Europe’s continued anxieties towards the refugee crisis has allowed fringe groups to exploit tensions.

Finland’s “Soldiers of Odin” is one such example. This ‘street patrol’ movement promises to protect native Finns from immigrants and Muslims.  It considers itself “a patriotic organisation fighting for white Finland”.

They claim that Islam causes insecurity and increased crime. At protests they have carried signs that read “Migrants not welcome”.

You can trace the origins of the movement to a protest in the town of Kemi, near the northern city of Tornio, last October.

Its founder Mika Rana, justified their patrols under the guise of security. Social media allowed the movement to connect online. And share their anxieties (and hatred) of different cultures. A Facebook post alleging that asylum seekers housed near a school in Kemi had spied on young girls brought them onto the streets.

Rana’s own social media account reveals his white supremacist beliefs. His Facebook ‘likes’ include Holocaust denial, nostalgia for Nazism, and a ‘Stop Islam’ page.

The Internet has always enabled far-right ideologues and groups to disseminate materials with ease. Social media serves to intensify the process. And it allows groups to mirror other far-right groups across Europe. Take for example, the English Defence League. You will find chapters across Finland, Sweden, and Germany to name but a few. Social media allows individuals to express solidarity or influence discussions irrespective of location.

Rana’s profile is no exception. Other ‘likes’ include the neo-Nazi thuggery of Combat 18 and Britain First. In spite of this, Rana insists that the movement remains open to all.

Invoking the language and imagery of Odin helps white supremacists mythologise their purpose. They extol the heroic virtues of northern European whites – as it promotes genetic closeness and the tribe. A tribe that helped build civilisation against the elements and odds. Mythologising the past allows them to situate their own experiences in a grander narrative. A struggle for white consciousness and identity grows its own momentum with the weight of history behind it.

Forging this link can provide the individual and movement fresh direction and purpose. They claim a uniformed presence in at least twenty Finnish towns and cities. Social media allows the group to collect custom orders for merchandise.

A recent online poll comprised of 1,000 Finns found a groundswell of support for the group. Researchers found that 48 per cent of individuals polled held negative views of the group. In spite of its links to the Finnish Defence League and the criminal past of some of its members, 28 per cent held positive views of the group. Online polls carry their own caveats; but the findings have alarmed some in Finland.

This support may stem from Finland’s acceptance of more than 30,000 asylum seekers amid a prolonged economic recession. Soldiers of Odin exploit the disquiet of disapproval, resentment and anxiety.

In recent years, Finland has embraced asylum seekers from the Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, and the Balkan regions. Yet Christianity remains Finland’s largest religion. As 78 percent self-identify as Lutheran. Finland’s Muslim population remains a minority.

Soldiers of Odin continue to grow in popularity. Its Facebook page boasts over 12,000 ‘likes’. With added growth, the group has started to appeal to individuals in the UK. Britain First has also shared a story about the Soldiers of Odin as media interest in the group rises.

The group’s Facebook serves to reinforce prejudicial views of Muslims, refugees and migrants. Externalising these groups as a threat helps justify their street presence. For supporters, the protests become acts of bravery, not intimidation.

At a political level, Prosecutor General Matti Nissinen has rejected the presence of the movement. Police insist that there ‘are no legal obstacles to forming a street patrol‘. But it grants them no additional rights to interfere in the activities of others.

The coalition government seems split on how to deal with them. Finance Minister Alexander Stubb suggested that the coalition would consider making the patrols illegal.

In response, the Soldiers of Odin urged supporters to sign an online petition opposing the ban. Narratives that drive a sense of self-victimisation appease supporters. Especially if they perceive a conspiracy from above.

Here’s why the echo chamber effect is so important:  if you surround yourself with information that confirms your own opinions it becomes mainstream.  It can distort perception, polarise opinions and make a person distrustful of other sources. Radical right and far-right groups attempt to exploit this distrust to recruit. A key tool of this recruitment concerns Barkun’s theory of ‘stigmatized knowledge‘. In short, stigmatized knowledge presents information that mainstream institutions have not validated.

If individuals feel disempowered or ignored by the mainstream, they will find alternative sources to make sense of their anxieties. It presents an opportunity for radical groups to influence parts of society they would otherwise face rejection from. Not all will follow; but it remains a popular tactic.

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A footnote to Europe’s ongoing crisis is the rising use of anti-Muslim rhetoric. Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, defended the erecting of a razor-wire fence on its southern border through the language of cultural and religious difference.

Orbán stated that “most of them are not Christians, but Muslims,” and that “Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity. Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian?”

Antal Rogan, the parliament caucus leader of Orbán’s Fidesz party, said on Tuesday that “the very existence of Christian Europe” was at stake.

Rogan also told the pro-government newspaper Magyar Idok “Would we like our grandchildren to grow up in a United European Caliphate? My answer to that is no”.

Ivan Metik, a spokesperson for Slovakia’s interior ministry spokesman said last month: “We want to help Europe with the migration issue. We could take 800 Muslims but we don’t have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims be integrated if they are not going to like it here?”

In July, Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, argued that Christians would cause less tension. He added that terrorists might attempt to mingle among Muslim refugees.

Slovakia’s Muslim population totals just 0.2 per cent in a country that is two-thirds Roman Catholic. Immigration remains a priority for many ordinary Slovaks. With that in mind, cultural anxieties are easier to manipulate. Hence why an ‘anti-Islamisation’ rally in Bratislava attracted thousands in July.

In the Czech Republic, a petition against Muslim migrants received 145,000 signatures. Milos Zeman, the Czech president, made a cultural argument against taking refugees fleeing Libya.

“Refugees from a completely different cultural background would not be in a good position in the Czech Repulic,” he was quoted as saying by a spokesperson.

Those considered ‘culturally closer’ Eastern European Slavs and Christians from Syria.

The decision by Czech police to write numbers of the hands of mainly Syrian refugees drew comparisons to Nazi Germany.

Poland agreed to accept 50 Christian families fleeing the Syrian civil war. But it outsourced that initiative to a private firm called Estera.

Miriam Shahed, who heads Estera, told the FT that ‘non-Christian’ refugees threaten Poland. She insisted that ISIS would not murder other Muslims because they ‘share’ identical beliefs. Shahed claimed that Islam represented a ‘totalitarian system’ and many Muslims are ‘criminals’.

This past April, Ukip leader Nigel Farage told BBC Breakfast “[If] we have to give some Christians refugee status given that with Iraq and Libya there’s almost nowhere for them to go then fine but Europe can’t send the message that everyone who comes will be accepted“. A position he took in 2013.

In light of Aylan Kurdi’s death, alongside members of his family, Farage sought to shift the debate by tweeting: “We must also establish who is a genuine refugee and to make sure they are not an extremist from Isis or other jihadi institutions”.

We must also establish who is a genuine refugee and to make sure they are not an extremist from Isis or other jihadi institutions.

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) September 3, 2015

To mythologise Europe’s Christian identity and Muslim refugees as terrorists helps the extreme right (and others) demonise religious minorities. Europe’s own legacies and traditions of antisemitism and anti-Muslim feelings continue to ebb and flow. Both incorporate ‘biological’ and ‘cultural’ forms of racism. This racist tradition constructed both religious minorities as ‘foreign intruders’ in societies. Anxieties around cultural and religious difference fed the paranoia of societal change through demographics. A paranoia compounded through the nefarious and paradoxical antisemitic trope of disproportionate Jewish influence.

The specific cultural and religious anxieties tied to Muslim identity fed the conspiracy of ‘Islamisation’. A key component of this belief is ‘Dhimmitude’ a term coined by ‘pseudo-scholar’ Bat Ye’or. Ye’or contends that non-Muslims treaty for protection in ‘Muslim conquered’ lands. A notion that feeds a false narrative that Muslims receive legal and political favours in secular contexts. On the fringes, the far-right hint at a civil war that will bring ‘Islamisation’ through violence.

Anti-Muslim prejudice is also understood in the specific cultural and linguistic spaces of some European nations. In French it translates as Islamophobie, in Spanish the term translates to Islamofobia, or Islamofobi in a Scandinavian context. But how these prejudice experienced by Muslims in these countries translates from specific cultural vernaculars are not just linguistic points of difference. But link the political and social cultures of the countries in question.

The religions of Islam and Christianity are not predisposed towards prolonged conflict. Yet hostility stems from moments in history. Interested parties (and individuals) distort these events to push anti-Muslim narratives.

Not even the Crusades triggered all-out conflict between the two faiths. But often this controversial moment in history becomes a propaganda tool for extremists on both sides. Take for example the far-right appropriation of Knights Templar imagery.

Racialisation allows individuals to see Muslims as foreign bodies and non-white (even white converts are labelled p*kis and race traitors). Dehumanisation allows individuals to disassemble Muslim identity and reassemble the Muslim body in subhuman terms. In far-right circles, the terms ‘Mudscum,’ ‘Musrat/Muzrat/Muzzrat/Muzzie,’ and ‘MuSlime’ pop up in their echo chambers. Though the term ‘Mussie’ holds positive connotations in Australia.

In a broader sense, dehumisation helped Nazi Germany label Jews as the literal embodiment of vermin and disease; Hutu génocidaires labelled Tutsis as cockroaches; dehumanisation aided black enslavement in colonial times.

Outside of Europe, the Irish refugees of the Potato Famines of 1845 to 1846, and 1846 to 1847 experienced dehumisation upon entry to Canada. The elites of Toronto deemed the Irish uncivilised due to their religion, language and physical traits. In reality, this physical appearance owed to a minority of West Country Irish peasants, it fuelled the corrosive stereotypes of Irish identity. In short, to not be Protestant in this era of Toronto’s history created suspicion.

In spite of the true realities that underpin this crisis, kernels of hope do appear; but the rhetoric does echo a darker period of Europe’s history; and will not change soon.

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A dozen skeletons found in a rubbish dump were Jewish victims of Portugal’s Inquisition, according to researchers.

The excavation team uncovered the remains in Evora, east of Lisbon, at the former Jail Cleaning Yard of the Inquisition Court. The dump functioned between 1568 and 1634. Inquisition manuscripts confirmed that 87 prisoners died when the jail was in use.

The three male and nine female victims died with no funeral rights or burial goods. Researchers noted that “the sediment surrounding the skeletons is indistinguishable from the household waste layer where they were placed, suggesting that the bodies were deposited directly in the dump”. In death, the humiliation compounded those accused of being Jewish or heretics.

Pope Gregory IX created the Inquisition in 1233, after a period of consolidation in Europe,  to ensure heretics did not undermine papal authority. For example, they branded the Cathers and Waldensians heretics for their metaphysical Christian beliefs.

Suspicion followed Jewish converts; some believed they continued to practice Judaism in secret. A converso faced fines, imprisonment or burning at the stake if found guilty of practising their old faith.

Under the Inquisition, the accused had no right to face or question their accuser; it validated the testimonies of criminals and the excommunicated. It sought ought so-called heretics, nothing about the movement proved passive.

In 1391, following a series of riots in Spain, 20,000 faced the prospect of embracing Catholicism under pain of death. Though some sought to continue pracitising their Jewish faith in secret. Later generations still attended Bar Mitzvahs and attended circumcisions.

By the 15th century, converting to Catholicism in Spain carried the promise of social mobility. By 1492, Spain forced its Jewish communities into exile, some went to the Ottoman Empire, others moved to Portugal. But the arrival of the Inquisiton provided fresh challenges.

Seeking Iberian unification with Spain, King Manuel I  decreed expulsion for the Jews and Muslims (Moors) who did not convert to Christianity within ten months. That rhetoric did not reflect his intentions to pursue an integrationist policy until his death in 1521.

His successor, King João III, founded an institutionalised Inquisition in 1536, after gaining the blessing of Pope Paul IV. A few years later and the Pope reformed the Roman Inquisition in 1542.

In 1998, scholars held a conference at the Vatican on the Inquisition. The fruits of that discussion turned into a 800 page report published in 2004. Its editor, Professor Agostino Borromeo, argued that of the 125,000 cases tried by the Spanish Inquisition, only 1 per cent resulted in the death penalty.

In Germany, they argue, more male and female “witches” died at the hands of separate civilian trials in the early 15th century. Of a population of 16 million, 25,000 died. In Lichtenstein, 10 per cent of the 3,000 faced death for witchcraft.

In spite of Borromeo’s claims, in 2000, Pope John Paul II made a sweeping apology (in all but name) for the sins committed in the Crusades, Inquisition, and Holocaust.

Historian António José Saraiva noted that at least 40,000 Portuguese were charged. Of that number, at least 1,200 died. Portugal’s Jewish communities totalled 400,000 during the Inquisition. In constrast, the modern figure stands at just 600. Spain and Portugal enacted the right of return for Sephardic communities in 2013.

Researchers added that it was impossible to know conclusively if the skeletons were Jews.

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