Breivik's actions and Fjordman's worldview

Submitted by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi (United Kingdom), Jul 28, 2011 at 05:35

Dr. Pipes,

I commend you for writing on this topic in light of the fact that people could use his citations of your work to discredit you. However, as you show, Breivik's dismissal of you as a 'moderate' illustrates the massive gulf between your writings and his own.

Nonetheless, I fear that you have not addressed a very salient point. Namely, the role of Fjordman, Gates of Vienna and other like-minded blogs and writers in the moulding of Breivik's outlook. Basically, when it comes to blogs that define themselves as part of the 'counter-jihad' movement and share a hostility to Islam as a whole, a sharp schism exists between those who view Western governments and the liberal-left as being part of a giant conspiracy to destroy Western civilization by transforming Europe via mass immigration and multiculturalism into an Islamized 'Eurabia', and those who view said governments and leftists as naive but well-intentioned.

Evidently, Breivik subscribed to the former school of thought, and his views are not really much different from those of Fjordman, who in particular promotes the notion of the EU and Western elites as conspiring to reshape Europe. He also frequently warns of civil war and equates the left as a whole with Nazism, deeming co-existence impossible with the Left. He even has the temerity to claim that Western governments today are practising a 'reversed Nazism' against the native populations of Europe, and asserts that the natives need to stand up for themselves.

Now, the logical consequence of the latter school of thought entails the point that one's political and ideological opponents are amenable to reasoned argument; this is not so in the Fjordman and Gates of Vienna worldview. For these bloggers, the halls of power are dominated and controlled by sinister Leftists and cultural Marxists, and the situation is hopeless unless something can effect a radical change, seeing as how we must be at war with these elites and cultural Marxists.

Thus, Breivik's 'last resort' to violence to hurt the Norwegian left is really just the logical consequence of the 'Gnostic alienation' from the West that Fjordman et al. inculcate. Either they do not believe that the threat is as dire as they say it is, or they are 'incoherent hypocrites', as the anti-Islam blogger 'The Hesperado' put it. Would you not agree?

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