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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not sure about the electoral geography but the Boston and Skegness seat ‘only’ had a 5% BNP and 9% UKIP vote in May 2010
And the 35% of population who did vote for Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates in 2010 must include at least some civilised people who are unlucky enough to live in Boston.
So I’d still doubt the claim that 100% of the inhabitants are knuckle-dragging inbred racists – 50% for sure, 75% maybe and 90% just possibly – but there must be a few righteous souls dotted around.
Of course that was 35% of the voters – or say 20% of the electorate or a bit over 15% of the population
‘Dr’ Paul – are you really a doctor? – are you suggesting that the struggles of the people of Kosovo, or Bosnia-Herzegovnia, should be understood *primarily* as struggles by al Qaida?
SR, ‘Martin does not grasp the fact that indigenes have to work too in order to earn money to pay their bills and buy food. Sorry. Actually, I think this highlights a problem with their politics’
Sorry SR, had to stop and read that a few times before I could actually believe you said it. Still distrusting my eyes after 3 or 4 times. Replying now I really want to be charitable and assume you are yet again just taking the piss for it’s own sake. Rather than that being a serious comment.
If it is a serious comment SR your politics really worry me. Actually it’s stupidity is not really worth a reply. But as I said I am feeling generous.
Am I to take it then you condone and forgive working people (Indigenes – fuck, you must move away from Orwell now and then you know) any and all base racism in defence of their fight for their one crust.
Of course Capitalisms divide and rule is at the heart of it. Racism is as much a part of the profit as the bloody dividend. Just witness it’s sickening and violent rise in Russia after 89. Capitalism = Racism. I first clicked on that about 35 years ago. How about you? Of course Xenophobia can be the first and dumbest explanation in our search for answers to no jobs, housing etc. But evidently, unlike you, I hope we can all soon see beyond it.
Christ knows where your politics are but I am pleased I am this side of the wardrobe when it comes to your ‘Make Believe Narnia’. Fabricating an entire political agenda on someone you do not know, have never met, and never will do. Thank God. Beginning to think that you are the ‘Daily Mail decoy’ here and not Glesga.
Socialism. I do know what it means. Not tearing the shit out of each other so the ‘real enemy’, Capital, wins every time. How about you?
http://richardjacksonterrorismblog.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/a-letter-to-the-norwegian-government-following-the-oslo-terrorist-attacks/
Martin. We have had a friendly banter. But please do no mention the Daily Mail and me as maybe co conspirators. But carry on I am not offended.
Thanks for confirming what I thought about you Martin, with that letter from Professor Jackson. Not really Marxist is he? I must say, I do miss Boffy, at least he knew what he was writing about and had spent years in the movement. Still, he had the advantage of age.
Prof Jackson ignores the fact that islamic countries are not world leaders in democracy of any hue, the iron fist of the Beloved Ruler is their usual mode of government. Can you, Martin, name any ‘Christian’ Dictatorship (since the European Middle Ages.)? Germany, Russia don’t count.
“Thanks for confirming what I thought about you Martin, with that letter from Professor Jackson. Not really Marxist is he?”
Since when have Marxists only been interested in what Marxists have to say?
“Can you, Martin, name any ‘Christian’ Dictatorship (since the European Middle Ages.)? ”
About as unMarxist a question as you can get I would imagine!
Martin,
Piss taking for its own sake was the correct answer I reckon.
I also don’t know of any ‘JudeoChristian’ government that sponsors irregular warfare commonly known as terrorism. If the USA wants to use ‘insurgents’ (or ‘intranssigents’ as I call them), it doesn’t phone up the armed wing of the Church of the Latter Day Saints or the Holy Church of The Holy Spirit, (no, they are far too busy concentrating on their core business of extracting money from gullible and lonely fools), it rings up some branch of bearded tribesmen (some of who are neurosurgeons and have been educated at Yale)and asks them to do the business. Pakistan has based its domestic and foreign policy on such people. That’s another difference that Prof Jackson overlooks.
“Can you … name any ‘Christian’ Dictatorship (since the European Middle Ages.)? Russia and Germany don’t count”
Why does Germany (presumably *Nazi* Germany) not count?
http://nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm
“Can you, Martin, name any ‘Christian’ Dictatorship (since the European Middle Ages.)
Franco’s Spain? Dolfuss’s Austria? Salazar’s Portugal? Its not a hard one that, and there’s a few hundred thousand deaths in there if you bother to look.
No one has mentioned the Vatican Catholic Church and still up to their old games via Blair and Co since 350ad.
Jimmy old chap. If only you could stop defending New Labour you silly man. You know as well as we do they are co architects in this drive to take us back 60 years.
“Can you, Martin, name any ‘Christian’ Dictatorship (since the European Middle Ages.)
Christ you like your ice the thinner the better, do you not SR. Just trying to figure out what self destruct button in you skated on that silly pond. Thank you comrades. But it took me about 0.5 of a light second to conjure up the nightmare of Franco. The memory of thousands of comrades from the ‘International Brigade’ is not something we dismiss here. Is it SR?
On the hand however yet again all this internicine nonsense is so fucking depressing. We face the most vicious and inhumane attack from right wing capital. Yet all some of us can do is ‘Go boo-I am more Marxist than you’. Good for you SR. Pretty badge. Though not very good at it are you.
Personally I care little about the need for labels these days. Though I hope to god when we public sector strike in the autumn we can make it indefinite. I enjoy pork on a plane too. I have to confess to a weakness for ‘the enemy within’ badge though. Maybe we should make it ‘ Non-Indigene enemy within’. Loses something though. No fucking wonder Thatcher still wins nightly at the Casino.
Anybody who cannot read the funny and biting Richard Jackson link and not quickly latch on to the piss take really needs to look up ‘Piss Take’ or google it. To think some of us think we are the master of the art. Just how ironic can ironic get?
Bit depressing though what.
Martin Old fellah. History moves forward and could be a tad bit depressing for those on the end of political violence. We look on and can do fuck all about it while others take the spoils. I would like to have that magic wand. But I am only wee Jimmy fae Glesga.
Another of Breivik’s supposed sources of inspiration; William S. Lind, a contributor to ‘Counterpunch’:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/what-do-alexander-cockburn-and-the-norwegian-mass-murderer-have-in-common/
I think the guilt by association is being overplayed to be honest. Every writer who this guy ever cited is in the firing line, that is over the top imo. Much is played of his Zionism also, which I find totally opportunistic. The EDL are pro Zionist but we all know their default setting is anti semitic. Not the subtle anti Semitism that the sensibles see behind every pro Palestinian organisation but the knuckle dragging, your going home in an ambulance variety. The fact that Breivik may or may not be a pro Zionist is irrelevant to me.
What I think is relevant is the mainstream culture this guy was created from, a culture of racism and currently a fear of Muslims. This toxic sewer created by the likes of Phillips on one extreme and the sensibles on the other is what really creates monsters like Breivik. And this monster, if we ignore the extreme act, is a moderate, if eccentric, thinker. His views resonate with a majority of people, that is the uncomfortable truth.
Psychologists like to portary the man as mad, a lunatic, a egomaniac but with issues of self loathing. This may have its truth but the guy shouldn’t be compared to other mass killers like Hamilton in Dunblane, for example. Breivik dressed up as a cop and planned an attack on a political rally, this is more than the town centre rampage carried out by an alienated soul.
Deviation criticises “guilt by association” and then goes on to indulge in precisely that. As do the likes of Seamas Milne, Chris Bertrand and quite a few contributors to the sewer calling itself ‘Socialist Unity.’ What unites all these people is the absense of any serious evidence for their claims about “continuum”s and “epistemological climate”s, etc, etc.
The best-researched and most convincing study of Breivik’s influences that I’ve yet seen is this:
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/7/25/73510/6015/
Presumably a ‘Christian’ terrorist society would look be a large-scale Amish community. There is a lot of dispute as to Hitler’s Christianity, although I grant you that Germany was a Christian society. Franco, yeah, pretty damn Catholic, and a big friend of the Church, but was he aiming for theocratic rule? I don’t think so. There’s this little thing called ‘fascism’, has anyone heard of it? Interestingly, we know that fascists rule in favour of Capital, and if we want to compare fascists with Islamacists (on that level), then are we saying that they rule in the interests of Capital? I don’t think Salazar or Pinochet wanted to introduce theocratic rule either, although they used the Church as a means of social control.
Theodore Dalrymple was one of the people accused of stoking up this creature in Norway. He writes on his blog of his anxiety that he may have been some sort of catylast for this dreadful act. Many years previously, he had a patient (he is a psychatrist)who was fanatical about vegetariasm. This man continually threatened to take a gun into the local supermarket and kill the meateaters as they flocked around meat fridges. Dalrymple agonised over whether he should report this fellow to the police, and in the end did not. The man never did carry out the bloody acts he fantasied about, but what if he had? Would the psychiatrist have been responsible? Very difficult question, because there is no strict causality between fantasing aloud and acting. Many people go on for years dreaming of committing atrocities but never do them, that’s what makes counter-terrorism so difficult.
One overlooked fact is that Breivik was a user of anabolic steroids (as was Levi Bellfield). These are well-known to cause violent episodes and uncontrollable behaviour. While hardly arguing that that is the whole cause, because obviously this dreadful crime did not take place in a vacuum, it also suggests another possible source.
Denham,
I criticise taking the guilt by association to a ridiculous extreme. We will be burning the books he read next.
What does seem reasonable is to look at society in general and ask how someone like Breivik can arrive at his far right views. Now every journey is an individual journey, no doubt particular moments in this mans life influenced his choosen path. However, the far right always feed off the mainstream. Always have and always will. The ‘mainstream’ is Islamophobic, anti immigrant etc.
Deviation. Who or what influenced the socialists Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to wipe out millions of innocents. What makes Syrian tank commanders lob shells into crowds of civilians! The blame game blaming people with an opinion like Melanie Philips is just ridiculous. Some socialists have lost the plot. Some were rubbing their hands in glee when they thought the IRA had got Thatcher. Breivik has a screw loose somewhere in his head.
“Who or what influenced the socialists Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to wipe out millions of innocents.”
idiot. thick scum as well. Philosophical cretin. Arsehole. BleerggHH Commnatytror.
I could spend all day listing the logical fallacies contained in the last few posts (exception for Mr Denham’s and for M Jelly who is operating on a different plane altogether)
Do any of you actually read what you have written before hitting submit?
so much fuckking bollox around today. the thing is …you’d think that Marx’s Capital is some kind of treatise on commodity fetishism and other *cultural phenomena*.
Currently you could also get the impression that it’s some kind of counselling book on how to run a nicer and better capitalism…
The Trots love terrorists, just so long as they are Catholic/anti-British, or Muslim.
wood love to kill brennann
Gotta love the Trots, eh. Such a roaring success.
The Trots in general are a confused bunch. Some between Catholicism and Marxism. Some of the iodiots actually argue they can be both. Kind of Trotskyists that have never read Trotsky.
Old fellah Jimmy, ‘We look on and can do fuck all about it while others take the spoils’ just about explains New Labour’s complicity and political philosophy (I am being generous) We obviously cannot beat the grasping crooks so just let’s bloody join the bastards.
It’s depressing yes. But not a fraction as depressing as some of the opposition here supposedly fighting our corner.
‘There’s this little thing called ‘fascism’, has anyone heard of it? Interestingly, we know that fascists rule in favour of Capital, and if we want to compare fascists with Islamacists (on that level), then are we saying that they rule in the interests of Capital?’
Yes of course they do you fucking toss pot. (Term of affection, honest – my patience never was good). Every ruling elite in humanity, be it spiritual/religious, secular, agrarian or so called Socialist has so far come down in the end to serving the ‘Capital Master’. Be the bastard the owner of a brick yard in ancient Persepolis or born into the Murdoch Clan.
Where the hell do you think Religion came from? God?
Wondering if you are American SR. You cannot do irony can you? The Vatican worldwide turns in profits unimaginable even now to many UK large businesses. Because it remains itself absolutely fascist. Both a slave and innovation to the Bastards. The Vatican was the first to sign a ‘Concordat’ with Hitler, after that is, dear old Blighty signing the first naval treaty
If the one supreme god, the one supreme profit (spelling intended), the one supreme leader, the one supreme church is not fascist (or the one Capitalist brand) – tell me what is? It also happens to be something nearly all religions share. In some cases the more Gods the more the profit for some.
Capital/Religion needs stupid wishful ignorance just as they need markets.
The business case for the bastards just gets better by the day. So let’s fuck the business case can we? Please.
Martin. I could have written that in response to you. Let us two old fuds go doon the pub and leave it to the youngsters. No point in being angry when the koffin is beckoning.
To be clear, I think it likely that there could well be a link between the growth of a new strand of racist ideology, the rise of repellent anti-Muslim groups in Europe like the EDL and Breivik’s sickening actions. But I also think that none of the anti-warriors known to me—least of all the foolish narcissist Bertram or his sinister, more literate twin, Lord Milne—have shown themselves anywhere near capable of conducting such difficult empirical investigation in a disinterested and therefore genuinely informative way.
If they were honest, they might also be interested in a similar study into the relationship of the continuum of anti-war propaganda, the ways in which some of this chimed with and potentially reinforced the crude anti-Western message of the Islamists and the outcome of the 7/7 bombings.
Neither do they seem much interested in the way that some of their propaganda narrative—which I associate in particular with Milne—mimics the perspective of the BNP and the Islamists in portraying violent Islamists and Muslims as one and the same—thus perhaps themselves inadvertently feeding into the anti-Muslim racism that formed the political climate in which Breivik’s vicious phantasms were able to bloom.
In fact, all that they appear to be interested in—as they have been for getting on for a decade now—is to stifle legitimate political criticism of the Islamists and to get in one more smear on people who, on this issue, have simply committed the crime of being a little to their left.
Dave2 says
“If they were honest, they might also be interested in a similar study into the relationship of the continuum of anti-war propaganda, the ways in which some of this chimed with and potentially reinforced the crude anti-Western message of the Islamists and the outcome of the 7/7 bombings.”
How desperate can the sensibles get? The West commit mass murder in the Middle East and expect no reaction at all. This comment directly and crudely equates the far right racist ideology and the anti war movement, classic sensiblism. And you wonder why we attack you! Dave2 says the anti war movement are a reason the terrorist actions take place and equates this with the far right feeding off the mainstream racism. What a total crock of unsubstantiated shit. It cannot be contested that the far right feed off the mainstream and get strength from it.
The Mainstream is racist against Muslims, get out into the real world to see the level of racism against Muslims. It is scary and this is a country that has yet to embrace fascism in a political sense. The mainstream doesn’t care about subtle refinement and the average racist does not have the discerning nature that ‘we’ would wish for. You simply have to tread carefully around these issues and sensibles have never done that. They have actually become the cheerleaders and ideological propagandists for the war of ‘civilisations’ and no group has been so steadfast in serving the ruling elite. Sensibles have been all too accommodating to the “they want to impose Sharia law on us” brigade. The sensibles have been all too defensive about ‘bourgeois democracy’, which any socialist worth his salt wishes to see the back of.
The likes of Breivik feed off this mainstream; if you ever debate with these far rightists they will tell you themselves that socialists are out of touch with people and they reflect what people think. And you know what they are right about that.
Now the main reason for that is the bile put out by the gutter press but sensibles have played their part.
Th greatest danger in Europe is from left wing and Islamic terrorism, as evinced by the riots and murders in Greece. Strange that so many are silent on this subject, preferring the mythical right wing British terrorist.
hurry up OstLer and get another post up – we need another blank white space opportunity for electronic scrawl to present itself to all and sundry (i.e. cun~TS).
To repeat. I would gladly kill BrennaN. in a horrible fashion
One wise man ends up no wiser than the millions of people who drag him down to their level, to which he has to stoop to be effective.
Lenin had more self-consciousness about what he was up against than most, but the fact is his consciousness had to be limited as well as his scope of action, or he could not have functioned as the leader of a party, mass movement, revolution, or head of state.
“One wise man ends up no wiser than the millions of people who drag him down to their level, to which he has to stoop to be effective.”
Rubbish Jelly. History is littered with men who have stood against the tide. Gallileo was wise beyond his age for example. What can be a deviation today becomes accepted wisdom tomorrow.
“hurry up OstLer and get another post up”
At last some sense!
Hey, why would you wish me dead? I am not British, nor am I Northern Irish prod??prey tell.
Deviation. At least some on this site have a sense of humour unlike Pope Newman over on that pretend socialist site.
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=8382#comment-394081
Sorry Jimmy the link does not seem to work. Just assuming as I access it it’s being monitored and slowed by MI5/MI6 and their now redundant chums in the NotW. Lots of time on their hands. As I imagine SU poses no threat whatsoever to the British State, just like this place, it’s highly likely they monitor it. That explains 7/7. Maybe somebody foolishly typed in ‘anarchist’ there.
Will you drop this crap about age you old cretin. It’s now against the law you know. As for the pub? I can still drink and have a fag here thanks. Also against the law soon, even in the Street.
Lenin hated smoking apparently. God knows how that affected his judgement and rants. Maybe it was being stuffed into a tiny room in the Smolny Institute, in a chain smoking Sovnarkum, that caused his ‘Red Terror’. How many past smoke filled rooms have just put that down to his admiration for Robespierre? Nah. More to it me thinks.
stupID Yanks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JWNRjy98VY
Bumpits voluminising hair inserts…I wonder ‘is that what they’re made of, or where they’re supposed to go?’
Thanks for the tip M Jelly. I’ve ordered six, just what I need to go with my new frock. Big Hair. Love it.
Divvi from the MooN probably thinks that yooYUUBE clip is a documentary. or sumfink.
Were they recommended by Voltaire’s Priest?
they didn’t fuckking werk for him if he did
http://www.gifsoup.com/view/2208156/chrome-dome-heed.html
always werth looking at
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=street_of_shame&
“Here was a reporter who refused to pander to his readers’ prejudices at the same time his indiscreet and densely (historically and literarily) allusive prose seemed to put a pleasingly high estimate on one’s intelligence. Here, crucially, was an avowedly left-wing writer who regarded it as no part of his job to accept or purvey bullshit from “our side,” heeding instead Trotsky’s view that the “professional ethics of a correspondent” are best summed up in two words: “Don’t lie!””
http://www.thenation.com/article/38011/changing-places?page=0,2
you shud read it OstleR – it is about your secret fetish and person you would love to emulate – but obviously don’t have talent enuff to do so.
http://youtu.be/zr-gkMxCrF8