On “The ideological roots of the Oslo atrocity”
The Oslo killer’s ideological roots were clearly neoconservative. His manifesto references names of people and web sites that “inspired” him to hate and kill: Robert Spencer, Hugh Fitzgerald, Aluma Dankowitz, Bat Ye’or, Pamela Geller, Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes ... AmericanThinker.com, jihadwatch.org, memri.org, faithfreedom.org, theReligionOfPeace.com, LittleGreenFootballs.com ...
He is a very specific and a new kind of right-wing threat. He is a “neoconservative extremist”.
By the way, his manifesto also includes a call to arms for other right-thinking defenders of Western Culture, bomb-making recipes, strategies and tactics for carrying out similar missions. The manifesto has gone viral on the Internet. Copycat neoconservative extremist violence is a virtual certainty.
Vince F
Canada
31 July 2011
On “Fascist killer appears in Norwegian court”
Thank you for posing some really good questions about this attack, although I would have preferred you not be quite so subtle. The Norway attack bears many of the hallmarks of a “false flag.”
Joyce E
California, USA
26 July 2011
On “Unanswered questions in Norway terror attack”
About the times:
When the bomb goes off at 15.22 Friday the 22 of July the murderer is already on his way out of the city.
Anders Behring Breivik must have spent between 1 hour 30 minutes and 1 hour 40 minutes driving from the center of Oslo to the Utøya mainland pier. Which is normal for the distance, taking in consideration that this was close to the rush hour on a Friday afternoon. Reckon an additional 5 to 10 minutes—possibly more, before he is in a position to shoot anyone at the island. We are then at around 17.15. The local police get the first message about shooting on the island at 17.26. The local police ask for terror police assistance from Oslo at 17.33.
The first local police officers arrive at the pier at 17.52—the first ambulance arrives at the pier at 17.57. They are both ordered to keep away due to the shooting from “several shooters” at the island. Heavily armed anti-terror police arrive at 18.08. Spending less than half the time than the murderer on the distance from Oslo to Utøya’s mainland pier—with a speedboat towed on a trailer! How they did that is a mystery. Parts of the road are mountainous and very dangerous. I would not try to repeat that! They waded ashore on the island at 18.25. Anders Behring Breivik was arrested at 18.27....
There isn’t room to criticize Norwegian police for not being fast enough. In less than an hour from when the terror police were warned, Anders Behring Breivik was arrested. Neither our police nor our air force have helicopters so heavily armed that can land troops in a “closely defended area”, which Utøya was characterized as at the moment.
So, much of the international press’s critics of the Norwegian police reaction time is “just air”.
Tom O
Oslo, Norway
28 July 2011
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This fascistic atrocity in Oslo is in a straight political line from the terrorist attacks of 9/11, details of which are murky and controversial, to say the least, and the subsequent declaration by Bush of the “war on terror”, to which virtually all the bourgeois governments around the globe subscribed to, mainly for their own cynical reasons, or to follow the US lead.
To illustrate this right-wing trend one need only to recall the US-led NATO war on Afghanistan, the subsequent attack on Iraq with its “coalition of the willing”, other assaults on Middle East countries, a plethora of “anti-terrorist” laws in virtually every country on earth, and, of course political expressions of the ruling class, such as Pope Benedict’s anti-Muslim diatribe in Regensburg, the various “clash of civilization” claims, expulsion of Roma in France and Italy, the ban on burqa and nijab in various European countries, suppression of the Schengen treaty in the EU zone, to name but a few of the more egregious examples. All this was accompanied by social democratic or faux left parties, regarded widely as somewhat “progressive”.
It is therefore more important than ever for SEP and its voice, WSWS, to take a more proactive role in developing an international movement to turn around this right-wing and fascistic wave that is threatening to plunge the world into another period of war and destruction, from which there may be no coming back. After all, all the objective conditions are already in place!
Mirek
NSW, Australia
28 July 2011
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... Thanks for reporting that this is not a “lone gunman” but part of a broader right-wing trend. The wsws.org states, “The media and politicians are working assiduously to obscure the political motives of the killer, his connections to far-right and fascist organizations, and the political and moral responsibility borne by establishment parties and politicians in Europe and the US who have sought to appropriate the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim program of the extreme right wing.”
Sincerely,
PS
USA
28 July 2011
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I wonder how much the so-called defenders of “Western civilization” know about its origins! From science to advanced mathematics, art and medicine and the preservation of ancient texts from Greece and Rome that would otherwise have been destroyed by the Catholic Church, Islam and Muslim scholars created much of what the anti-Muslim factions claim to be “defending”. It is ignorance on this gigantic scale that is counted upon by the forces of the ultra-right in their efforts to confuse and misdirect the working class.
The Muslims also created the concept (and sign) for Zero. How appropriate that this also describes what the right-wing fringe has learned from history.
Carolyn
California, USA
28 July 2011