By Steve Hynd
The Norwegian rightwing terrorist Anders Breivik is insane, according to his lawyer. This should hardly need saying. Walking calmly among teenagers shooting them by the score is not the action of a sane person. That's something that has been stressed again and again by "counterjihad" and rightwing authors over the last few days as they run to distance themselves from Breivik's fandom for their writings, revealed in his 1,500 page manifesto.
They do have a bit of a point, for once. As Slate's William Saletan puts it:
The vindictive part of me wants to blame [Pamela] Geller and her ilk for what happened in Oslo. But then I remember something Abdul Rauf said: "The Quran explicitly states that no soul shall be responsible for the sins of another. Terrorism, which targets innocents who had no part in a crime, fundamentally violates this Quranic commandment." That principle---that no one should be held responsible for another person's sins---is the moral core of the struggle against terrorism. It's the reason I can't pin the slaughter in Norway on bloggers who never advocated sectarian violence. I just wish those bloggers, and the politicians who echo them, would show Muslims the same courtesy.
And James Joyner, in a fine round-up of various op-eds on this subject, writes:
As Foust notes, the Internet is full of bad ideas, including a great deal of hate speech. Decent people should condemn it. And to the extent intelligent people with large followings are spreading the false message that the world's 1.5 billion Muslims are somehow responsible for the crimes of a handful of their brethren, other intelligent people with large followings should speak up against that notion.
There's a fine line, though, between arguing against bad ideas and calling for civility in our discourse and chilling honest and vigorous debate. There is legitimate reason to talk about things like immigration policy, militant Islam, and national cultural identity. To shut down that discourse because the likes of Anders Behring Breivik might commit outrageous acts of violence would not be "cost-free," either.
But, and here's the rub, writers like Geller, Robert Spencer and the rest don't not advocate sectarian violence either. There's no hint of Ghandi or King style non-violent protest in their writings. Instead their rhetoric, as Marc Sageman says, is the rhetoric of violence.
Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik�s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam �is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.�
�This rhetoric,� he added, �is not cost-free.�
If you call your "counterjihadist" blog Gates of Vienna- so named because "At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are in a new phase of a very old war"; if you write about Muslim immigration in terms of it being a deliberate "invasion" of Europe by Islam; if the very basis of your argument is couched in terms of a "clash" of civilizations - then you're simply not being an advocate of nonviolence. Only one of the counterjihadist bloggers has the guts to say "It is clear that Anders Behring Breivik is one of us."
His opinions are virtually identical to my own and those of most people in the Counterjihad movement. He accesses the same websites and information sources that most of us do, and he has exactly the same concerns about the Islamification of Europe.
Of course, that same blogger then goes on to put the real blame on the political left:
It is the left-wing that is responsible for this outrage, not the right-wing. This act of violence is the consequence of a deranged political elite attempting to demographic re-engineer an entire continent against the wishes of its people; exploiting imperfections in the democratic system so that the people are never allowed a real choice; passing laws to criminalise free speech so that honest discussion is scarcely possible any more; and a media conspiracy (embodied in laws or informal agreements like the NUJ Guidelines on Race Reporting) to systematically suppress information about the negative consequences mass third-world immigration, and particularly the Muslim component of it, is having on Europe.
And, of course, if you describe "a postnational, postpatriotic European Union governed by a benevolent ruling elite" as if democracy just didn't enter into it; if you describe Norwegian teens as like the "Hitler Youth"; or if you write, baldly, that "Breivik may be right" then you're playing into that conspiracy mindset and your rhetoric will provide the infrastructure for violence when there's no call to eschew violence in sight.
Opposition to Islam was the killer's stated motivation. He targeted other white Scandinavians because he considered them race traitors. He wrote all of this down, too, so we don't even have to make guesses about it! He blamed liberals for enabling jihad by supporting "multiculturalism." (Funnily enough, that is also exactly what Mark Steyn thinks.)
Breivik's own lawyer confirmed that today.
�He believes that he is in a war and in a war you can do things like that,� Mr. Lippestad said. ...Asked if the rampage was aimed at the Labor Party, or at Muslim immigrants, Mr. Lippestad said, �This was an attack on the Labor Party.�
Contrary to Frontpage Magazine's apologia today, folk like Roberts Spencer don't have to make explicit "calls for anyone to commit acts of terrorism", they just have to refrain from calling on their readers not to commit those violent acts. Their rhetorical framework uses the language of violence and hate, they should not pretend they are surprised when violence is the result.
My colleague B.J. put it well in a comment yesterday.
Blaming all Muslims for the actions of a few is wrong, but there are those in the Muslim community whose rhetoric and actions place them in a far more blame-worthy position for the violence.
By the same token, I wouldn�t blame all Christians for the actions of the terrorist few like Breivik, but there are those whose rhetoric and actions inspire and inform such actions, and while they may not be directly responsible, neither are they totally blameless.
There is a chain of causality here that cannot be parsed away or sidestepped. It's something everyone involved in the debate - especially conservatives - is just going to have to deal with.
It's time to call Ross Douthat, Pam Geller, Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Mark Steyn, and Robert Spencer exactly what they are: terrorist sympathizers.
ReplyDeleteIt's such a useful term. I'm not surprised they invented it, for it describes themselves perfectly.
There are legal definitions of insanity, none of which I can parse.
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit surprised to hear Breivik's lawyer saying such things after the careful silence of Norwegian officials. Hard to say whether this is shock on his part, or a developing strategy.
It's easy to say that someone who perpetrates such acts must be insane. But Breivik has said that he understands what he did, and that it had to be done. Plus his intensive and effective planning indicates his rationality.
We don't like his motives, but they are the same as those of the counterjihad commentators. Breivik just moved a but further to one possible logical conclusion.
Legally insane I don't know but he seems that from my POV. Something I've not seen yet discussed by the BS punditry in corporate media is that Norway has a maximum number of years an individual can be sentenced for any crime which they maybe convicted. I think it's 21 years. If however an individual is deemed insane the confinement can be indefinite with an evaluation regarding the illness occurring every 5 years. When I heard the lawyer saying his client was insane I thought he might be working for the Crown.
ReplyDelete