Terrorism is a method. It is not an ideology, or a movement, or a disembodied force on which war can somehow be waged (as per President Bush’s “war on terror”). It is a means, a tactic to achieve objectives which can be of various kinds.

What is the method of terrorism? The use of systematic violence in order to create public fear.

It has been mainly used to attain political objectives (eg. Fatah, Hamas, IRA), religious objectives (eg. the Inquisition, the Salem witch-hunters), commercial objectives (the Mafia), and in modern times the personal objective of self-expression with idealistic pretexts (eg. Ulrike Meinhof, Che Guevara, Bernadine Dohrn, Anders Breivik).

The victims are usually targeted randomly. The deaths and injuries are as atrocious as the terrorist can make them. Randomly chosen victims, whoever and whatever they are, are always innocent in the context of the attack.

There is no actual or conceivable justification for the use of terrorism. It is evil, no matter why it is used and even if it achieves a desirable end.

Acts of terrorism are distinguishable from acts of war. It can be used within the context of war (eg. executions carried out on civilians by invaders as a warning to the invaded).

Communist regimes are terroristic by nature. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were terrorists, Castro and Kim Jong Il are terrorists.

All autocracies, such as those of Gaddafi of Libya and Assad of Syria, are terroristic. So are the mullahs who rule Iran.

Is there a test which can be applied to an act of violence (outside of war or democratic law enforcement) to determine whether it is terroristic? Not always, but broadly, yes. If the act makes most people feel less afraid – as when a tyrant is assassinated – then it is not. But , admittedly, examples can be thought of where the distinction is hard to make.

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Here is an opinion of the Breivik massacre that is worth thinking about, bearing in mind that the use of terrorism is never justifiable.

Debbie Schlussel writes:

The Norwegian newspaper pictures from the “political youth camp” at Utoya Island, Norway – the day before terrorist Anders Behring Breivik attacked it – say it all. The boycott sign is obvious, and the other pic is a game, re-enacting of the HAMAS flotilla in which terrorists tried to murder Israeli soldiers (complete with Palestinian flags and Norwegian kids’ smiles). These kids who were killed by a terrorist . . . well, they sided with Islamic terrorists.  … The man in the pic happily encountering the boycott sign is Norway’s Foreign Minister Gahre-Store, who went on to praise Palestinian terrorists and condemn Israel.

“Victims” or Perpetrators?: Norwegian HAMASniks Join Norway Foreign Minister @ Utoya Island Camp

Funny how Glenn Beck has come under attack for comparing the camp to a Hitler Youth camp. Based on these pics, seems like he’s spot on, though he should have added, HAMAS Youth camp, too. As we all know, Nazis boycotted Jews and were Jew-killers. And these hateful, privileged brats at the camp boycotted Jews and sided with Jew-killers. I don’t condone violent massacres on innocent civilians, and I condemn what Breivik did. He is a terrorist just like the 9/11 hijackers, Hezbollah, HAMAS, and Nidal Malik Hasan. But what goes around comes around. You support terrorists against innocent civilians in Israel, then you get attacked by terrorists who are upset with your support.

For me, this is like Alien v. Predator. I’m not sad for either side. And I make no apologies for it. Now these kids’ families know what it feels like to be victims of the Islamic terrorists whose Judenrein boycotts and terrorist flotillas against Israel they support. We don’t live in a vacuum. I can’t feel sorry for those who support my would-be assassins. And I don’t get too upset when they face the karma that is their fate. HAMAS isn’t just against Israel, it’s against all Jews . . . and all Christians. Just ask the Christians who’ve had to flee Gaza for their lives. And read the HAMAS charter. I’ll bet that’s something these spoiled airheaded kids with their Boycott Israel signs and HAMAS flotilla re-enactment games never did.

Frankly, the HAMAS charter and HAMAS’ behavior, all of which these kids at the Norwegian HAMAS youth camp cheered on, is a lot more scary than the screed and deeds of Breivik.

My late grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, never shed a tear for dead Nazis. My late father, a Vietnam era Army veteran, never shed a tear for those who supported the killing of Americans and Jews. And I shed no tears for these HAMASnik campers with a Scandinavian dialect. Perpetrators are not victims. Sorry. HAMAS collaborators don’t get my pity. They never will.

The Norwegian ambassador to Israel fails to understand that the method of terrorism is wrong whenever, wherever, and by whomever it is used. He opined that it was good when used by Hamas on Israelis, bad when used by Breivik on Norwegians. Debbie Schlussel is not making the same mistake in reverse by condemning Hamas and excusing Breivik. She condemns Breivik’s act. But the act of terrorism in this case does not appall her as it appalls us. Most of the victims on Utoya Island were young. Their opinions were hand-me-downs from their parents and teachers, not arrived at through experience and reason. Some of them would probably have come to a better understanding of political issues as they matured.

However, our sense of justice is outraged – and our sense of irony overwhelmed – by this statement on the massacre issued by Fatah, the other major Palestinian terrorist group:

It is with consternation that we have received the dramatic news of an awful terrorist attack against a summer camp ran by our comrades of Norwegian Labor Youth, AUF.

Fatah Youth declares its consternation about the terror attack. There are no words to describe an attack against people that have been our comrades in our struggle for freedom and independence. Very few people have stood by our side as much as the Norwegian people, and particularly our AUF comrades.

We know those who have been cowardly assassinated. Those are people that have stood for the human and national rights of the Palestinian people both in Europe and while visiting Palestine.

Fatah Youth has participated for almost 15 years in the same summer camp and our youth has benefited by learning and sharing experiences on democracy and advocacy for peace and justice.

We hope that those responsible for this criminal terror attack will be brought to justice. Such sick minds should not have a place in any society.

As a people that has been victim of state terror for the last 64 years, the Palestinian people and particularly Fatah Youth presents its condolences to the families of those killed and sends a strong message of support to our comrades from the Norwegian AUF as well as from other sister parties that were participating in this summer camp.

 

There may now be more Muslims in Europe than Christians. Not that most Europeans have converted to Islam – they’ve  just given up religion.

The Protestant countries of the north shrugged it off some time ago; the Catholic countries, mostly in the south, more recently.

Now Ireland is angrily repudiating the Catholic Church.

From the Telegraph:

The airwaves are full of bitter remarks supporting Taoiseach [Prime Minister] Enda Kenny’s attack on the “disgraceful” Vatican, and recommending every anti-church measure from the dissolution of the monasteries to the expulsion of the Papal Nuncio and the severing of all links with the Holy See. (The recall of the Papal Nuncio this week marks the lowest point of relations between Ireland and Rome.) …

The Taoiseach, meanwhile, has been met with standing ovations for his salvo against the Vatican for failing to respond with sufficient concern to the clerical sex abuse scandals as described in the Cloyne report.

His justice minister, Alan Shatter, is introducing a highly controversial Bill which will compel Irish priests to disclose the secrets of the confessional where paedophilia is mentioned: failure to do so could result in a five-year prison sentence. …

The breach with the Church has been a long time coming, and for the majority of Irish citizens it is welcome. …

There are now calls to remove the Catholic Church from every element of Irish public life, and this is supported by a growing secularist movement.

Contrary to supposition, though, state and Church in Ireland are already separate: the constitution, although it mentions God, makes no mention of the Catholic Church, specifically affirms that there may be no religious discrimination, and rules that no religion may be endowed by the state. However, there is a difference between state and culture: the state construes laws, but the culture draws on history, memory, family, folklore. Despite constitutional separation of Church and state, there remain religious traditions, such as the broadcast of the Angelus on national radio, the prayers that open Dail [Parliament] sittings, and the existence – even dominance – of faith-based schools, which secularists seek to abolish. …

Catholic Ireland … could become as secularist as France, with all allusion to the Almighty officially excised.

We would consider this a good thing if Muslims would follow the Christians’ example and become secularist. But Islam is spreading and its power is growing all over the continent and in Britain.

From the Mail Online:

Islamic extremists have launched a poster campaign across the UK proclaiming areas where Sharia law enforcement zones have been set up.

Communities have been bombarded with the posters, which read: ‘You are entering a Sharia-controlled zone – Islamic rules enforced.’

The bright yellow messages daubed on bus stops and street lamps have already been seen across certain boroughs in London and order that in the ‘zone’ there should be ‘no gambling’, ‘no music or concerts’, ‘no porn or prostitution’, ‘no drugs or smoking’ and ‘no alcohol’.

Hate preacher Anjem Choudary has claimed responsibility for the scheme, saying he plans to flood specific Muslim and non-Muslim communities around the UK and ‘put the seeds down for an Islamic Emirate in the long term’.

In the past week, dozens of streets in the London boroughs of Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets and Newham have been targeted, raising fears that local residents may be intimidated or threatened for flouting ‘Islamic rules’. Choudary, who runs the banned militant group Islam4UK, warned: “We now have hundreds if not thousands of people up and down the country willing to go out and patrol the streets for us and a print run of between 10,000 and 50,000 stickers ready for distribution. There are 25 areas around the country which the Government has earmarked as areas where violent extremism is a problem. We are going to go to all these same areas and implement our own Sharia-controlled zones. This is the best way for dealing with drunkenness and loutishness, prostitution and the sort of thug life attitude you get in British cities. … The Muslim community will not tolerate drugs, alcohol, pornography, gambling, usury, free mixing between the sexes – the fruits if you like of Western civilisation.” …

 

Seizing control: Activist Jamaal Uddin puts up one of the Sharia stickers in Leyton, in the East London borough of Waltham Forest

 

Drink outlawed: Uddin places his poster on a lamppost outside the now defunct Oliver Twist pub in a part of Leyton in London

The campaign comes just months after stickers proclaiming a ‘gay-free zone’ … appeared in Tower Hamlets.

Women in parts of East London including Tower Hamlets have been threatened with violence and even death by Islamic extremists if they did not wear headscarves.

“We’re living through a revolutionary moment, all over the world. The world we knew and believed we understood is gone, and we don’t know where we’re headed.”

So writes Michael Ledeen at PajamasMedia. His column gives rise to question after question in our minds:

The more I look at the Oslo massacre, the more I am struck by how archaic it all is. The killer fancies himself a noble defender of a Western world that no longer exists, and has not existed, really, since the First World War destroyed it. He is the sort of fascist who believes in the myth of a Golden Age that must be restored, and vaingloriously sees himself a member of the elite chosen by history to defend the mythical West.

So what is the nature of the West that exists now? Whatever it is, is it not under attack? And if it’s under attack, how should it be defended?

He [Breivik] fancies himself a warrior fighting against two mortal enemies: “Marxism” and “Islam.” He needn’t have bothered; they both died a long time ago.

Is there not a Marxist in the White House right now, and has not his ideology brought America to economic crisis and contributed to chaos in the world?

The first was effectively demolished in the Cold War with the defeat of the Soviet Empire. Yes, there are certainly Marxists around, and even communists, but there is no longer a worldwide mass movement challenging the West in the name of dialectical materialism. Their contemporary warriors are intellectuals, not workers, and they are more often masked as liberals or moderates than openly leftist revolutionaries. That’s because there is no market for revolutionary Marxism, as Van Jones can explain to you.

No link is given to any statement by Van Jones, the Maoist who was exposed as such and (therefore?) left his White House job as Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. Perhaps Ledeen means that his discharge demonstrates that Marxism “has no market”.

It’s true that most Reds are Green these days, but is it not still the same old egalitarian collectivist ideology that moves their emotional bowels?

The second, “Islam,” has been moribund for centuries. Virtually all the countries calling themselves “Islamic” are failed states whose citizens are starving, whose industries are generations behind those of the contemporary West, and whose most talented young people are mostly eager, even desperate, to live and work in infidel countries. Yes, there are certainly plenty of murderous jihadis around, but although they work very hard at killing us (typically often blowing themselves up instead, or setting their own underwear on fire), they are most effective against other Muslims. Even outside the “Muslim world” — as President Obama called it during his unfortunate address in Cairo in 2009 — the hard-core pro-jihad, let’s-create-a-new-caliphate crowd visits misery on correligionaries packed into ghettos and force fed a particularly nasty version of shariah.

What of the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt whose declared and practiced policy is to spread Islam world-wide, and the legitimization of that jihadist organization by Obama’s State Department now pursuing diplomatic relations with it?

And what of the growing power of Islam in Europe, with sharia recognized as a parallel legal system and the unchallenged acceptance of virtual Islamic states within the states?

Anders Breivik’s demons did not drive him to attack Muslims, although there may have been some among his victims; his targets were his own people, those he called “traitors” for betraying the mythical West to the mythical global forces of Islam and Marxism. Quite a bizarre tapestry: A fight to the death among and within three spent forces which had already died.

So there is no Islamic threat to the West? There is no Red-Green movement trying to establish world government? And no West to be threatened?

He goes on to acknowledge that all three “spent forces” still exist, still think of themselves as they once were, and fail to see the new realities in which they are struggling with ghosts.

This archaic mythology is not only Breivik’s; the Marxists and the radical Islamists embrace it just as avidly. The Marxists embrace the myth of class struggle in a Western world that is no longer capitalist and where there is no working class. The jihadis embrace the cause of holy war (no accident, the Marxists might say, that jihadis raced to take “credit” for the mayhem in the first hours) against a Western world described as Christian and Islamophobic. That, too, is an archaic remnant from a past long dead and buried, especially in Europe. The Old World is secular, and, certainly among its elites, more anti-Semitic and anti-Christian than anti-Muslim. Just look at the thoroughly disgusting remarks by the Norwegian ambassador to Israel AFTER the massacre, in which he showed greater “understanding” of Palestinians killing Jews than of a Norwegian massacring fellow countrymen.

The West no longer capitalist? In every Western country capitalism is grossly interfered with by socialist governments, but capitalism is still the only bread machine.

True the European West is no longer Christian, but it is increasingly Islamophobic, as it must be if Islamic terrorism and the jihad are working as intended. One should not judge the degree of Islamophobia by how many attacks are made on Muslims. Even mockery and criticism of Islam are restrained, because Islam’s campaign of intimidation has worked. Europe has been largely dhimmified, and that in itself is proof that Islam is feared.

Sure the Marxists long since abandoned the proletariat as their sentimental pretext for revolution, but they substituted the Third World, those more distant “victims” of capitalism, and of “colonialism” and “imperialism”. They still aim to impose their egalitarian and collectivist tyranny on the rest of us, and with the trumped-up panic of the environmental movement have come far too close to achieving their goal. The threat still hangs over us.

The new Norwegian ambassador to Israel did indeed imply that terrorism is not bad when used by Hamas against Israelis, only when it is used by Breivik against Norwegian leftists. He must be a rather stupid man.

It is thoroughly understandable, then, that some have responded to the Norwegian mass murder with myths of their own, beginning with the fable that Breivik is the tip of a very large iceberg, that includes not only deranged would-be killers but also writers and politicians. Thus they conjure up yet another phantasmagorical mass movement — a vast conspiracy with countless followers, some hidden, others public. There is no such movement. Yes, there are crazy people who think they are fighters in the great cataclysmic struggle of the days of the Last Judgment … But I doubt there are enough of them to feed more than a handful of Knights Templar, let alone a full-fledged political movement.

No argument there.

He concludes:

We’re living through a revolutionary moment, all over the world. The world we knew and believed we understood is gone, and we don’t know where we’re headed. No wonder chaos disrupts orderly thought, and mythology replaces common sense.

Are our thoughts so chaotic that we deceive ourselves when we think of Marxism (in its new green clothes) and Islam as real enemies?

Is it a myth that capitalism works, or that the individual freedom on which it depends is worth fighting for?

Are we so bewildered that we cannot apply common-sense lessons from the past to our present predicaments?

Even if Michael Ledeen is right and we are shadow-boxing in the dimness of a new inchoate world, what choice do we have but to battle the enemies we perceive, and cling to the certainties we imagine we possess?

Anders Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist, was prepared to co-opt not only neo-Nazi groups and professional criminal to assist his “crusade”, but also Islamic jihadists.

Daniel Greenfield writes:

Breivik viewed Muslims as the enemy, but only domestically. He emphasized that; “Knights Templar do not intend to persecute devout Muslims”.

And he contemplated collaborating with them on terrorist attacks against Europe. “An alliance with the Jihadists might prove beneficial to both parties… We both share one common goal.” The Caliphate was a useful enemy for his cause.

In Breivik’s own words, this is how such an arrangement would play out;

“They are asked to provide a biological compound manufactured by Muslim scientists in the Middle East. Hamas and several Jihadi groups have labs and they have the potential to provide such substances. Their problem is finding suitable martyrs who can pass ‘screenings’ in Western Europe. This is where we come in. We will smuggle it in to the EU and distribute it at a target of our choosing. We must give them assurances that we are not to harm any Muslims etc.” …

There might come a time when we, the PCCTS, the Knights Templar will consider to use or even to work as a proxy for the enemies of our enemies.

Under these circumstances, the PCCTS, Knights Templar will for the future consider working with the enemies of the EU/US hegemony such as Iran (South [sic] Korea is unlikely), al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab or the rest of the devout fractions of the Islamic Ummah with the intention for deployment of small nuclear, radiological, biological or chemical weapons in Western European capitals and other high priority locations.

Justiciar Knights and other European Christian martyrs can avoid the scrutiny normally reserved for individuals of Arab descent and we can ensure successful deployment and detonation in the location of our choice.”  …

He was a deluded man who imagined himself leading a takeover of Europe, even if he had to serve as a Muslim proxy to do it.

Investor’s Business Daily reports and comments:

What emerges from his rantings is less a religious zealot than a fame-seeking loser — a wannabe terrorist.

The motive of fame is probably the most common among all terrorists. If not the world-wide fame  which the young European terrorists of the 1960s and 1970s lusted for, at least acclamation as hero-martyrs in their own societies – as for instance among the Arabs of the Middle East – is a powerful lure.

He even seems enamored of jihadists, talking admiringly of their ability to organize “cells,” while describing his own planned attack as a “martyrdom operation.” …

He’s not the “farmer” first reported, but an effete bachelor who lived with his mother in her Oslo flat, where he spent much of his time playing violent video games. He liked to dress up in fancy uniforms and pretend he’s a Knight. He took steroids to gain muscle.

In short, he’s a loser who fantasizes about leading a “revolution.” Like many psychopaths, he’s desperate for attention. Fame may be his real motive.

He claimed in court (where he was denied wearing a uniform) that others like him were waiting to carry out similar attacks.

But that’s likely a bluff to draw more publicity, since his writings and actions indicate that he acted alone.

“Give the impression that your cell is larger by attempting to forward misinformation on the police band or by other means,” he wrote in his diary.

Though what he did in Oslo is large-scale terrorism of the most heinous and treacherous kind, Breivik appears, like McVeigh, to be a one-off threat.

The primary threat still comes from Islamic extremists, including homegrown jihadists. And statistically, the terrorist profile is still overwhelmingly Islamic.

As far as we can discover from our skimming of his book and our search of reports, Breivik has not given a moment’s thought to his victims as individuals, or to their families.

*

A vicious and mendacious attempt by the Left to use Breivik’s massacre to tar all those who oppose the Islamization of the West, proceeds with the massed drums and bells of media clamor in an ecstasy of Schadenfreude. (See, for example, the New York Times here.)

But with what success?

Here’s a link to a video in which an EDL (English Defence League) leader, Tommy Robinson, interviewed by one of the BBC’s most self-righteous and aggressive interviewers who wants to implicate him and the EDL in Breivik’s crime, condemns the mass murderer and violent action in general. He defends his organization from accusations of neo-Nazism, denying any connection with neo-Nazi individuals or groups.

Tommy Robinson’s English may be a little hard for many listeners to follow at times. But perseverance is rewarded. He speaks for the common man – not only of Britain but, we believe, of Europe and the West. The short drama could not have been better cast had a professional producer staged it. Tommy (the name generally bestowed on the British private soldier) speaking from the heart, versus snooty Jeremy Paxman, a typical BBC man, self-annointed member of the elite intelligentsia, notorious for his sneering manner. But Tommy will not be shouted down, and makes his points simply and fearlessly.

Please watch it.

The manifesto of Anders Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist (see our posts Nemesis comes to Norway, and Nemesis comes to Europe immediately below), can be found here.

It is a long pdf document titled A European Declaration of Independence. The author’s name – an obvious Anglicization of his own name – is given as Andrew Berwick; the place and date of posting online, London 2011.

It is clearly and for the most part correctly written. One would suppose he must have had help from someone whose first language is English, but he says, “It should be noted that English is my secondary language and due to certain security precautions I was unable to have the documents professionally edited and proof read. Needless to say, there is a potential for improving it literarily.” Chunks of it, with small variations, are copied from the writings of the Unabomber.

In most of the first two sections, reasonable arguments are set out chiefly against the Islamization of Europe, multiculturalism, Marxism, political correctness, leftist indoctrination in the universities, feminism, and what he calls “Enviro-Communism”. In support of his views he quotes or refers to many of the writers and authorities we respect, such as Bernard Lewis, Bat Ye’Or, Robert Spencer, Andrew Bostom, Bruce Bawer, Daniel Pipes, Diana West, Melanie Phillips, Theodore Dalrymple. He deplores as we do the influence that revolutionaries like Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukacs, and Marxist theorists such as Herbert Marcuse and his fellow members of the “Frankfurt School”, have had on the politics of the West over the last half century or so. The values Western leaders have failed, he says, to uphold are individual freedom, freedom of speech, democracy. Histories of Islam’s earlier advances into Europe, quotations from the Koran and accounts of Islamic belief are carefully referenced.

The reasonable arguments are interrupted now and then by flights of romantic fancy inspired by the poetry of Ted Hughes, Nordic legend, and the superman ethics of Friedrich Nietzsche. These foreshadow what becomes, in the third section, full-fledged fantasy. It is here that obsession shows itself. He revives in his imagination the crusading Order of the Knights Templar (destroyed by King Philip the Beautiful and brought to a fiery end in 1314, when the last officers of the order, including the Grand Master Jacques de Molay, were burnt at the stake as heretics on an island in the Seine). He declares himself to be a “Knight Justiciar”. He writes as if a considerable number of others, predominantly northern Europeans, share the fantasy with him; a company that will mount a violent crusade against the powers who have betrayed the ideals and achievements of Christian Europe. The crusade will become a civil war – a global civil war: “not  between capitalists and socialists, but between nationalists and internationalists”; and between Islam and the non-Islamic world.

He condemns Nazism, but is prepared to fight alongside neo-Nazi groups. Criminal organizations would also be co-opted. The manifesto becomes a handbook for terrorists. He specifies the buildings that should be bombed, including government buildings and mosques. He lists the chemicals needed for making bombs, advises how to acquire them (eg. by having a farm and buying fertilizer in large quantities as if for the land), and describes in detail how to make them.

He expresses regret that women must be killed as well as men, but insists that in pursuit of such a high task as the Knights have set themselves, soft feelings cannot be indulged.

He sees the role in which he is casting himself as heroic. He encourages others to become hero-martyrs like him:

You will forever be celebrated by your people as a martyr for your country, protecting your culture and fighting for your kin and for Christendom.

You will be remembered as a conservative revolutionary pioneer, one of the brave European Crusader heroes who said; enough is enough, it is time to take back our countries before our multiculturalist traitor elites actually manages to finalize their agenda and sell us all into Muslim slavery.

Your sacrifice will be a great source of inspiration for generations of Europeans to come.

You will become a role model for hundreds, perhaps thousands of new emerging martyrs fighting the good fight, our fight.

And when we seize political and military power in Europe within a few decades, it will be pioneers and historical pioneers like you who will be celebrated with reverence.

Revolutionary patriots like the Justiciar Knights will then be celebrated as destroyers of Marxism and the slayer of tyrants; the fearless and selfless protectors of Europe, The Perfect Knights.

For there is no greater glory than dying selflessly while pro-actively protecting your people from persecution and gradual demographical annihilation.

We are destined to win in the end, as our people, all Europeans, are gradually waking up from their slumber and realising the deceitfulness and suicidal nature of multiculturalist doctrine.

We do not only have the people on our side, we have the truth on our side, we have time on our side, we have the will of our ancestors and the will of God on our side.

The Left will almost certainly claim that Breivik’s atrocious acts of terrorism are what opposition to Islamization and multiculturalism et cetera lead to. They will probably use his manifesto as proof of a “vast right-wing conspiracy”.

The Obama administration likes to pretend that white middle class Americans are the most likely terrorists.

But the fact is that for the last 45 years, acts of terrorism carried out by leftists and Muslims vastly outnumber those carried out in the name of any cause of the “right”. And terrorism as a method has not been often or strongly condemned by the leftist intelligentsia.

It will be now. As of course it should be.

We’ll have more to say about Breivik, his manifesto, and the right and wrong  lessons to be learnt from his actions.

We are against terrorism whoever commits it. [I personally devoted some 20 years of my life to investigating terrorism, hunting terrorists, writing and publishing about terrorists and their appalling activities – JB]

A Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik has been arrested on the charge of killing dozens of people, 92 at the time of this writing: 85 of them shot while attending a Labor Party youth camp on Utoya Island, 7 killed by a bomb explosion in Oslo. [For later figures see foot of this post.] The shooting and bombing were acts of terrorism.

Breivik’s Facebook entries* reveal that he was trying to organize anti-Muslim action.

So these acts were carried out by an anti-Muslim terrorist, not by a Muslim. Islam is nevertheless the cause of what happened in Norway.

The point we made yesterday, that nemesis has come to Norway, is reinforced.

Breivik’s targets were not, it seems, Muslims themselves (unless incidentally), but those who, in the mind of the mass-murderer, were connected to the politicians responsible for admitting and privileging Muslims. The Labor Party,  in coalition with the Socialist Left Party and the Center Party, governs Norway at present.

Here’s an example of how Muslims have been privileged in Norway. According to a recent report, “all rapes” in Norway over the last five years were committed by Muslims, and the reaction of politicians to this shocking information was to tell Norwegian women they should adapt to Islamic custom by covering themselves as Muslim  women do.

Did they not think for one moment that such blatant injustice might make at least some of their citizens angry?

These are comments on the Telegraph report of the Norwegian terrorist attack:

I hope that the Labour Youth movement in Norway realize that if they flood their country with Moslems, they will seek to establish a caliphate and undermine freedom and democracy. Their attitude towards migration may appear enlightened humanism but it will erode everything that they and their ancestors hold dear.

Far right is on the rise in the whole of Europe and no one can do a thing about it.

The commenters imply that a backlash has started against Norway’s, and Europe’s, capitulation to Islam. We think they may well be right.

(See also the comments on our own article Nemesis comes to Norway, which are full of interesting points.)

When a few individuals, most notably Geert Wilders in Holland, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Austria, Jesper Langballe in Denmark**, offered peaceful and extremely necessary criticism of multiculturalism  – the policy that brought Islam into Europe and protected and privileged it – the reaction from the authorities was to bring them to trial for heresy.  That’s what it amounted to, whatever charges were specified. To do this was to go against the best tradition on which European greatness and power was built, at least since the Enlightenment: the Socratean idea of free intellectual examination in open debate.

European leaders lost sight of what tolerance means. In the name of tolerance they allowed the intolerance of Islam to prevail in whole towns and areas of their cities. To tolerate intolerance is to be intolerant. And that is what they’ve become.

They lost sight of what freedom means. They protected an ideology which names itself “submission” (the literal meaning of Islam) to deny freedom of speech to the indigenous peoples of Europe.

They lost sight of what “racism” means. In the name of “anti-racism” they permitted Muslims openly and stridently to express hatred and murderous intent against Jews.

They sowed the wind and they are reaping the whirlwind.

Too late some of them have nervously murmured the suggestion that maybe the policy of multiculturalism – meaning the admission of millions of Muslims into Europe – was not a good idea. New organizations are being formed (see here and here) in many European countries to oppose what they see as an invasion of their countries by Islam. Their opposition is all too likely to be murderous.

When emotion is strongly aroused in the political arena, and open debate is suppressed, there will be violence, there will be blood.

Perhaps even civil war.

* Eg:

Islam(ism) has historically led to 300 million deaths

Communism has historically led to 100 million deaths

Nazism has historically led to 6-20 million deaths

ALL hate ideologies should be treated equally.

There are political forces in Oslo who want mass subsidised and low cost “Islam-blocks” in Oslo West for “better integration”… If this ever becomes the case, most of Oslo West will move to Bærum (and most will eventually follow).

I have on some occasions discussed with … the EDL [English Defence League] and recommended them to use conscious strategies. The tactics of the EDL is to “entice” an overreaction from Jihad Youth/Extreme-Marxists something they have succeeded several times already.

The agenda of the Norwegian cultural conservative movement over the next 5 years …

1. Newspaper with national distribution

2. Work for control of several NGOs

3. Norwegian EDL

Also go here for more quotations from Breivik, in some of which he talks specifically about his opposition to multiculturalism.

* * See our post The new heresy, January 11, 2011

*

Update on the numbers Monday, July 25:  The count of the dead has been lowered by the Norwegian police. It now stands at 76 instead of 93, 8 of them in Oslo.

Today the capital of Norway was bombed. As we are Islamophobic, suspicious by nature, and fairly well-informed, we leap to the conclusion that Muslims did it.

If we’re right, it’s a case of a biter being bitten.

Norway has long been cheering Islam on, because it’s a heavily leftist nation, and because most Norwegians hate Jews.

Bruce Bawer lives in Norway. He speaks authoritatively about Norway’s sentimental sympathy with Islam:

They’re overwhelmingly on the left, and intensely hostile to the West, to capitalism, to the US and to Israel. Before the fall of the USSR, an extraordinary percentage of them were Communists. They have replaced their affinity to the Soviet Union with sympathy for the great totalitarian ideology of our time: Islamism. Thus they romanticize Palestinians and despise Israel.

Part of the motivation for this anti-Semitism is the influx into Norway in recent decades of masses of Muslims from Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere. Multiculturalism has taught Norway’s cultural elite to take an uncritical, even obsequious, posture toward every aspect of Muslim culture and belief. When Muslim leaders rant against Israel and the Jews, the reflexive response of the multiculturalist elite is to join them in their rantings. This is called solidarity.

Norwegian history also plays a role in all this. Anti-Semitism has a long, deeply-rooted history here. This was never a cosmopolitan country – no nation in Europe was less ethnically or religiously diverse. On the contrary, Norway was a remote, rural, mountainous land of pious Lutheran farmers whose early 19th-century constitution banned Jews from its territory.

Norway was notoriously pro-Nazi. Later, after Germany was defeated –

The entrenched leftwing elite did its work through the schools, universities and media – producing a generation of Norwegians for whom being virtuous and intellectually sophisticated means, among other things, embracing the Muslim “victim,” and despising the Israeli “bully.”

On Oslo’s version of Fleet Street there is a bar, a journalists’ hangout, called Stopp Pressen (Stop the Presses). For years, there hung in its window a photograph of a smiling, beatific Yasser Arafat. From the way he was portrayed, you’d have thought he was Albert Schweizer. I walked by that picture almost every day for years. It was a good reminder of the sickness at the top ranks of this society.

How is modern anti-Semitism expressing itself in Norway?

Norwegian academics have sought to ban contacts with Israeli universities. Norwegian activists have encouraged boycotts of Israeli products. Every so often, a high-profile professor or activist, or some famous author … will write a virulent op-ed or give an angry speech denouncing Israel and insulting Jews as a people. …

Nothing … could be safer for them to say in this country; no one will seek to harm them physically or otherwise. On the contrary, their anti-Semitic drivel will only win them plaudits from their colleagues. Yet they are treated as bold, courageous, original truth-tellers. …

Well, they were safe enough from European Jews, who never hit back hard, even with mere words, more’s the pity.

But they were not safe from the very people they brown-nosed, if we’re right about who bombed them today.

How dangerous is political and radical Islam in Norway?

Terrifyingly dangerous. And what makes it dangerous is the eagerness of the cultural elite to whitewash it. Islamists are welcomed into the elite. In recent years, one high-profile Islamist has been given a coveted position as a columnist for the country’s newspaper of record, while another has become a leading member of one of the political parties, and has established himself as a powerful figure in Norwegian society.

These men are invited to parties at the US Embassy, and enjoy friendly relations with top members of the Norwegian government and with members of the royal family. It seems clear that they are being groomed for high political office …

Then there’s our resident terrorist, Mullah Krekar, and his family, who have long been the subjects of fawning newspaper and TV profiles in which they are depicted sympathetically as kind, gentle, suffering victims. (This is a man who founded the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, and who is known to be guilty of murdering and torturing children.)

Oslo was violently attacked by Muslims two years ago when –

…  supposedly in response to Israel’s actions against Hamas, Muslims rioted in downtown Oslo, making a large area of the city look like Beirut or Sarajevo at their most violent moments in modern history. The violence was out of control, the damage extensive. Yet almost everyone got off scot-free.

Early last year, in the same Oslo Square where Quisling and his henchman once held rallies [Vidkun Quisling was the Minister-President of Norway 1942-1945 who collaborated enthusiastically with Hitler – JB], scores of radical Muslims gathered to hear a Nazi-like message of hate against Jews, gays, secular democracy, America, the West, Israel. The speeches were chilling. Yet the men who gave those speeches continue to be treated with respect by Norwegian authorities.

Will a bombing, by Muslims, of their capital city change the minds of Norwegians about Islam?

More likely they’ll cringe even lower and lick the boots of Muslims more zealously. We’ll wait and see.

Islam to the West: “You are willing to tolerate the intolerant and the intolerable. That will be your epitaph. We are intolerant of the tolerant. That will be the message of our victory.”

We quote from an article by Edward Cline at Family Security Matters.

He writes as a secularist, and praises individual freedom. A thinker after our own heart.

Twenty years before 9/11, when Saudi nationals hijacked American passenger planes and used them as suicide bombs, the West was warned by one of our main enemies of things to come. The warning was announced in an unsigned Reuters article which appeared in April, 1981, in The New York Times: “Saudis Shield Islam From ‘Alien Values.’”

The headline sums up one half of the truth. A subheading may as well have read: “Values Alien to Islam to be Liquidated.”

A page-two heading could also have paraphrased Vladimir Lenin: “Westerners will sell us the rope with which we will subjugate them.”

The physical rope is the oil-production capacity which the barbarians nationalized (pioneered by Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, which then helped to form OPEC in 1960), which the West refrained from reclaiming. The ideological rope is multiculturalism and cultural relativism. Their ultimatum was and remains: If you Westerners insist there is no difference between our cultural and politics and yours, then it can make no difference to you if we take over and set the terms of your existence.You are willing to tolerate the intolerant and the intolerable. That will be your epitaph. We are intolerant of the tolerant. That will be the message of our victory.

The Times article is a fawning puff piece about our less than benevolent extortionist, the royal kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and about its pseudo-angst over how Western values are no match for a medieval, totalitarian ideology that is insulated from any and all threats from Western civilization.

Saudi Arabia’s economic planners believe they can successfully link the West’s technology and the Islamic faith without rending society, but acknowledge they face a challenge.

The text of the country’s economic plan recognizes that there is concern in the Government and among the populace that ”alien values and the spirit of materialism” may threaten religion, adding that this is a difficult problem. …

But as Cline points out,  “Islam is safe. It faces no peril from the West.” It is the West that is threatened by Islam. And if the West is overcome by Islam, scientific and technological development will cease.

Islam is by nature a parasitical ideology which cannot allow its adherents to create, innovate, or think outside the suffocating box of blind faith. Islam cannot allow its elect or anyone else freedom of thought without sabotaging itself. It will not abide criticism ranging from cartoons of its prophet to examination of its central tenets. So, it must feed off the West, which does allow freedom of thought, and freedom of action.

It is not … Islamic society that is being rent by the conflict between Islam and the West. It is the West’s societies, in virtually every Western nation, that are being torn asunder thanks to their pragmatic, tolerant, non-judgmental, and politically correct perception of Islam as just another religion. Europe is experiencing this dissolution first hand.

What are the “alien values” that the Saudis wish to keep – and have successfully kept for decades at box-cutter’s length? The supreme value of the individual. The idea that it is the individual who is the prime mover of his own life, responsible for his own values and actions. The value of that individual to be free to act in his own self-interest. The value of the idea that his rights to exist and to act do not emanate from society, or the state, or any monarchy, but from his nature as a being of volitional consciousness beholden to no dogma or faith.

We interrupt him to applaud.

And we nod in agreement as he goes on:

The “spirit of materialism”? What is meant by that? Ostensively, an overriding concern for one’s material comfort and happiness at the expense of intangible “spiritual” or moral values …

We like those quotation marks round “spiritual” – whatever does the word mean?

… which, in the case of Islam, is unquestioned submission to the theology and pseudo-ethics of Islam. However, blind, unquestioning acceptance of any morality is not a moral action. And one does not witness the sacrifice of “material values” in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Dubai, or any other oil-windfall Arab regime. Like the ancient Egyptians, the Saudis have embarked on an “economic plan” which consists of building monumental skyscrapers, housing developments, and other neo-pyramids, all of which, funded by petrodollars, are white elephants that can never earn back their enormous investment. They represent the siphoning off of genuine, productive wealth from the West into unimaginable money pits. …

Willful blindness keeps most Western politicians from seeing and acknowledging the truth that Islam is waging a war of conquest. President Obama, we observe, acts consistently to ease Islam’s path to victory (see our post Too dreadful to contemplate, July 9, 2011).

The West is on the defensive, Islam on the offensive. As communists in the past have done in pursuit of global socialist state, Islamists [we just call them Muslims – JB] are plotting the overthrow of the West and its replacement with a global caliphate …  They are quite frank about their ends and means. …

While one totalitarian system has collapsed of its own ineptness, another has sprung up to take its place. …

Journalistic and politically correct diffidence continues to this day …  [towards] death fatwas on critics and cartoonists, rising sexual assaults on non-Muslim women in Western countries, honor killings of disobedient girls and women, riots and mass car burnings in “no-go” ghettoes in major cities, a resurgence of anti-Semitism spread by Muslim clerics, brazen calls for sedition and the overthrow of Western governments in mosques, the de facto establishment of Sharia courts in contravention of civil law, the meek accommodation of Muslim “needs” such as foot baths, prayer rooms, and halal food, often paid for by non-Muslim taxpayers (yes, it is jizya, or the Islamic tax on conquered infidels), the Ground Zero mosque … and so much more, all abetted, condoned, or ignored by a liberal news media, our leftist/liberal intelligentsia, and often by our judiciary.

And by most teachers in our schools and academies, and most of our military and political leaders.

Even our technology won’t save us if we lack the will to win this war.

America’s war in Afghanistan is at long last coming to an end.

Daniel Greenfield has these thoughts on the failed campaign:

Obama has made it clear that Karzai has no future, and that means that a growing realignment is happening in Afghanistan. With two sides to choose from, one that is on the way out, and one that is on the way in, a new tide of support is flowing away from the American backed government and to the Taliban. …

Afghanistan is the Muslim world at its most elementally tribal with fewer of the mock civilized interfaces between the Westerner and the ragged edge of the frontier than are found in Pakistan or the Middle East.

The Taliban took power there in the same way that Mohammed once did in the Arabian desert, by packing together ruthless brutality and a fanatical religious ideology. Their coalition was based on naked power and terror. Ours was based on foreign aid, elections and soldiers digging wells. It’s not that we never had a shot, but that we were trying to impose order on what is really a permanent state of chaos.

Even before the choppers have begun taking off, the chaos is reclaiming the land. The Islamists will return, celebrate their victory, and fall into another civil war. Without foreign troops there to target, they will not be able to count on the same level of aid from the Muslim world. Which will move the clock back to before the American invasion.

Kabul will hold out for a while, but eventually it will fall, and all the NGO’s, the girls we taught to read, the elections and the laws will all go back under the Burqa. …

The story will play out the same way that it did in Vietnam and the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Not because it was foretold, but because we lost sight of what the mission was.

The same mission creep took hold in Afghanistan and Iraq, that has taken hold in most of our wars. We stopped fighting to destroy an enemy and began trying to win the hearts and minds of the population. No longer as a means, but as an end. …

If we had put our focus into hunting down the Taliban, wiping out any village that harbored them and leaving behind a trial of chaos and refugees, then we would have at least taught a lasting lesson.

But for what? Is it certain that 9/11 was prepared in Afghanistan, or was Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, or even perhaps Iran, when he plotted the attack?

One might think that America should have whacked the Taliban regardless of whether it had anything to do with 9/11. Perhaps another whack may be necessary one day. But America should whack and go.

Instead we believed that by exporting our system, we could implement a state of stability. Transform Afghanistan from a collection of villages and hovels run by gangs and large families into something more modern. The effort was doomed to fail. Afghanistan is not a modern state. It isn’t a state at all. Like most of the Muslim world it’s a patchwork of families and clans with borders and a flag stuck on top. To run it, is a matter of managing chaos. …

Our drive for democracy was based on a fundamental error. We had not taken into account that the difference between us and them, was not that we had voting booths, and they didn’t. But that we were civilized and they weren’t.

Is civilization rendered impotent by its own moral values when it comes to using force against savages?

When the Romans despaired of taming wild tribes they built walls to keep them at bay: the limes in Germany, Hadrian’s Wall in Britain. In our time, no wall can protect us from Islamic savages. From time to time we will need to whack them, but we should never hang about trying to tame them.

How can we possibly learn the answer, when we keep asking the wrong question. … The right question wasn’t how do we stabilize Afghanistan, it was how do we find the people who did this to us and teach them and their backers an enduring lesson.

There was a brief shining moment when we understood that this was the question. When it was “You’re either with us or against us” and “Give us Bin Laden’s head”. When politicians seemed to have reverted to the common sense approach of the man on the street. But then the experts took over. And the question became one of reconstructing Afghanistan in the name of some greater good. Now the Taliban are giving the final answer to that question.

The only true moral of war is that you shouldn’t begin one that you aren’t going to fight to win. And we didn’t fight to win. We fought for hearts and minds. And now when the troops go, we will discover how little those hearts and minds were worth all along.

Just how phony the claim is (put out by Obama and his henchwomen*) that the Libyan engagement is all about the “responsibility to protect” civilians, is demonstrated by this report published two days ago on July 18, 2011, by Asia News – and nowhere in the West:

Benghazi-based rebels took Brega over night. The town, which is 740 km east of Tripoli, is the country’s main oil hub. The National Transitional Council (NTC) called the fall of the city its greatest victory since the war against Gaddafi began. However, doubts remain about rebel intentions. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused them of retaliatory violence against pro-Gaddafi regime civilians. … HRW said rebels looted and torched homes in towns that had fallen under NTC control. In villages south of Tripoli, Gaddafi loyalists were beaten, their houses set on fire.

We have little respect for Human Rights Watch having observed their frequent incapacity or reluctance to tell the truth, but in this case their accusation is backed up by another source:

Tiziana Gamannossi, an Italian businesswoman in Tripoli, told AsiaNews that the rebels’ push is causing fear in the civilian population. …

In her view, NATO is funding and arming violent groups that lack any training or code of honour. …

For Gamannossi, a war that was launched to defend civilians is absurd. The latter watch powerless as their cities and country are torn down amid the silence of western media.

“These days, hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated against NATO in Tripoli, Zliten, Ajaylat and Sabha, demanding an end to the air strikes. No newspaper has given such news much importance, calling the protests ‘ demonstrations funded by the regime’.”

Last week the 30-member contact group on Libya, including the United States, China and Russia, “formally recognised the NTC as the sole representative of the Libyan people. This will give the council access to about US$200 billion in Libyan government assets held in foreign banks to fund the rebel advance.”

What makes this contact group expect that the people leading the National Transitional Council will be any better for Libyans, or for other states to deal with, than Gaddafi has been?

The answer is, absolutely nothing. They may even be worse.

* Samantha Power, Senior Director of Multilateral Affairs, National Security Council;  Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the UN;  Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State.  See our post A siren song from hell, April 1, 2011.