(An image from a right-wing extremist video posted on the internet by Anders Behring Breivik)
By Simon Lee
The ramifications of what the Norwegian anti-Muslim terrorist Anders Behring Breivik did are beginning to unravel to the horror of the international community.
The initial response to the appalling act he did was that he was a madman. Geir Lippestad, the lawyer of the 32-year-old Breivik who claimed responsibility for the death of 76 people said, "This whole case indicated that he is insane." Later, he however said his “client is part of an anti-Islam network with around 80 terror cells across the West with two in Norway.”
While rejecting the existence of such cells in Norway, Norwegian domestic intelligence chief Janne Kristiansen says she does not think Breivik is insane, “I have been a defense lawyer before and in my opinion this is clearly a sane person because he has been too focused for too long and he has been doing things so correctly. In my experience of having had these sorts of clients before, they are normally quite normal but they are quite twisted in their minds, and this person in addition is total evil."
Yet, to the dismay of many, a 1,467-page document containing gruesome details of the terrorist act soon revealed that Breivik belonged to a group he helped form known as the 'Knights Templar Europe' when he met eight other extremists in London in 2002 in order to “seize political and military control of western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda."
In the manifesto titled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, Breivik reveals his links to the neo-Nazi EDL, "I used to have more than 600 EDL members as Facebook friends and have spoken with tens of EDL members and leaders. In fact; I was one of the individuals who supplied them with processed ideological material (including rhetorical strategies) in the very beginning."
Less than 90 minutes before he began his terrorist attack, Breivik sent his hate-fraught 'manifesto' to 5,700 contacts including 250 in the UK. According to Tanguy Veys, Belgian MP for the rightwing anti-Muslim party Vlaams Belang, - and one of those who received the document - most of those on the email list were UK-based.
"I think the UK was the biggest group [of recipients]," he has told the Guardian. "There were people from Italy, France Germany … but the UK was the biggest number."
Addressing each recipient "Western Europe patriot", he wrote, "It is a gift to you … I ask you to distribute it to everyone you know."
Describing himself as a warrior, Sigurd (crusader), Breivik says he attended a football ground in the UK and voiced his support and admiration for the English Defense League (EDL).
"I've seen with my own eyes what has happened to england, i was in bradford some years ago, me and a friend walked down to the football stadium of bradford, real 'nice' neighborhood, same thing in the suburbs of london. well thinking about taking a little trip over the sea and join you in a demo. would be nice with a norwegian flag alongside with union jack or the english flag, that is if a norwegian would be welcome offcourse?"
According to Breivik, those who defend multiculturalism in Europe are traitors, “[W]e should under normal (optimal) circumstances not exceed (per 2010) aprox. 45,000 dead and 1 million wounded cultural Marxists/multiculturalists in Western Europe."
In an interview with Press TV, Chris Bambury, editor and former member of the Central Committee of the British Socialist Workers Party stated, “There is clearly a growing connection to far right fascist groups. Breivik himself had contact with 500 members of the English Defense League, a violent anti-Islamic organization in Britain - shows the length of his connections. He himself said he was introduced into far right politics through connections in Britain. It's a regular occurrence now that people are becoming fascist and racists and that anti-Islamic people are found with weapons and explosives. It seems to be that the police and security forces are passing this up precisely because they are fixated on Islam, so-called Islamic terrorism as part of the war on terror and therefore they're ignoring what is a growing tide of what is anti-Islamic politics across Western Europe.”
Interestingly, Breivik has been described in Western media as 'killer,' 'mass killer,' 'murderer' and the like and meticulous care seems to have been taken to avoid the term 'terrorist' and what he did, - the merciless slaughter of 76 innocent people - has been described as extremism. But why so much discriminatory linguistic care in selecting words? Simply because Breivik is a Christian. In the Western eye, adherence to a particular faith defines what you do. In plain English, if you are a Muslim and send others to their doom by tying a suicide belt to your waist and detonating yourself, you are a terrorist but if you do the same thing and happen to be a non-Muslim, you are an extremist. According to Rémi Brulin, an adjunct professor at New York University, terrorism is the most meaningless, and therefore the most manipulated, word in the English language.
Multiculturalism has come under critical attack for several months now. In October 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “The approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other... has failed, utterly failed."
It was in fact the first direct attack on multiculturalism and indirect attack on Muslims on the part of a European leader. Her remarks were later reflected by other European leaders including Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
In a similar strain, Silvio Berlusconi said, “We don't want Italy to become a multiethnic, multicultural country. We are proud of our traditions."
His remarks were well received by the Italian Northern League, a right-wing anti-immigrant party. Antagonism to multiculturalism gained momentum and mingled with anti-Islamic sentiments. Emboldened by Berlusconi's remarks, Roberto Calderoli, a Northern League leader, wore a T-shirt on state TV decorated with caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
Expressing the same idiotic notions, British Prime Minister David Cameron strongly criticized 'state multiculturalism' in his maiden speech. At a security conference in Munich, he stated the UK needed a stronger national identity in order to prevent people from turning to all kinds of extremism.
His speech was in fact an invitation to mistreatment of Muslims in the UK.
“Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism," he said.
Breivik is a product of this line of thinking in the West. He is not surely the first hate avenger; nor is he the last one. More Breiviks are on the way if we believe that there are about 80 anti-Islamic cells in Europe who are ready to wage a crusade war against the advocates of multiculturalism and the Muslims. It is very unfortunate to note that Western leaders have already started promoting this type of thinking among the youths who are the most prone to impressionability.
Western culture seems to be plunging into an abyss of ignorance; rather, it is being drawn into blind ignorance by its own leaders.
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