Some reading on Norway

I'm working on a longer post on what happened in Norway in Finnish. I'll try to return to the topic in English later. For now, here's some recommended reading:

New York Times: Breivik and His Enablers

What has become clear in Oslo and on Utoya Island is that delusional anti-Muslim rightist hatred aimed at “multiculturalist” liberals can be just as dangerous as Al Qaeda’s anti-infidel poison: Breivik alone killed many more people than the four Islamist suicide bombers in the 7/7 London attack of 2005.

Guardian: Anders Breivik's chilling anti-feminism

Breivik's introduction is entirely given over to a half-baked history of political correctness, "no aspect" of which, he tells us, is "more prominent … than feminist ideology". The PC-project is bent on "transforming a patriarchy into a matriarchy" and "intends to deny the intrinsic worth of native Christian European heterosexual males". But more than that, it has succeeded. The "feminisation of European culture" has been underway since the 1830s, and by now, men have been reduced to an "emasculate[d] … touchy-feely subspecies".

The Nation: Europe's Homegrown Terrorists

Unlike Muslims in the wake of Islamist attacks, Christians weren’t called upon to insist upon their moderation. No one argued that white people had to get with the Enlightenment project. But the bombings—and the presumptions about who was responsible—suggest that the true threat to European democracy is not Islam or Muslims but, once again, fascism and racists.

New York Times: Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.

The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam, lacing his 1,500-page manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber.

BBC: Norway and the politics of hate

Back in 1985, I was in the US reporting on the emergence of right-wing militias. They were springing up across the Mid-West. Some were little more than gun clubs. Others trained men in uniform.

They believed that their idea of America was under threat. Many saw the federal government in Washington as the enemy, staffed with officials who were betraying America's core values.

A strong strain of paranoia ran through their conversation and publications. I recall a man showing me a grainy photograph, claiming it proved there were secret Russian bases in Michigan.

Most of this reflected the margins of a society and could easily be dismissed. But the idea that his government was the real enemy worked away inside the mind of a young man called Timothy McVeigh. Sometime later he packed a van with fertiliser and diesel fuel and blew up the federal building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people.

And, finally, The Colbert Report.