Jeff Sharlet on Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik

Jeff Sharlet, who has been studying American right-wing movements, spent a good chunk of today live-tweeting his reading of Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik's writings and manifesto. Among other insights: Breivik saw his attack on the youth summer camp as a preemptive strike against future traitors.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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TooGoodToCheck

wow. killing kids because they might betray you at some specified point in the future. . . Christ what an asshole
- http://www.raingod.com/ angusm
  
  And by “betray” we mean “hold political opinions different from his”.
  There are probably other definitions of the word, but obviously none that matter to Mr Breivik.
- bnschlz
  
  He’s just following the example of the free world.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctrine#Pre-emptive_strikes
snagglepuss

Meanwhile, that rat bastard Glenn Beck is calling the 80+ children killed by that Teutonic, white-supremacist, religious-zealot mass murderer – brace yourselves - “Hitler Youth”.
- Mike Richards
  
  Is this the same Glenn Beck who organises the 9/12 Project – which aims to “recapture the spirit of the day after America was attacked” and who have been running ”vacation liberty schools” where children of Tea Partiers get to learn a particular view of religion, economics and political principles?
  Can’t be. It’d be shocking if Glenn Beck was a hypocrite as well as a bigot.
  - http://www.twitter.com/joeszi Joe Szilagyi
    
    The really interesting thing will come when an acolyte of Beck does something harmful in his name or teachings, and to see what his response will be. We’ll know then if it’s ideology or income. If he disowns it even a little, this is all just a paycheck to him.
  - BarBarSeven
    
    Glenn Beck is neither a hypocrite or bigot. He’s just an amoral sociopath opportunist who spots base desires, caters to base desires and sells a product to base desires.
    
    Doesn’t abscond him of responsibility for his actions, but valid emotions or motivations are never at the root of his behavior.
- robuluz
  
  Just goes to show there’s no hope of a pause for reflection from the neocons. Reality steps up the horror and they just step up the crazy.
- Brainspore
  
  I had to look that up to believe it. That piece of filth is giving neo-nazi-sympathizing rat bastards a bad name.
  - Cowicide
    
    Wow, I had to look it up too. I gave even someone like Glenn Beck much more benefit of the doubt than he deserved.
    
    I have to wonder is Glenn Beck mentally ill? I’m not saying this as a joke or to be mean. I sincerely question the sanity of anyone who would say such a thing knowing full well the families and friends of the victims would hear it sooner or later, much less the entire country of Norway who is in grieving. He’s showing the very definition of a sociopathic behavior, that’s for sure.
- HDN
  
  where’d he say that?
  nm, I found it.
- vette
  
  Actually, he likened any politically involved youth with Hitler Youth, which in my opinion only makes it worse. His world must be a very sad place if teens can’t dedicate time to any political cause without being indoctrinated or forced.
- vette
  
  Actually, he likened any politically involved youth with Hitler Youth, which in my opinion only makes it worse. His world must be a very sad place if teens can’t dedicate time to any political cause without being indoctrinated or forced.
- robotmonkeys
  
  You know who else was prone to hyperbole?
  
  The Nazis.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

I think Breivik should be set free.

In a Somali war zone.

Dressed in his “crusader” uniform.

Armed with just a sword.
krjames

Because nothing says “manly nobility” like shooting kids at a summer camp.
- Fnordius
  
  Not just a summer camp, but a lot of those he killed were politically active, and would have entered politics. To get a sense of scale, it would be as if someone had just killed thousands of Young Democrats, or whatever part of the Democratic Party helps get young adults ready to participate in politics.
  
  It was murder, and I do hope the bastard has a long life as an anonymous prisoner. I do not want to write or read his name. He should suffer the Minstrel’s Curse of being shunned by all media, as it is clear that this monster craves attention.
bkad

This was interesting, but I do think it would be a lot easier to read if he had just written a few paragraphs on a blog somewhere instead of using twitter. But, I’ll admit, I’m not a twitter user to begin with (not used in my social circle) so I may be biased — I forget sometimes Twitter has reach.
- querent
  
  he said he was gonna write up something more formal later.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

I’m not so much shocked that Glenn Beck doesn’t have a sense of shame but that he still has any audience or credibility. In a sane country his audience would be limited to those in earshot of the park bench where he sits all day, masturbating, drinking Night Train, and screaming nonsense at people.
LikesTurtles

As stupid as Beck is for making the Hitler Youth comment, especially in light of the fact that he runs his own politically themed summer camp, I do have to wonder about the wisdom of starting children down the path of partisan identity. Passing on values is one thing but passing on party loyalty seems a bit much. Of course I’m viewing this through the eyes of someone who has lived in North America all of his life so I might be a bit biased given our hyper partisanship here.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Gideon-Jones/100000909387494 Gideon Jones
  
  These weren’t children and this wasn’t a “summer camp” the way Americans think of it. They were students in their mid-late teens and college age students, taking part in a leadership development conference. This was equivalent to walking into a gathering of the College Democrats in the US, and starting to shoot.
  
  It was an attempt at basically wiping out an entire generation of political leaders. Because of the size of Norway, it’s actually quite possible this guy succeeded.
  - Gulliver
    
    This was equivalent to walking into a gathering of the College Democrats in the US, and starting to shoot.
    
    Or a Boyscouts of America camp.
    
    I theorize that Beck continues to polarize people because we/they listen to his incoherent rants. This is why I do not like partisan politics. I don’t think political rhetoric turns ordinary inDUHviduals into lunatics, but it sure as hell gives lunatics an audience.
    
    I’ll say this, Fox News dodged a bullet of their own letting Beck go last month.
  - Nick_D
    
    Really?
    
    First off…. so these were teenage children, not elementary school children, and they were into politics, not sports or whatever… So what? Are you saying that they had it coming?
    
    Second of all, the idea that “it’s possible this guy succeeded”… You must be smoking some serious crack. Something like this will only push Norway and possibly the rest of the world to the Left.
    - Jellybit
      
      I didn’t see Gideon condoning anything. He was merely clarifying the fact that this guy wasn’t just blindly “terrorizing” people so that they’d change their behavior, but was trying to accomplish a specific goal. A type of genocide of a partial generation of leftist political leaders, leaving a weak point for the right to take more control. A goal in which he may have very well succeeded, given the size of Norway. Gideon may be wrong in his assessment of success (I don’t know enough about Norwegian politics to say), but that doesn’t mean he thinks it’s at ALL ok.
  - http://twitter.com/Martebjarte Marte Ottemo
    
    Luckily, the opposite seems to be happening. Political youth organizations in Norway, ranging from left to right, are reporting on record numbers of people contacting them over the last couple of days. Article in Norwegian only: http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article4184188.ece
    - Jellybit
      
      Good to hear. Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, when I google translated it, the headline reads, “Youth parties are seeing strong demand for tragedy”.
- millie fink
  
  Children absorb values anyway,and party loyalty is a form of values. Better they receive openly stated positive values than the sexist/racist/homophobic/Christian-oriented/classist ones that permeate mainstream U.S. culture. Or rather, they’re going to absorb the latter anyway, so absorbing as well the former could help counter the latter.
- vette
  
  It’s pretty common for teens to be politically active in Norway. We have youth parties for all the big political parties. In most cases it’s the teens themselves, not their parents, who choose to be involved and therefore goes to these kinds of camps. Think of it as a scout camp with political discussions and speeches instead of hiking.
http://www.facebook.com/daen.de.leon Daen de Leon

@LikesTurtles: You are correct. The political landscape in Scandinavia is much less rabid and more an integral part of society. Or it has been – I saw a distinct shift to the right during the eight years I lived in Denmark. Depressing.
http://twitter.com/ducchau99 duc chau

Then again, #Breivik Knights Templar fantasies not so different from KKK’s fantasies. Everyone loves an invisible empire. Well, assholes do.

I like this guy!
Brainspore

You know, I’m starting to think the part of Glenn Beck’s brain that recognizes Nazi-like characteristics was put in backwards. Gay Jewish congressman? Nazi. Mixed-race President? Nazi. Actual neo-nazi white supremacist? Well, he might not be a nazi but those young folks he massacred were looking pretty shady.
- Mister44
  
  He just uses it because it instantly evokes a response. You can’t say “Nazi” with out getting some sort of rise out of people, even just a subconsciece twinge. It gets him attention. People who will never watch/listen to a show are now talking about him. He likes that. It’s just like a kid acting out to get attention from its parents.
  
  Eventually I predict the word will be watered down so much that it is just a synonym for “bad”.
  
  “You broke that vase on purpose! Why are you acting so nazi, Tina?”
  “Did you see the new iPhone? It’s so nazi Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave.”
http://www.facebook.com/yahya.nazer Yahya Nazer

paying attention to killers to make yourself famous, is like to be the killer
just think, if your kid was killed will you have send info about this killer
i hope not.
you just do this to make yourself famous
such a wrong cause
sorry for you
ill lich

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the American right is trying to distance themselves from this, despite the fact that they also agree with most of what Breivik says. But it is absolutely clinically insane to say you agree with his writings, but then (like Bryan Fischer) add the caveat that Breivik isn’t a “real Christian” but a “jihadist”; if you agree with his philosophy, then he is squarely within your camp.

Glenn Beck and his ilk are furiously spinning this to their favor, as tough as that is, and they will succeed with a certain core audience. The same kind of people who insist that Hitler was actually left wing, and that Democrats have a monopoly on racism.
querent

I may have missed a memo, and I know I’m being lazy by asking instead of looking, but do we know this guy did it?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  What with the confession and the witnesses, yes.
  - querent
    
    Gotcha. Thank you, sir.
- travtastic
  
  Unfortunately, there’s also at least one video-capture image of him reloading, surrounded by bodies on the shoreline.
querent

From the BBC:

“Separately, Mr Stoltenberg, in his first interview with a British
broadcaster, told the BBC’s Jon Sopel that the attacks would change his
country but that it would ‘still be open and democratic.’”

and

“He said he believed no country could ever fully protect itself from attacks such as these.”

That’s a stunning amount of reasonableness, right there. Course I’m an american, so I don’t have a whole lot of tolerance (in the sense of a drug tolerance) for those things.

also: apparently 21 years is the longest anyone can be held in Norway, unless they “continue to pose a danger to society.” did not know that.
Mister44

re: “He said he believed no country could ever fully protect itself from attacks such as these.”

This is a truth we should all accept and not use it as an excuse to be even more “Big Brother” than we already are.
NothingButFlowers

I don’t want to give the man any more attention on this, but you do have to admire the choice of screen shot on this story about the Hitler Youth comment:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8660986/Norway-shooting-Glenn-Beck-compares-dead-teenagers-to-Hitler-youth.html
anharmyenone

If you look up “right wing” its origins are in royalism and fascism. In an American context, those values are antithetical to conservative values of small, limited government, constitutionalism and common sense. American conservatives should not label themselves, nor allow themselves to be labelled “right wing”. However, I will admit that far too many American conservatives have been seduced by the siren song of perpetual war and anti-gay bias and deserve to be criticized severely for those failings. Also, while Republican policies have virtually always been objectively better for African-Americans, a handful of Republican politicians have cynically used “dog-whistle” tactics to get votes from stupid racist Democratic voters who couldn’t realize those Republican politicians were just using them to get elected and had no intention of oppressing African-Americans. (Remember slavery and Jim Crow were both Democratic party policies and Dr. King was a Republican.) The failings of American conservatism have not been “right wing” though. Using “right wing” to describe American conservatism is just as sloppy and wrong as Glenn Beck’s “hitler youth” statement.
- sisyphus321
  
  Thanks for that little bit of Republican nostalgia. Unfortunately, the Republican party isn’t the same thing today that it was 50 years ago.
- Brainspore
  
  …while Republican policies have virtually always been objectively better for African-Americans…
  
  (At the risk of straying even farther off topic…)
  
  If you look at the entire history of the Republican party I’ll grant that it has been good overall for African Americans, what with the abolition of slavery and all. But if you’re one of those short-sighted people who has only been following politics for the last couple of generations that statement sounds downright wacky.
- zombiebob
  
  >Also, while Republican policies have virtually always been objectively better for >African-Americans
  That certainly stopped right before the civil rights era, as pointed out by another poster. “The party of Lincoln”: a a mystical and magic phrase that causes the pronouncer to ‘forget’ the past 5 decades.
- http://twitter.com/chrisjimson chris jimson
  
  There is no evidence that Dr Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. His father was a lifelong Republican, as were most African Americans prior to FDR, but MLK Jr. vocally supported JFK during the 1960 election. Perhaps he was indeed a Republican, but if the GOP wants to claim him as their own, then they should A.) explain why only Republicans opposed MLK-Day being made a national holiday, and B.) address MLK’s Poor People’s Campaign, his “economic bill of rights” would be considered communism by every single Republican today.
  
  I’m not sure even Lincoln would recognize the GOP today. Slavery was a long long time ago, and Jim Crow was only supported by Southern Democrats who really had their own coalition (or do you believe JFK supported Jim Crow too? How about LBJ?) The NAACP was opposed to Jim Crow, does that make them a GOP affiliated group?
  
  As for Breivik, ultimately the GOP seems to agree with the heart of his writings, so they clearly share philosophies, they only disagree with his tactics. If you want to say “Breivik is crazy” that’s OK with me, but don’t deny he shares similar socio-political views with the GOP; he was out to kill liberals he viewed as traitors, so he sure as hell isn’t a liberal.
  - anharmyenone
    
    You use the word liberal. There are generally two kinds of liberal. The open-minded kind, like the great thinkers of the Enlightenment and the American founding fathers and anyone else open to new ideas and a can-do attitude. Many of the early Progressives would qualify as liberals in this sense, as would anyone today, whether Progressive, Conservative, or otherwise who is open-minded and believes in making things better. Persons of any philosophy can also be closed-minded, or illiberal. Then there is another kind of Liberal, the capital-L Liberal, who is always illiberal, with an ideology entertainingly summed up by the analysis of Evan Sayet. Unfortunately Evan is a little bit of a Neocon, but he puts his finger on Liberalism in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaE98w1KZ-c Not all Progressives are Liberals. Progressives who are liberal are worthy of admiration, while Progressives who are Liberal are not. Conservatives who are liberal are admirable, while Conservatives who are illiberal are not.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Maybe marklar should just marklar marklar marklar-marklar. As long as we’re making up our own special meanings for words, that is.
- travtastic
  
  …Glenn?
Navin_Johnson

Despicable, ridiculous, and ahistorical account of things there man. Civil rights has always been a progressive/liberal endeavor while the people harassing and murdering them could be called nothing but conservative. It’s funny how often this b.s. is trotted out by racist conservatives. Go read up on the Southern Strategy, Dixiecrats etc. Oh that’s right, you already know.
Navin_Johnson

Seems in a lot of ways he was kind of an incoherent American style paleoconservative with libertarian leanings. Thus the citing of Hayek and Mises etc.. It would seem that his main enemy was the progressive social democratic culture of Norway. As Naomi Klein said: a kind of politicide was going on, a war on a progressive culture.
- Gulliver
  
  It’s bad enough that so many people think Glen Beck and Alex Jones are libertarians. Now this wacko has them thinking he’s a libertarian. I’d call Cory Doctorow more of a libertarian than any of those wastes of oxygen. Unfortunately, the neocons that highjacked the Republican party in the fifties and sixties have perverted the meaning of liberty just as they’ve perverted the meaning of conservative to mean what it doesn’t. Right and Left are even more of a meaningless simplification. It’s sad enough that America has been sold on this false dichotomy in service to cynical politicians and the Us vs. Them mentality so thoroughly that our politically active minority largely seems to believe in the total demonization of their opponents. I hope Europe is not headed down the same road.
Guest

http://manboobz.com/2011/07/24/norweigian-terrorist-anders-breiviks-manifesto-reveals-him-to-be-a-rabid-antifeminist-with-views-strikingly-similar-to-many-mras/
- Gulliver
  
  Today I learned about a part of the interwebs I could gladly do without, the “manosphere”.
  
  Thank you for giving me yet another reason to look forward to space travel.
anharmyenone

Chris Jimson, maybe you should take a history test. http://www.nbra.info/DYK-HistoryTest
- travtastic
  
  You can’t actually be serious in posting that as a response to anything that’s been said. I refuse to believe it.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Citing a Republican caucus website for facts about the Republican Party: priceless.
Ahkenhaton

Also found in Breivik’s ‘manifesto’, quotes in support of his from the UK’s very own Mad Melanie Philips, a rabid anti-Muslim ‘writer’ on the Daily Mail, a rightwing ‘newspaper’. You can judge people by the company they keep…