Scandinavia may look idyllic from a distance, what with royal families and prime ministers almost without security, but it has endured its fair share of violence, from the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme to two school massacres in one year in Finland, one killing eight, the other ten. Anders Behring Breivik’s rampage, in other words, was hardly unprecedented.
In the past, one had the cold comfort of knowing that deranged acts such as his were carried out by individuals under the sway of extremist ideologies. Not so Behring Breivik. This terrorist lists among his favorite authors George Orwell, Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, John Locke, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Ayn Rand, and William James. The disconnect between Behring Breivik’s mainstream political conservatism and his psychological derangement presents a shocking new dilemma and challenge.
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That said, there is no reason to think that Behring Breivik has a single follower, that any other mainstream political conservative will emulate him and massacre socialists. This has never happened before and will probably never happen again. This is a gruesome, freakish exception.
And yet, this exception does tell conservatives that we have to be aware of a danger we had not thought of before. We may oppose socialists, but not vilify them.
Given how meticulously Behring Breivik planned not just his bombing attack and gun rampage but also his posting of a manifesto and a video, and given his plans to turn his trial into political theater, his terrorism appears ultimately intended primarily to bring attention to his political views. Indeed, during his initial court appearance on July 25, the Associated Press reports, he presented the violence “as ‘marketing’ for his manifesto,” 2083 — A European Declaration of Independence.
In this way, Behring Breivik resembles the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who engaged in violence as a means to market his 1995 manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future. Indeed, the tie between these two is very close: Hans Rustad documents how extensively Behring Breivik plagiarized from Kaczynski, changing only some key words.
Add to these two Timothy McVeigh (the 1995 Oklahoma City bomber) and Baruch Goldstein (the 1994 Hebron mass killer) and one has the four outstanding exceptions to the dominant rule of Islamist mass murder. One website, TheReligionOfPeace.com, counts 17,500 terrorist incidents on behalf of Islam in the past ten years; extrapolating, that comes to some 25,000 since 1994. We are dealing with two very different orders of magnitude. As David P. Goldman notes, “there is a world of difference between the organized use of horror by terrorist movements and the depraved actions of individuals.” Yes, we must worry about non-Islamist violence too, but the Islamist variety prevails and, being a vital extremist movement, will continue to do so.
Ravi Shankar, executive editor of the New Indian Express, writes that “What happened in Oslo Friday may be the early beginning of a new civil war — Europeans fighting each other, both Muslim and Christian.” He could well be right. As I argued in a 2007 analysis, “Europe’s Stark Options,” the continent’s future is likely to consist of either Islamization or protracted civil conflict. I sketched the possibility of “indigenous Europeans — who do still constitute 95 percent of the continent’s population — waking up one day and asserting themselves. ‘Basta!’ they will say, and reclaim their historic order. This is not so remote; a chafing among Europeans, less among elites than the masses, loudly protests changes already underway.”
If one counts themselves among those who believe that even "moderate Islam" is anathema to the West, and there are many respectable writers who think that to be the case, does that make one complicit with Breivik?
"Ravi Shankar, executive editor of the New Indian Express, writes that 'What happened in Oslo Friday may be the early beginning of a new civil war — Europeans fighting each other, both Muslim and Christian.'"
Who's Ravi Shankar's best writer? George Harrison?
"The disconnect between Behring Breivik’s mainstream political conservatism and his psychological derangement presents a shocking new dilemma and challenge."
Mr. Pipes, I have been a longtime reader of yours but I do have a concern with your stance regarding moderate Islam being the solution to radical Islam.
I have spent a lot of time reading and researching Islam through writings - both Islamic and "other" - and I can't see backing for your position in the Koran nor Hadiths.
I believe you mean secular Islam is the solution, no? I hold a similar belief that only non-radical muslims are the answer, but I can't see any path for them other than a rejection of several tenets of their religion and acceptance of human rights regardless of religion.
Fox and therefore the rest of the Right is in major league "how dare you" mode over Breivik being called a "Christian" or a "Christian Fundamentalist" by the MSM.
Try this little experiment with any hypothetical terrorist:
"The terrorist was born a [X]. He calls himself a [X]. He says he did what he did in fulfillment of his duty as a [X] Accordingly, it's fair to call him a [X].
If he's a Christian, he's a Christian. Point me to the Christian pastor or Jewish rabbi that instructs his flock to commit murder in the name of his religion.
Capcha is "talk turkey". That's an insult to turkeys. It should have been "talk MikeB". :P
This is painful. I'm surprised such uninformed and sloppy thinking could come from someone associated with two reputable institutions (that I love by the way). Anders is not a Christian. He is a "cultural" christian, by his own words, which means he doesn't believe God or Christ even exist. I wrote about this here: External Link . The fact that you're so willing to swallow the sensationalistic tripe the media is feeding you in order to substantiate your opinion is surprising. Finally, are you really so "moderate" you can't even write out the word "screwed"? I mean.. really?
Scandinavia is not as “idyllic” as it seems. This is utter silly and disingenuous. First, Norway, Sweden, and Finland are wildly different places; it's mainly Americans who lump them together and talk about "scandinavia" and "socialism" and so forth. Second, Norway is an active participant in various military adventures against the Muslim world, including Libya and Afghanistan. Hardly the recipe for idyllicism. And of course these nations are all embroiled in various immigration issues, which have caused the kind of anti-Muslim feeling--and action--that Mr. Pipes at the moment seems to want to downplay. Breivik is the most obvious conservative christian anti-muslim "crusader" at the moment but not the only one--for example, somebody is shooting at immigrants from the darkness in Malmo, Sweden. The marksmanship is lousy but there’s no other evidence that it’s an internationally sponsored jihadist cell.
Sweden and Norway have recorded very little evidence of terrorism on the part of muslims, home-grown or internationally sponsored or extraterrestrial. The vast majority of the violence there is by Christianist conservatives, many of them part of organizations that take racist, anti-Islam positions in published material. One guess as to the predominant influences on those people.
That's not causation, of course; I'm with the Norwegians--free speech is paramount. Plus of course those native people outnumber muslim immigrants by wide margins, so it's not surprising that the numbers go the wrong way for an argument like Pipes'. But there’s no support for the notion that, despite Breivik, Norway is a battlefield with al Qaeda. That’s a sop for American christianists looking for cover now that they have had forced into their insulated information chambers the fact that a great deal of the recent violence comes back to them, to their people, to their writers and ideas. Pipes is tracing some vague and dishonest numbers game away, away—nothing to see here, be happy and comfy—away and back to organized extranational or sponsored al Qaeda influence in Norway. It does not work. There is no evidence—there’s less than no evidence, which may imperil Mr. Pipes' income and definitely imperils his argument.
Second, note Pipes' clever pivot from the previous acts of violence he cites (as proof of Scandinavia's non-idyllic state). These three acts of violence are offered, then Pipes says these acts are usually "...carried out by individuals under the sway of extremist ideologies." But those three acts of violence prove the opposite of this point. The extremist ideologies involved are his, not theirs. Again, that doesn’t prove causation. Pipes makes good points and understands the jihadis in valuable ways—even though I disagree with his conclusions I usually find his observations valuable. But not here. Pipes’ customers are people a lot like Breivik. If that makes them uncomfortable, well good. I’ll be the first to defend their right of speech and opinion, but the connections can’t be dodged. Ideas have consequences, as we have heard so often in the American conversation.
But how can these acts of violence participate in any argument that al Qaeda is active in Scandinavia? Both school shootings Pipes cites were carried out by al Qaeda operatives cleverly disguised as disgruntled, bullied, and probably insane Norwegian white men. Both were enrolled at the school at the time (one high school, one vocational college). Both al Qaeda operatives had used extensive surgical procedures to make them appear to be Norwegians, had taken Norwegian names, acquired Norwegian families and completely brainwashed them into believing that they were ancestral Norwegians. Both expressed typical feelings and ideas for the young white man conducting a rampage/suicide--a woefully common occurrence, one which we are quite familiar with here in the US. Both were bitterly, violently estranged from any religious viewpoint we would recognize. In other words, both school shootings are useless in any argument that claims militant jihadis are connected or influential in Breivik's case or in Norway generally.
Palme's assassination--that's another thing entirely. Palme was an object of continuous virulent hatred from the Swedish right wing. In fact, Palme’s treatment should seem familiar to students of American history—he was barraged by a constant flow of rhetoric from the right that sounded a lot like a toned-down preview of the way the American right wing—far and mainstream—treated Bill Clinton. Palme’s detractors were people Pipes would recognize clearly, since the same species of foaming, fact-averse radical now keeps him fully employed as a dignified, scholarly voice of reasonable arguments that nevertheless rarely venture successfully from certain hotel ballrooms and blogs. Palme's assassination is unsolved; the drug-addict patsy setup didn't hold and the general consensus among Swedish law enforcement is that Palme was targeted by a far-right organization. No proof, though, so grain of salt is required.
In any event those three incidents are the reddest of herrings in an argument about jihadist responsibility for Breivik's work. They are much better evidence for the lone-wolf producing crucible of toxic rhetoric and evidence-free racism that seethes and jitters at the far right fringe, that far-right fringe (I repeat) that is very familiar to Pipes and his ilk.
But I must say the tenor of this post suggests that Mr Pipes is being more thoughtful than usual, more careful than his audience usually requires. If this is a distancing, and if the vague associations of claims in this post is intentional, I encourage it. The readers and commenters here are lost to logic or moderation, and immune to complex argument, and are peevish when confronted with their own complicity, however deniable, in massacres. I don't write for them, and I ignore their barbs. But I encourage Mr. Pipes to use his influence perhaps to join a more moderate and constructive argument. Our nation is packed with weapons and dense with potential Breiviks, thanks to a generation of hate-talk—mostly, but not exclusively, right-wing and Christian hate-talkers; mostly, but not exclusively, right-wing and Christian killers. And the massacre is not so rare—never so rare, in fact—a fairly constant tempo of men stalking around with guns and extra ammo in McDonalds or Luby’s or the Tower or Fort Hood or in my classroom in Williams Hall or a mall in Tucson or an island full of kids you dehumanize as ‘socialists.’ Those mass-murderers tend to be readers and listeners, smart men with a screw loose. They are not rare enough—kick the haystack and needles fall out every six months or a year. Not a coincidence, Mr. Pipes. I believe in reason and empathy enough to think that some of them can be defused and deflected, calmed and delayed and reached. I accept them—they are my people, Mr. Pipes. So too are their victims, random or not. Are they your people, too? Do you deny them? Because I also believe in the mind enough to know that they can be enraged and incited and catalyzed, too. Our choice, Mr. Pipes.
