Saturday, July 23, 2011

The Oslo Terror Attack Arrest

My first reaction is utter shock: a Norwegian anti-Islamic nationalist did this?  This had all the fingerprints of something from al-Qaeda, right down to simultaneous attacks, and an Islamic group claimed credit for it.

But it does seem plausible that this guy was the equivalent of Timothy McVeigh.

I do think it will be interesting to watch how leftists who make excuses for Islamic terrorists (being victims and all that) will make no such excuses for this guy.

UPDATE: It appears that of the 90+ deaths so far, at least 85 of them were done by Breivik shooting. I am guessing that Norway is going to go down the same path on gun control that Britain has.  This account from the Los Angeles Times is quite worrisome:
Police are focusing on a darker side. Though they said Breivik had no criminal record, they described him as a "right-wing Christian fundamentalist."
Murdering dozens of defenseless, begging teenagers?  Either the police are not accurately describing Breivik, or he missed something along the way.

UPDATE 2: The more I look at this, the more it makes me wonder if he is going to pass a sanity check.  He has apparently confessed, and he is clearly a very smart but evil guy: dressing in a police uniform to get people close enough to commit mass murder shows intelligence--but the nature of this crime is certainly going to discredit those Norwegians who are concerned about multicultural and Islamic immigration.  I am not sure what he could have done to make his ideas less appealing.  His description of himself as:

Justiciar Knight Commander for Knights Templar Europe and one of several leaders of the National and pan-European Patriotic Resistance Movement

certainly sounds wacky enough.

Yet his manifesto (1500 pages long) is here. I have not read terribly far into it, but several things strike me about it:

1. It is pretty well-written, considered this guy's native language isn't English:

The US’s founders recognised three primal values in the Declaration of Independence, and they ranked them properly: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If the order of these fundamental human rights is switched – with happiness before liberty or liberty before life – we come to moral chaos and social anarchy.

This very condition is what Judge Robert Bork describes as “modern liberalism.” He defines its characteristics as “‘radical egalitarianism’ (equality of outcomes rather than of opportunities) and ‘radical individualism’ (the drastic reduction of limits to personal gratification).”

Judge Bork also identifies radical feminism as “the most destructive and fanatical” element of this modern liberalism. He further describes radical feminism as “totalitarian in spirit.”



2. His analysis of the methods of Gramsci and the Frankfurt School are, within my level of knowledge, accurate.  He seems to have a good grasp of the methods by which the left has accomplished its goals of destroying Western Civilization, and appears to be well read on the subject:

The most readable English-language history of the Frankfurt School is Martin Jay’s book, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research, 1932 - 1950 (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1973 – new edition in 1996). This book is in print in paperback and can be ordered through any bookstore. The reader should be aware that Jay’s book is, in the words of another work on the Frankfurt School, a “semiofficial” history, which is to say that it is largely uncritical. Like virtually all other English-language authors on the Institute, Jay is on the political left. Nonetheless, the book provides a solid factual introduction to the Frankfurt School, and the reader should have little trouble discerning in it the roots and origins of today’s Political Correctness.


3. It doesn't sound crazy.  He is saying things that are apparent to lots of people who would never think of doing a crime this horrendous.

And yet mowing down dozens of teenagers is about as shocking as it gets.  He has managed to take what might have been a worthwhile document (although in desperate need of editing for length) and made it completely vile by his actions.

14 comments:

  1. This is a terrible event and a wake up call for Norway. It will be interesting to see how they handle it.

    Certainly the suspect can have no legitimate or rational justification for these actions (by any measure of human moral standards including J.S. Mill who he was apparently fond of).

    I am still trying to digest the early reports (which of course could be wrong), but I am leaning towards this guy being part of the segment in Norway that is feeling economic and social pressures caused by the government's promotion of Muslim immigration (which is creating tremendous problems and pressures in Norway).

    I am 1/4 Norwegian by ancestry (maternal grandmother born in Norway over 100 years ago) so have some personal emotions about this event. But I also don't understand the craziness of the left in Norway (I guess I'm too American) and their actions that exasperate things.

    McVeigh murdered a bunch of innocents including children because of the incompetent b*tch Janet Reno and her leadership of the Waco fiasco and now apparently this guy has done similar because of Muslim immigration. Why didn't McVeigh kill Reno and this guy go after the Norge PM instead? Not saying I condone that, but it would certainly have made a lot more sense than killing innocents including children!

    I fear Norway will do all the wrong things in response to this event (i.e. just as here in the US not see the wrongs they are committing against their citizens in the name of their political and social agendas).

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  2. Yet another example of a nutcase targeting unarmed victims. Will Norway follow England? Or will they do the right thing and let their people have the ability to defend themselves?

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  3. It appears parts of his manifesto were cribbed from the Unabomber's. See here for some examples. Perhaps like Kaczynski he was a relatively functional madman.

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  4. One of the difficulties is that schizophrenia disproportionately affects geniuses, like my older brother. That makes the social costs extraordinary.

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  5. Clayton, Thin line between insanity and genius I guess...

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  6. Regarding the author's ability in English when his native tongue is Norsk. Norwegians learn English and like many from the "European" world put us to shame in that respect (skill in their native tongue and English while we struggle just doing English...)

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  7. This may not be Norway's Timothy McVeigh; it may be Norway's Marinus van der Lubbe.
    The question is, who benefits?

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  8. I have zero trust in what the media tells us about this guy.

    I'll wait to see if something different comes out.

    Norwegian; born, raised, and living in Norway; Christian fundamentalist. One of those doesn't belong.

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  9. I am skeptical as well, but there has been a vigorous fundamentalist missionary outreach in Scandinavia in the last couple of decades, since the Lutheran Church was busily lapsing into irrelevance anyway, and kooks sometimes develop curious religious obsessions.

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  10. This whole "Breivik was a Christian Fundamentalist" was started by the MSM for many reasons, one of which, I think, is that is seems to "even the score" with 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Mumbai, and so on. But in Breivik's own words:

    "If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform."

    This is all there is to his "Christian Fundamentalism".

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  11. AnyLoudCry: can you give me a source for that statement by Breivik?

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  12. I took it directly from the Manifesto, page 1307. You can find it here:

    http://www.kevinislaughter.com/wp-content/uploads/2083+-+A+European+Declaration+of+Independence.pdf

    Of course, the usual caveats apply, as they do in all things linked to this case so early in the game. Would it be surprising, after all, to find that this manefesto is a forgery? But my point is that, so far, the idea of Christian Fundamentalism was injected into the case by the MSM.

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  13. AnyLoudCry,

    Passed on by the MSM, but aren't they just quoting some Norwegian official? (Not that it makes the claim any more accurate, but let's give the credit for demagoguery where it's due...)

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  14. Yes, "passed on" is probably better. But wouldn't it be nice if some investigative reporters actually investigated a few things?

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