plan and carry out intimi- 

dation campaigns, surveil their targets, plan physical at- 

tacks or even incite their readers/members/audiences to 

do their “dirty work”. For instance, in the summer of 

2012, the kuruc.info extremist group organized a success- 

ful intimidation and harassment campaign against hu- 

man rights activists who protested against an alleged 

World War II war criminal, who was suspected of being 

partly responsible for the deaths of more than 15,000 

Jews in Košice (Kassa), Slovakia. In the months that fol- 

lowed the activists’ protest, the readers of the kuruc.info 

website sent myriad racist and anti-Semitic emails and 

text messages to the activists. They also harassed the vic- 

tims via phone and sent several death threats. 

The internet, thus, is a double-edged weapon. It has em- 

powered everybody and helped to achieve great things. 

The Arab Spring is just one example, one can also think 

of NGOs and other organizations that utilize these new 

technologies to do good, bring about change and make a 

difference where it is needed. However, it can also be ex- 

ploited by extremists to further their agenda and spread 

their propaganda to vast masses. 


5 

Conclusion 

The effects of domestic extremism on society, politics, 

policy, security and the threat environment are manifold. 

Extremists, who carry out violent or murderous attacks, 

shake the foundations of the state and question its capa- 

bilities to provide security to their citizens. This also 

leads to the erosion of the state’s reputation and credibil- 

ity. Since providing security is one of the most important 

aspects of a state’s reason of existence, challenging that 

strikes at the heart of the modern nation state. 

Furthermore, there are groups that do not carry out at- 

tacks, but challenge the state’s monopoly on the use of 

violence to ensure peace and public safety. They act as 

gendarmes or self-appointed peacekeepers, whilst in- 

timidating local minority communities and spread ethnic 


hostility. The New Hungarian Guard in Hungary is a 

good example for this phenomenon. 

The remainder of groups intensively spread hostile 

propaganda, securitize socioeconomic issues and actively 

try to affect the mainstream political sphere by them- 

selves, or through far-right/left parties. Moreover, they 

reach certain individuals (e.g. Breivik) through aforemen- 

tioned new means of communication and radicalize 

them, which makes them complicit in their murderous 

attacks. 

All the key challenges posed by domestic extremism, all 

the misconceptions that surround it, and all the changes 

in the threat environment that have been described by 

this paper contribute to shocks in domestic politics, the 

democratic political system and national/public security. 

Mainstream politicians are yet to provide satisfying an- 

swers to the challenges posed by the rise of far-right/left 

parties in the past decade, or by explicit extremist groups. 

Since centre parties have to compete against these newly 

risen extremist parties, they are slowly shifting towards 

the edges and implement illiberal immigration policies or 

very tough penal codes, thus criminalizing poverty and 

minorities. 


It seems that the answer of Europe to these newly 

emerging challenges is one that is far from the European 

traditions of openness, liberalism, multiculturalism, tol- 

erance, pluralism and humanism; values that are all 

deeply rooted in European societies ever since the En- 

lightenment. Thus, it seems that the continent is starting 

to go slowly backwards. 

Domestic extremist groups and extremist parties are 

managing to influence the general public and via the 

electorate, mainstream politics. In Greece, Hungary, Italy, 

England etc. many minority communities, especially the 

Roma and Muslims cannot be sure if their country is will- 

ing or capable of defending them. The insecurity of such 

communities and the growing poverty that follows the 

great recession, paired up with the slow dissolution of 

the welfare state lead to conflicts within European socie- 

ties. The majority sees minorities and immigrants as exis- 

tential threats and minorities are afraid of the majority 

due to the state’s diminished capability or willingness to 

protect them from extremism. 

The disbandment of Roma camps and the expulsion of 

EU citizens of Roma origin from Italy and France show 

that even “old” European countries use new, radical ap- 

proaches towards immigration and handle these issues as 


criminal problems, not as socioeconomic ones (Davies, 

2010; Faiola, 2010). 

If the growing economic issues are amplified with further 

rising extremism, then it will become almost impossible 

to implement sound immigration and welfare policies, 

since they will be indirectly blocked by domestic extrem- 

ist groups. This could lead to growing insecurity and 

open violence against immigrants (e.g. Greece), further- 

more to the serious erosion of security and fundamental 

European values. 

These processes have already begun and their effects can 

be seen in countries that had been struggling with sys- 

temic weaknesses, political crisis, corruption and disillu- 

sionment before getting hit by the recession. Some, or all 

of these elements can be found in most European coun- 

tries, thus they are only “waiting” for an internal or ex- 

ternal shock to plunge such countries into deterioration. 


6 

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The Domestic Extremist 

Groups in Europe Project 

This project is a systemic research effort initiated by the 

Athena Institute with the primary goal of identifying and 

describing all important active extremist groups in 

Europe. A resulting, Europe-wide database on extremist 

groups with detailed information on more than a 100 

high-risk organizations, interactive map, data 

visualizations and more is available on the website of the 

Institute. 


About the Athena 

Institute 

The Athena Institute was founded to enhance human dignity 

and protect our most vulnerable communities while 

combating extremist agendas in order to preserve and 

strengthen democracy in the European continent. In a 

broader context the Institute’s interventions aim to prevent 

small-scale human rights violations to spiral out of control 

and become a full-fledged security policy challenge. 

Via its monitoring activities and independent investigations 

the Institute collects data on the phenomenon of do- 

mestic extremism that serve as a basis for its fact-based 

analytical programs exploring trends and shifts in the 

threat environment. In addition to reaching out directly to 

key stakeholders, the Institute also launches powerful initiatives 

to shape the public discourse with the aspiration of 

serving as a security provider. 

The Athena Institute is an independent, nonprofit and 

nonpartisan organization based in Budapest.

Domestic Extremism in Europe - Athena Institute

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