On the ideology of Anders Breivik
Posted on Thursday 28 July, 2011
Filed Under International
St Petersburg: IF MY experience of the time it takes to read a 1,500 page book is typical, not one of the myriad opinion pieces so far penned on the ideology of Anders Breivik can possibly be based on close textual study of the ideas advanced in his now notorious manifesto.
As the rush to blame Islamists for last Friday’s atrocities in Oslo underlines, it is always wise to regard instant punditry as at best preliminary judgement, offered only until a considered opinion can be reached.
With that qualifier out of the way, I have skimmed ‘2083: a European Declaration of Independence’, and my first impression is of a document lacking any intellectual concision whatsoever. Names – including those of eminent liberal and even leftist thinkers – are dropped widely, but in a way that suggests only cursory familiarity with their thought.
Some rightist commentators use Breivik’s nods to Locke, Burke, Mill, Gandhi and Orwell to insist that he could hardly have been influenced by any of the key themes of contemporary rightist discourse. Sorry, but that contention doesn’t quite stack up.
The available précis suggests that the substantive content is based on popular reactionary arguments that regularly find their way into the pages of Britain’s large circulation conservative newspapers, of which he appears to have been an avid reader.
It is these opinion columns deprecating ‘cultural Marxism’, ‘political correctness gone mad’, ‘the EUSSR’, and ‘the Islamisation of Europe’ that provided Breivik with the raw material that enabled him to form what passes for a worldview.
This has led some leftie bloggers to assert that moral responsibility can be traced back to original purveyors of these positions, in the same way they held Sarah Palin responsible for Jared Loughner. That would be a mistake, too. It surely wasn’t Melanie Phillips’ finger on the trigger at Utøya.
It would be doubly wrong to move on to call for the suppression of wrong-headed ideas falling short of direct incitement to violence, simply because of the risk that they might prove inspirational to the cracked.
In any case, Breivik could just have easily latched on to some other set of syncretisms by way of his search for a theoretical basis. Relatively recent history alone provides examples of leftist and religious terrorism, too.
Plenty of gunmen who go postal – to use a US vernacularism that originated from just such a mass shooting – are strictly apolitical. In that sense, the ideology at work is pretty much incidental.
Unfortunately we have to face the truth that no measures can guarantee against future slaughters of this kind. By all means monitor internet discussion boards, and double check on guys who order fertiliser by the tonne. And then keep your fingers crossed, because after that, you are on your own.
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121 Responses to “On the ideology of Anders Breivik”
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Jelly,
So you spend most of the day watching bumpits clips on youtube, now I get it.
“Monsieur Jelly est formidable” is, of course, Will Rubbish. He litters this, and other blogs, with obscenities and vile, but obviously empty, threats of violence. He also has an irrational love of Christopher Hitchens.
Sometimes he says something worthwhile, stopped clock and all that. One day somebody will take him seriously and he will be in pain. What a prick.
slobby fudge is sooooo very boring. he never did get back to reply jimbO above either. also a proven liar and thick beyond repair.
So Monsieur Jelly is really Mr W Rubbish – http://www.flickr.com/photos/whimsicalrubbish/1403840917/ – and has been “outed” by Lobby Ludd.
Tells you all you need to know about blog commenting.
Aye – He’s probably been looking in the BT phonebook for people called Rubbish in Newcastle. The thick fuckking tosser.
One of vilest responses was from our former mucker, Bob Pitt.
http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/bob-pitt-rappel-a-lordre/
But Pitt’s website is so cuddly and wuddly, for an obsessive monument like.
Boleyn Ali, your photo of Monsieur Jelly is obviously more recent than mine.
A. Coates. So Pitt was ex WRP. I was briefly associated with that mob during the early seventies in Glasgow. They wanted then to put everybody against the wall and shoot them. Once they got their claws in they would not let go. They offered to get me a sick line so I could attend that Marxist college where the live rounds were allegedly found. I had to eventually tell them to fuck off. It is no surprise they invent this islamaphobia crap. If anything thay were good at making up slogans.
fuck off glesga. yoo are is A TOSSER
“One of vilest responses” really? Compared to tossers like you who think that Nick Cohen’s demonisation of the Left is the best thing since sliced fucking bread?
[I can’t even be bothered to get into the whingeing of those who attack over and over Islam-tolerant political forces, and then complain when someone suggests that condemning those on the same end of that spectrum as Breivik might like to enjoy a little payback.
You can be an excellent socialist at times, but this self-pity is unbecoming.
Jelly Baby. Such a shame our paths will never cross.
Skid
Nick Choen is a self serving journo who occasionally, but more likely accidentally, is right. When he is it is more than likely that it is as a result of the work of others. On the whole a bit like a burnt and intractable cottage loaf.
wwee needd a gust poost from onne of the bllerrrg comommeteyrers.
Is that pdgy, bearded, middleaged loon on the flickr site an accurate representation of Mr Rubbish? Only asking like.
swerEr rat shuD noT caLL EnyoNE a LO0n . that is the law.
Has Oslerrrgh GIve N Up Hon BLOGG and gOn to TWiTTerrr, the SplittER
shiTTskIdderZZ wotches dallAs and thinks it is a dokumentarryey about the oiyil Industry. and that,
i hadd a goe of that twaitter but gave it all up. i t was fucll off cuernTS talking shit. are yoo now or have youu ever been a twittererr?
I’m a bit late to this thread, and one of the 116 comments may well say the same, but doesn’t publishing the 1500+ page manifiesto as a PDF mean that instant comment pundits can use the search function to pick out the bits they like – skipping the boring bits about hiring mining engineers etc – and comment accordingly?
nowh idea what yoo are on abowt