Oslo and Utoya — some other reading
There is also more detailed commentary on the Middle East, with quotes supportive of the idea of a Christian federal region in Iraq as well as the Syrian Baathist, Allawite-led regime, because of its protection of Christians! But the action plan in this second document is far more chilling and foreshadows the violence that was unleashed in Oslo on 22 July.
Whether today’s alleged mass murder already coexisted with the armchair generalist who wrote far-fetched but moderately eloquent postings on document.no in October 2010 or whether Breivik was subject to a subsequent process of radicalisation that concluded with his violent attempt at declaring “European independence” remains to be seen.
Finally, Why the European Right Can’t Be Blamed for the Tragedy in Norway, by Joshua Foust at The Atlantic. Foust is another excellent and informed analyst, with a focus on Afghanistan and environs. I have my doubts about some readings of his conclusion here — “To really answer the question of why Breivik committed such atrocity, we have to move beyond his politics and his carefully placed manifesto” — but his point about the rhetoric of the right is a powerful antidote to other articles in my list.
And kudos to Kevin I Slaughter, who brought the Manifesto to our attention. He found it on Stormfront…
That’s it — gotta run. My freshly-minted 13-yr-old awaits his dad.
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Lars M:
July 25th, 2011 at 10:43 pm
A commentary by UK based newspaper The Guardian, on the dubious amount of guesswork by the media, and the added confusion it adds:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/24/charlie-brooker-norway-mass-killings?mobile-redirect=false
joey:
July 26th, 2011 at 11:27 am
Glenn Beck has likened the Gunman’s victims to the Hitler Youthhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/26/glenn-beck-norwegian-dead-hitler
You stay classy San Diego…
onparkstreet:
July 26th, 2011 at 1:38 pm
“This rhetoric,” he added, “is not cost-free.”
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Nothing is cost-free. Not even the "rhetoric" of smug above-it-all dismissal….
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But I like to tease the good Dr. Ex’s blog. It’s an old habit of mine and I ought to learn better by now.
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The blog "brownpundits" has some interesting observations completely outside the barking dog norm, too.
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The following thread is interesting:
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http://www.brownpundits.com/2011/07/24/right-wing-extremist-charged-in-norway/#comments
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Personally, I’m detoxing from the internet for a bit. Reading Milan Kundera and Immortality.
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Take care all,
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– Madhu
onparkstreet:
July 26th, 2011 at 1:47 pm
My first comment is still awaiting moderation so I hope this comment doesn’t seem out of sequence, but….
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I feel embarrassed that I didn’t think of this kind of "reprisal" terrorism given my interest in things South Asian (SA’s living in the West and so forth).
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That’s the way some Indian diaspora papers talk about Hindu ("Hinduvata?") terrorism. They use the term "reprisal" as in reprisal to Islamist terrorism.
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I find the term reprisal morally problematic yet the discussions regarding the Norway terrorist are similar to those discussions.
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– Madhu
Charles Cameron:
July 26th, 2011 at 3:37 pm
That’s a neat point about "reprisal terrorism", Madhu. I hadn’t thought of this in those terms, although I’m familiar with the violence over Ayodhya, the Gujerat riots, etc.
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It’s interesting, though, that while Breivik clearly saw the battle over Europe as being one of Islamization vs his kind of return of Christendom, his actual targets were the liberal "enablers" of Islamization, rather than Muslims.
david ronfeldt:
July 26th, 2011 at 7:01 pm
which is why i hasten to add, charles, that brievik’s mindset is about tribalism — extreme tribalism — more than other social frames, including religion:
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everything he is upset about — ethnic impurity, multiculturalism, islam, etc. — fits the tribalized mindset, resulting in a stark staunch us-vs.-them mentality, bent on vengeance, justified by selected religious beliefs.
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it’s not that he is mirror-imaging al qaeda or anyone else; it’s that he is replicating a standard long-established frame that exists for anyone of any religion to draw on. and once gripped by its heat, it becomes justifiable to kill anyone of the other tribe or clan.
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i suppose most such fanatics would start by targetting whoever are “them” on the other side first. but breivik has started by targetting the parts of “us” that he claims have betrayed his cultural ideals. but that too fits the tribes framework, as an expression of clan warfare.
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anyway, many thanks for posting this literature survey. it’s a big help.
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Charles Cameron:
July 26th, 2011 at 7:30 pm
I’m glad you found it useful.
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> brievik’s mindset is about tribalism — extreme tribalism — more than other social frames, including religion <
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I think that’s fair enough, David:
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There’s an area that I’m interested in, and on different occasions delighted, infuriated and terrified by, which has to do with imagination, inspiration and intuition. In disciplinary terms, it has led me to comparative religion, cultural anthropology and depth psychology — in terms of people, to Eliade, Corbin, Scholem; Victor Turner & Clifford Geertz, Bateson; and Norman O Brown, Jung and Hillman. But that’s about me, and my own predilections and areas of interest — and I tend to use the word religion as a sort of shorthand for that whole area.
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I’d say that tribalism is certainly a part of it too, and perhaps better suited as a keyword in this case.
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But just as I think the words imagination, inspiration and intuition offer us three usefully different emphases in thinking of an unspecifiable "zone" — so I think that the motivations of people like UBL and Breivik are multifactorial, and that the exact specifications of the factors are more a matter of emphasis than classificatory exactness.
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Which won’t (and shouldn’t) stop us trying to be precise… : )
onparkstreet:
July 29th, 2011 at 1:45 pm
@ david ronfeldt:
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Wow. That’s a fantastically interesting comment. I posted the following comment at Small Wars Journal which is related in a way:A clarification to may second comment:
.On the use of "brown"….
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Six or seven years ago, I started noticing that young South Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, etc.) living in the West started using "brown" as a catch-all for these various second and third-gen immigrant youth. Probably started earlier than that. Some of the Indian think tank websites I read make fun of the term South Asian but they are just being a bit, well, snotty and intellectually incurious.
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It’s a perfectly valid western usage (they use the phrase "the West" all the time which is exactly the same) that along with the word "brown" is an attempt to meld the old melting-pot ideas of the United States with current Western concepts of multiculturalism.
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Even if it’s not an explicit thing, that is what I think is going on.
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http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2011/07/us-accuses-iran-of-secret-alqa/#c022740
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And B. Raman has the following post:
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Right-thinking Hindus would feel puzzled and concerned over media reports regarding the many references to the Hindutva movement allegedly contained in the writings of Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old Norwegian who carried out an immense carnage in Norway on July 22,2011, resulting in the massacre of nearly 80 Norwegians, many of them young.
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http://ramanstrategicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/07/hindutva-ideology-norwegian-carnage.html
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– Madhu
Charles Cameron:
July 29th, 2011 at 4:27 pm
Hi, Madhu:
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Thanks for the pointer to Raman’s piece. It certainly deserves to be included in my "other reading" list above — perhaps it’s time for me to do "other readings ii".
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When I first read it I started collecting Hindu and Hindutva related materials, both from the 2083 manifesto itself and from various news sources, thinking I’d write up a piece with that specific focus. I suppose i still may — but others have probably done a decent job by now, so maybe there’s no need.
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There are so many references to different strands of religion — Christian, Hindu, Odinist, etc — that Breivik hopes to bring into his coalition against Islam! I’m not sure I’ve seen such a variety in one place before, which is interesting in itself.
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And his references to sanatana dharma — and mention of Sita Ram Goel — are certainly of interest.
Charles Cameron:
July 29th, 2011 at 6:44 pm
My apologies for initially misspelling your name, Madhu — I guess my fingers are all too used to typing "Mahdi"!
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I’ve now corrected myself.
onparkstreet:
July 31st, 2011 at 4:30 pm
No worries. I make the same typo myself, sometimes!
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– Madhu
Charles Cameron:
July 31st, 2011 at 6:19 pm
You are most gracious, Madhu.