LONDON - Norway is not the only country suffering from far-right extremism. Like a virus, it is spreading throughout Europe.

The recent massacre by far-right Norwegian zealot Anders Behring Breivik brought the problem into the spotlight. But populist anti-immigration parties have been performing strongly across Western Europe, where many countries are still struggling to emerge from recent economic hardship.

On Monday, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg urged parliament to preserve the democratic values of Norway as public pressure grew for stiffer sentences for serious crimes after Anders Behring Breivik's bloody rampage.

In a poll of nearly 1,300 people taken six days after the attacks, 65.5 percent said the penalties were "too low" and only 23.8 percent were happy with them, the Verdens Gang paper reported. More than half said their views had hardened since the mayhem that claimed 77 lives.

Breivik, 32, who confessed to the July 22 bombing in Oslo and shooting spree on a nearby island, has been charged with terrorism, which carries a sentence of up to 21 years.

He allegedly wrote a 1,500-page manifesto and published it online. The text rants against immigration, multiculturalism, Marxism and globalization.

It also warns of what he calls an Islamic Demographic Warfare. Breivik called for a "crusade" to defend his idea for Europe.

Norway's anti-immigration Progress Party is now the second largest in parliament, winning one in five votes in the last election.

"Although Europe's far-right parties have tried to distance themselves from the attacks in Norway the bombing and massacre highlighted the increasing prominence in mainstream European politics of right-wing nationalist groups with an anti-immigration agenda," said Nigel Inkster, director of Transnational Threats and Political Risk at London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The idea of having a pure community, or a white Europe, is actually quite common within European right-wing extremist groups.

When the continent fell into economic turmoil in recent years, Populist parties throughout Europe received new momentum.

The Sweden Democrats enjoyed success at a general election last September, entering Parliament for the first time. They now have 20 out of all 349 Parliament seats after winning 5.9 percent of the vote.

In Denmark, the People's Party (DF) is already the third-largest party in Parliament and a partner in the country's government since garnering 14 percent of votes in the 2007 general election. The minority center-right coalition government, under the DF's influence, has turned the country's immigration rule into possibly the tightest in Europe.

In Finland, the popularity of the True Finns party has also grown in recent years. The party received 19.1 percent of the vote in this year's parliamentary elections compared to just 4.1 percent in 2007.

Among those major European powers, the British National Party, despite winning only 1.9 percent of the vote in the 2010 general election, has been represented in the European Parliament since 2009.

And although France's National Front party is not expected to win outright in next year's presidential campaign, it is expected to make an impressive showing after having performed well in this year's regional elections.

The surge of extremist sentiment has been fuelled by immigration and exacerbated by the economic crisis, according to local analysts. When unemployment rises, a challenge faced by many European countries in recent years, so does anti-immigration sentiment.

"European right-wing extremists believe their jobs have shifted to immigrants. Such a view is quite popular among the young people. Anti-immigration and (being) against the entry of foreign cultures is the key characteristic of the far-right in Europe," said Wang Peiran, a visiting scholar specializing in European security studies at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium.

The Norway attacks have triggered a debate on the continent about multiculturalism and immigration. British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have both made public references to the failure of multiculturalism.

"But," Inkster said, "it is unclear what they propose in its place".

Yui-Tak Wan contributed to this story.

China Daily