-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Norwegian television has identified a suspect in the shooting spree on the island Utoya as Anders Behring Breivik, 32, describing him as a member of “right-wing extremist groups in eastern Norway.” The shooting at the youth camp has reportedly resulted in more than 80 deaths.
In his Facebook account, now deleted, he describes himself as having Christian, conservative views. He also has a Twitter account with only one tweet, a quote from philosopher John Stuart Mills: “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests.”
If the reports are accurate, don’t expect denunciations of right-wing extremism from Fox News. If the event in Norway had been caused by a Muslim, would Fox News classify it as a terrorist attack instead of a massacre by a madman?
Here’s an article and photo taken at the Utøya Labour Youth League on Thursday prior to the attack. The sign says “Boycott Israel”
kderosa
1, July 23, 2011 at 2:50 pm
From the 2011 EU terrorist report:
Number of terrorist attacks:
Right-wing 0
Number of convictions/acquittals
Right-wing 4
You numbers add up like the Boy Toy of Orange….I am sure it is a Republican Debt Reduction Strategy….
Anders Behring Breivik: profile of a mass murderer
A right-wing fundamentalist with a hatred for Norway’s left, multiculturalism and Muslims
By Peter Beaumont
guardian.co.uk
Saturday 23 July 2011 18.30 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/23/anders-behring-breivik-norway-attacks
Excerpt:
A friend told the Norwegian newspaper VG that Breivik had been from the far right politically since at least his late twenties, when he began posting a series of controversial opinions on Facebook and the Norwegian site Document.no, which is critical of Islam.
What has emerged so far paints a disturbing picture: a Christian fundamentalist with a deep hatred of multiculturalism, of the left and of Muslims, who had written disparagingly of prominent Norwegian politicians.
Raised in Oslo, he is reported to have attended the same Smestad primary school as Norway’s crown prince, later attending schools in Oslo’s Gaustad and the Handelsgymnasium. Writing later about his teenage years, he would describe racial tension between Norwegians and young immigrants.
Another significant event was being baptised into the Protestant church of “his own free will” at the age of 15. More recently, however, he had expressed his disgust at his own church. “Today’s Protestant church is a joke,” he wrote in an online post in 2009. “Priests in jeans who march for Palestine and churches that look like minimalist shopping centres. I am a supporter of an indirect collective conversion of the Protestant church back to the Catholic.”
He was a fan of violent video games and former neighbours said he had sometimes been seen in “military-style” clothing. In the pictures that have so far emerged, Breivik appears well dressed, slender and clean shaven, a picture of the young entrepreneur he wanted to be. His businesses, however, were not much of a success, each one being dissolved after a short while after making a loss, until he established his farm business in 2009 and moved out of Oslo.
The purpose of his businesses, as Breivik admitted in one posting, was in any case to support his political activities.
But the man who listed Kafka and George Orwell’s 1984 as his favourite books on Facebook made little secret to friends and others who frequented Christian fundamentalist and far-right websites of his racist views. A member of an Oslo Masonic lodge, reportedly a body builder and a hunter with two registered weapons – a Glock pistol and an automatic rifle – it has been Breivik’s online profile that has, so far supplied the most public information.
He was a former “youth member” of his country’s conservative Progress party between 1999 and 2004, a party he criticised in one posting for embracing “multiculturalism” and “political correctness” rather than taking an “idealistic stand”.
From the 2011 EU terrorist report:
Number of terrorist attacks:
Separatist 160
Left-wing 45
Islamist 3
Right-wing 0
So we have a bunch of separatists and lefties committing most of the terror attacks in Europre.
Number of convictions/acquittals
Separatist 201
Islamist 84
Left-wing 37
Right-wing 4
So Islamists start showing up in large numbers in convictions/acquittals, maybe that’s why they haven’t been able to pull off attack attempts.
That trend holds during the entire decade.
Lesson 1: never trust Glenn Greenwald.
Lesson 2: left wing extremists commit and are convicting for far more terrorism than right wing extremists.
Lesson 3: islamist extremists remain the 2nd worst threat in Europe, but law enforcement appears to be working to prevent actual attacks.
From “Make the World a Better Place blog:
“Norwegian bloggers are reporting that Breivik is the author of a blog called Fjordman and that he’s guest blogged for Atlas Shrugs, Jihad Watch and Gates of Vienna “for years.” As Breivik, he publicly praised one of her posts. Elise Hendrick has translated a passage from Realisten which confirms that Fjordman and Breivik are one and the same:
According to his own statements, Anders Behring Breivik previously operated the blog ‘Fjordman’, and later wrote for many years under the pseudonym Fjordman for the anti-Muslim and Zionist blogs Gates of Vienna and Jihad Watch.
In fact, an intrepid friend of Elise’s has created a web page with the “collected works” of the miraculous Fjordman. ”
Collected works:
http://chromatism.net/fjordman/fjordmanfiles.htm
Maker The World ….:
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2011/07/22/rightist-wreaks-terror-through-norway/
I have been reading some Google translated writings of Breivik claimed to be from 2009-2010:
In his writings there were repeated comments about the lack of criticism for Japan despite widespread acknowledgement that the nation rejects multiculturalism. He contrasts that with the criticism of those who who challenge multiculturalism within Norway or Europe generally.
Excerpt from Super Freakonomics:
“But a revolutionary and a terrorist have different goals. Revolutionaries want to overthrow and replace a government. Terrorists want to- well, it isn’t always clear. As one sociologist puts it, they might wish to remake the world in their own dystopian image; religious terrorists may want to cripple the secular institutions they despise. (Alan) Krueger cites more than one hundred different scholarly definitions of terrorism. “At a conference in 2002,” he writes, “foreign ministers from over 50 Islamic states agreed to condemn terrorism but could not agree on a definition of what it was that they had condemned.”
What makes terrorism particularly maddening is that killing isn’t even the main point. Rather, it is a means by which to scare the pants off the living and fracture their normal lives. Terrorism is therefore devilishly efficient, exerting far more leverage than an equal amount of non-terrorist violence.
In October 2002, the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area experienced fifty murders, a fairly typical number. But ten of these murders were different. Rather than the typical domestic disputes or gang killings, these were random and inexplicable shootings. Ordinary people minding their own business were shot while pumping gas or leaving the store or mowing the lawn. After the first few killings, panic set in. As they continued, the region was virtually paralyzed. Schools were closed, outdoor events canceled, and many people wouldn’t leave their homes at all.
What kind of sophisticated and well-funded organization had wrought such terror?
Just two people, it turned out: a forty-one year old man and his teenage accomplice, firing a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle from an old Chevy sedan, its roomy trunk converted into a sniper’s nest. So simple, so cheap, and so effective: that is the leverage of the terror. Imagine that the nineteen hijackers from September 11, rather than going through the trouble of hijacking airplanes and flying them into buildings, had instead spread themselves around the country, nineteen men with nineteen rifles in nineteen cars, each of them driving to a new spot every day and shooting random people at gas stations and schools and restaurants. Had the nineteen of them synchronized their actions, they would have effectively set off a nationwide time bomb every day. They would have been hard to catch, and even if one of them was caught, the other eighteen would carry on. The entire country would be brought to its knees.”
The point I wanted to make with this is this- the shooting could most likely fit under several definitions of terrorism, since it is widely defined and debated. The act itself however, does not invoke terror into the lives of every day people (as the D.C. shootings had). Or has it? I do not personally know anybody over there, and I could be wrong. But for the sake of this point, I will assume that they are not crippled and paralyzed with fear. It has most likely resulted in an initial shock of horror and disgust, as well as the expected fear one has when they are told the youth camp forty miles off their town has just experienced a massacre.
I believe it correct to assume this to be a massacre by a madman, and until further information or actions reveal what they may, I feel this conclusion satisfactory.
(And are there any terrorist acts not committed by madmen? I do feel like this instance is actually very close to both definitions, just that with the known information I have reached my conclusion)
Nal,
Thanks for the enlightening stats!
This just in:
Norway bomb suspect bought 6 tons of fertilizer
By BJOERN H. AMLAND – Associated Press,LOUISE NORDSTROM – Associated Press
http://news.yahoo.com/norway-bomb-suspect-bought-6-tons-fertilizer-124405264.html
Excerpt:
SUNDVOLLEN, Norway (AP) — The Norwegian man suspected in a bombing and shooting spree that killed at least 92 people bought six tons of fertilizer before the massacre, the supplier said Saturday as police investigated witness accounts of a second shooter.
From Glenn Greenwald: The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of “Terrorism”
One report says:
“The Swedish anti-racism magazine EXPO reports that Anders Behring Breivik has been a member of Nazi forum Nordisk since 2009.”
Link
Yeah, because muslim extremists have been responsible for so little terror related violence in the past decade, why would anyone ever suspect them in the latest terrorist-like attack?
From Fox News, How to Make Sense of What Happened In Oslo. posted yesterday before Anders Behring Breivik had been identified:
But we don’t want to speculate, do we?
Hilarious lack of self awareness.
I posted this on the Gang of Six thread earlier, but will re-post here. I got a note early this morning from someone who has a direct contact in Oslo. This is not word for word, but is a condensed paraphrase.
Word from Oslo, Norway now says the death toll in the mass murder is now 91. Unconfirmed as of yet, but based on what we know so far, the report is credible. Many of the youth campers tried to get away from the gunman by swimming from the island to shore, a dangerous swim, especially if fully clothed. Some are believed drowned. He stalked the campers as they tried to flee, killing them execution style. Wounded survivors said they escaped being killed by playing dead.
It is still not known if Anders Behring Breivik had accomplices, or if he acted alone. Police and news reporters investigating his background have tied him to the right-wing ultra-conservative movement whose cause is xenophobia and antisemitism.
I’m going to post this here also,I put it on this thread”You Got To Know When To Hold(er) ‘Em
Published 1, July 22, 2011 Criminal law , International , Justice , Politics 4 Comments
Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger”
But I think it will work here also:
Cover Story — July / August 2011
News for the World
A proposal for a globalized era: an American World Service
By Lee C. Bollinger
I would be surprised if in future decades, people did not say that the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first was the period in which the shape of the modern world was determined, and that two primary forces did most of the shaping: the spread of capitalism and free market economies, and the invention of new technologies of communication.
http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/news_for_the_world.php
Fox News just reported on the bombing/shooting. They mentioned Brievik and his links to “right-wing extremism,” “christian-fundamentalism,” and “anti-muslim” views. So much for all that nutty speculation.
It is relatively pointless to look at Fox News and conservatives and see how they spin things and delude themselves UNLESS you’re willing to look at your own behaviors and thought processes.
When do you “other” or “demonize” people as a shortcut?
What do you say when people question fluoridation, or global climate change?
When men complain of biases in the courts?
When a Strauss Kahn is arrested?
What do you say? What do you do?
Before Obama was elected, did you ever say that his liberal critics were probably racist? If so, do you criticize Obama now?
Telling me of Fox News is old and boring. Telling me how other people are horrible is valueless.
I know about Fox News. I don’t need to read another blog post here or at Kos telling me what scum they are.
AY:
BINGO!!
If the event in Norway had been caused by a Muslim, would Fox News classify it as a terrorist attack instead of a massacre by a madman?
Excellent points….I think OS made the same last night…