It had to happen: the rise
of a “counter-jihadist” terrorist outfit that is the mirror image
of al-Qaeda. That it first arose in Norway, rather than, say, in the US,
is just a coincidence, although I’m sure Anders Behring Breivik, the
perpetrator of the Norwegian mass murder in Utoya, has his American
collaborators, as he claimed in his manifesto, “2083: A Declaration
of European Independence,” [.pdf] and an accompanying video. Indeed, a good
many of the sources he cites in “2083” – which is basically a compendium
of previously published works by others – are American. Material from
David Horowitz’s website, Frontpagemag.com, figures prominently,
along with articles taken verbatim from the Horowitz-affiliated “Jihad
Watch,” run by professional hater and make-believe “scholar” Robert
Spencer.
Breivik’s “book” is
a mishmash, half diary of his careful preparations for the attack thrown
together with anti-Muslim materials and boilerplate conservative rhetoric
about the importance of faith, family, and community – Breivik lifts
an entire section of a screed on “Cultural Conservatism” by the
late Paul Weyrich – totaling well over a thousand pages. Thankfully,
we don’t have to plough through this disjointed “compendium,”
as he calls it – which shows signs of being hastily thrown together
in preparation for his international debut as the Norwegian Timothy
McVeigh, just like his Facebook page and his Twitter account. Breivik
created a much more coherent video version which gives us a lot more
clues about why he murdered 90-plus (at last count) of his fellow Norwegians
in the name of fighting Islam.
In the video, Breivik targets
the Enemy, which he calls “cultural Marxism.” So you thought communism
failed with the fall of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern
Europe? Wrong! In reality – according to Breivik – the Marxists,
under the banner of the Frankfurt School theorists, infiltrated the
mainstream political parties, academia, and even exercised a dominant
influence on the “global capitalists.” Their goal: the eradication
of European cultural identity, to be subsumed under a multi-culturalist
“EUSSR.” The present rulers of the West are cultural “traitors,”
who are conspiring openly with Islamists to reestablish the old Ottoman
Empire in Europe and pave the way for the “Islamization” of the
entire continent.
The second part of the video
details the threat posed by an inherently aggressive and implacable
Islam, the long history of Islamic imperialism, and the submission of
the subject peoples to “dhimmitude.” This section relies heavily
on the writings of the professional Islamophobes such as Robert Spencer,
Bat Ye’or, Andrew G. Bostom, Bernard Lewis, etc., that reads like
the table of contents for a routine edition of Horowitz’s online magazine. It is neoconservatism, of the old cold war variety,
with the only difference being that International Islam has taken the
place of International Communism as our unsleeping foe.
Part three of the video is
the most successful and creative: it presents a pantheon of heroes –
every European military figure or ruler who ever fought a battle against
the Ottomans – from Charles Martel to Vlad the Impaler, and even including
Czar Nicholas II. I have to add that all this is accompanied by soaring
“Celtic”-sounding music, like something out of the Lord of the
Rings score: interspersed with images of Crusaders, and such historical
figures as El Cid, Richard the Lionhearted, and events such as the Battle
of Tours and the Ottoman siege of Vienna, this section links the sympathetic
viewer to a usable past, an heroic tradition of which he can feel a
part. This segues easily into the fourth and final part, which is chiefly
exhortatory – a call to action. The cultural Marxist “traitors”
must be hunted down and exterminated: he is very clear about this. A
Cultural Marxist Hunting Permit is depicted, so as to make Breivik’s
strategic principle unmistakable. These new “Crusaders,” then, are
to be an army of assassins – a “Christian” Western version of
al-Qaeda.
The similarity of Osama bin
Laden’s vision and Breivik’s is remarkable, right down to the glorification
of martyrdom which prefaces part three of the video. It is as if someone
had sat down and deliberately limned bin Laden and the theoreticians
of jihadism, inverting the ends but consciously imitating the means
and the Manichean mindset. This is where the real passion comes across,
where the viewer is asked to identify himself as an heroic figure –
all this kind of appeal lacks is a promise of virgins in the afterlife.
However, the powerful emotional punch packed by this very effective
propaganda ploy contrasts sharply with the odd, jerrybuilt nature of
Breivik’s rationale for his murderous enterprise – as if the involved
ideological narrative is almost an afterthought to the actual deed.
After all, Breivik rails endlessly against Muslims – but winds up
murdering Norwegians, none of whom were Muslim. I don’t quite know
what to make of this, except that the whole thing seems rather contrived,
although to what end is unclear.
What is clear, however, is
that the “Knights Templar Europe” is not merely the imaginary construct
of a deranged mind, but an actual organization that seems to have been
founded at a meeting in London which Breivik attended in 2002. He claims
to have collaborators, and he specifically mentions one “European-American”
who attended the founding meeting. Norwegian police are saying he acted
alone, but this seems impossible: he began preparations for the attack
in 2009, and the sheer logistics of carrying out such an operation –
undetected – would argue that he had help.
It also appears as if Breivik
has links to the English Defense League, a virulent gang of violent
skinheads who target Muslims and have been gaining strength in the
Clockwork Orange-y Britain of today. Financed by British businessman Alan Lake, the EDL has been endorsed by the
American “counter-jihadists” grouped around “Stop the Islamization
of America” and its European affiliate: Breivik’s agenda was eerily
prefigured by Lake, who stated on Norwegian television that “such
people should be executed,” referring to British Muslims and presumably
others he considers “seditious.”
For years, neoconservatives
have been telling us the decadent West is no match for the holy warriors
of Islam, and what is needed is a revival of the Crusader spirit so
that we can defeat our Eternal Enemy once and for all. We in the West
must be put on a permanent war footing, they tell us, in order to put
“an end to evil,” as two of them put it in a book title. Like the
neocons, Breivik and the EDL are staunch supporters of Israel: the Israeli flag flies at EDL rallies, and the Jewish state comes in
for undiluted praise in the Knights Templar manifesto.
Before Breivik was identified
as the culprit, neocon columnist Jennifer Rubin rushed into print with
an assessment by two of her fellow neocon “experts” – Gary Schmitt
and Thomas Joscelyn – that this was the work of al-Qaeda, and concluded:
“This is a sobering reminder
for those who think it’s too expensive to wage a war against jihadists….
Some irresponsible lawmakers on both sides of the aisle…would have
us believe that enormous defense cuts would not affect our national
security. Obama would have us believe that al-Qaeda is almost caput
and that we can wrap up things in Afghanistan. All of these are rationalizations
for doing something very rash, namely curbing our ability to defend
the United States and our allies in a very dangerous world.”
Well, it is a sobering reminder, but not in the way Rubin intended: it’s a reminder that ideas have consequences. It’s not surprising someone took neoconservative propaganda seriously enough to go the terrorist route: Breivik is merely carrying out the program advocated by the David Horowitz’s, the Robert Spencers, the Pam Gellers of this sad and sorry world. The one difference is that Breivik and his fellow Knights are taking direct action, without bothering to employ the agency of government.
