zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — round-up of commentary, varied sources ]

.

There has been a great deal written already about the events in Oslo and Utoya, and some of the most interesting materials are to be found in slightly out of the way places — and places can be “out of the way” for people because they’re ideologically opposed to one’s own central reading, as Valdis Krebs once notably showed with a social network graph of political book purchases on Amazon.

Accordingly, I am posting a slightly annotated list of pieces that I’ve found interesting over the last couple of days, not including much in the way of major news media, and slanting a bit left since the ZP readership arguably slants a bit right — although as a monarchist jungian zenman myself, I find the whole idea of birds flying with only one wing imaginatively implausible, morally reprehensible and biologically unsound.

In alphabetical order as organized by the titles of the relevant files on my own computer, then, to avoid favoritism:

Breivik and Al-Qaeda by Will McCants on Jihadica. McCants has come in for some unjust criticism recently, this piece is important because he’s among out best AQ specialists, and highlights Breivik‘s interest in AQ which at times amounts to “mirroring” ( see Abu Muqawama quoting Marc Sageman below)

Anders Behring Breivik: Soldier in the Christian Right Culture Wars, by Chip Berlet on Talk to Action. Berlet is an astute analyst from the left, one of the few political analysts with keen insight into apocalyptic and millennial thinkin, and a colleague from Center for Millennial Studies days.  He has various other relevant posts up at Talk to Action.

Why right-wing domestic terrorists are our big blind spot: Let’s start with the media, by David Neiwert on Crooks & Liars features a totally mistaken attack on Will McCants (see above), and included here for that reason. Niewert is best as a monitor of far right militia groups and generally worth reading.

Thomas Hegghammer via Will McCants on Twitter. Hegghammer is a first-class Norwegian terrorism analyst, and his tweeted comments to McCants can be found in McCants’ twitter feed, but will soon disappear — replaced by other tweets worth noting.

What did the Oslo killer want? by Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy — listed here for the brilliant quip quotation from Breivik: “Just like Jihadi warriors are the plum tree of the Ummah, we will be the plum tree for Europe and for Christianity.”  That’s a killer quote.

In response to Norway attacks, right-wing bloggers suddenly demand nuance, by Adam Serwer on the Washington Post’s Plum Line blog. Key quote, slightly redactedfor my purposes: “[ that ] school of analysis, which puts the blame on all Muslims for acts of terrorism perpetrated by Islamic extremists, has been fully discredited – … – terrorist acts are committed by individuals, and it is those individuals who should be held responsible.” That’s not the whole picture, but it’s a consideration.

Initial Plagiarism Test of Breivik’s Manifesto w/ the Unabomber’s by Jarret Brachman. I’m glad Brachman is doing “plagiarism analysis” of Breivik’s texts — I suggested to Chris Anzalone that he might try some if his university has the facilities — and Brachman has also been “Wordling” Breivik and the Unambomber. If the Open Source Center has translated Musab al-Suri by now, there’s another Wordle project that might prove interesting — and more generally, someone ought to compare al-Suri’s 1500 page A Terrorist’s Call to Global Jihad with Breivik’s similarly extensive manifesto — after all, both of them are espousing what Louis Beam called “leaderless resistance”…

Technological and Lone Operator Terrorism: Prospects for a Fifth Wave of Global Terrorism, a paper by Jeffrey D. Simon. I don’t know if this has been published yet, but it picks up on David Rapoport‘s seminal “The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism”. Blog-friend Jean Rosenfeld might like to comment further.

JOURNAL: Knights Templar, by John Robb at Global Guerrillas.  John makes the connection between Breivik’s Templars and the Mexican narco-gangs we’ve discussed several times at ZP recently, a connection which David Ronfeldt also made in a comment here.  Sharp guys, sharp eyes.

Is Norway’s Suspected Murderer Anders Breivik a Christian Terrorist? by Mark Juergensmeyer at Religion Dispatches.  Juergensmeyer is one of the pre-eminent scholars of religious violence, someone who has interviewed a wide variety of activists from half a dozen religious traditions at least, east and west. His book, Terror in the Name of God, is a must read. Key conclusions here — read him to get his reasons for saying these things — “If bin Laden is a Muslim terrorist, Breivik and McVeigh are surely Christian ones” and “in an imagined cosmic warfare time is suspended, and history is transcended as the activists imagine themselves to be acting out timeless roles in a sacred drama.” All in all, a powerful piece.

Quote of the Day by Abu Muqawama at CNAS:

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.”

Oslo Shooter A Frightening Reminder of Radical Right Terrorist Threat, by Heidi Beirich at SPLC’s HateWatch. Like them or not, SPLC keeps tabs on “homegrown” violence and the rhetoric that arguably enables it in the US context.

Amy Winehouse and the Norway Tragedy: Being More like God, by the Tailor of the Good Garment. The Tailor has a unique “Tailorite” angle on Islam and Sufism, is highly intelligent and highly unorthodox, and recently issued his own book which I look forward to reading — and probably won’t entirely understand. This post should be of interest especially to religious experts.

The Irrelevance of the Knights in a Global Society, by Juan Cole at Informed Comment. If Cole is irreverent enough to have had the White House on his tail, he’s probably (a) a familiar name to Zenpundit readers and (b) worth reading.  This is quite a pair of sentences:

Breivik’s medieval romanticism, his artificial European nativism, his pan-Christian vision, his hierarchical, racist view of society, all belong to bits and pieces of past dark episodes in European history. It is as though he has picked through the trash heap of history and attempted to resurrect broken icons, toys and ruined weapons.

The Terror Attacks in Oslo: Anders Behring Breivik on the Middle East and Islam, by Reidar Visser on Iraq and Gulf Analysis. Keeping the best for last, am I? Well, almost. Visser is one of the foremost analysts of Iraq, and as you’d expect, he gets into some fine detail.  Writing of the 2083 text, he says:

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.

Blog-friend John R. Hall is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California – Davis, and the author of such books as Gone from the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History; Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan with Philip D. Schuyler and Sylvaine Trinh; and Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity. His current research involves deploying a social phenomenology to retheorize modernity in relation to contemporary society.

David Ronfeldt suggested that John’s long and detailed remarks taking off from my own post, 2083 Graphics – a first look, deserved to be a post in its own right and not be lost in the comments section, and with Zen’s approval, I am delighted to present it here as Dr Hall’s first Zenpundit guest-post. — Charles Cameron

___________________________________________________________________________________________

I have just completed a very preliminary examination of the Norwegian manifesto posted just before the Oslo bombings. It is an astonishing and significant document, far from the incoherent ravings of a mad person, as I would wish it to be. And it is incredibly chilling in its ruthless rationality and relative coherence. Here, I offer some initial reflections. I have concentrated on the portions from page 717 forward, where the author details ideology, revolutionary strategy, and utopian vision of a future, federated Europe. Beginning on p. 1388, the author offers an autobiography and c.v. of Breivik, which presumably will be checked out by investigators and the media, plus a quite detailed account of his actions over the past several years. A number of important comparisons already have been made – to al Qaida and the Oklahoma City bombing, for example. But in many ways, if the perpetrator indeed acted alone, he is something of a piece with the Unabomber, who similarly combined ruthless action with a carefully elaborated manifesto. There are important difference, to be sure. In particular, the Unabomber worked to conceal his identity so that he could carry out multiple actions, and he operated out of an environmental left ideology rather than a Christian nationalism.

The latter part of the document depicts its account of pre-emptive war as a new mode of writing, exploring scenarios rather than writing fiction or history, thereby claiming to eliminate its usefulness to authorities seeking to use it as evidence when bringing charges against the author or a perpetrator of the acts it describes.

As others already have commented, the label of ‘Christian fundamentalist’ seems wrong, at least in conventional use of the term today. Certainly the author represents himself as a nationalist/European federalist conservative opposed to ‘cultural genocide’ of the Enlightenment West, and seemingly he proposes reinstitution of monarchy as more representative of a nation than democracy can be. Only very late in the missive, p. 1134, does he embrace Europe’s return to the traditional Catholic Church, for its apostolic succession of authority and its capacity to guide believers in matters of scripture. This development is to be coupled with a re-initation of patriarchy, developed in substantial detail (p. 1141ff.), and concern about ‘the ongoing genocide of the Nordic tribes’ and a discussion of its genetic basis and the dangers of miscegenation and sexual promiscuity (including a discussion of ‘erotic capital,’ leading to a frank discussion of the possibility that the state could ‘play an essential role in national reproduction’ (p. 1157ff.; quote, p. 1185). The treatise goes on to mention future education, economic, pollution-control, population-control, crime, cultural/anti-multicultural, deportation, and youth policies, as well as discussing financing an organization, categories of traitors (A, B, and C). In short, it is a comprehensive (in Mannheim’s terms) ‘utopian’ vision, i.e., one that could never be realized in the world as it is presently institutionalized.

Yet there is certainly a basis for recognizing the claims of a ‘Christian’ basis for the ideology, and a religious fundamentalism as well. This latter claim, I make in relation to Martin Riesebrodt’s important comparative study of U.S. Protestantism at the dawn of the twentieth century and Iranian fundamentalism 70 years later or so – both of them strongly based in an ideology of patriarchy, as is the Oslo killer’s manifesto (A Pious Passion, U. California Press, 1993).

Yet this is not simply ideological quasi-religious fundamentalism/nationalism. Rather, the utopian program has all the markings of an apocalyptic crusader, and more generally, the apocalyptic warring sect that I described in Apocalypse (Polity, 2009). The lever by which the author makes contact with Christianity (beyond its status as the cultural basis of European civilization, is a modern-day ‘PCCTS, Knights Templar’ struggle to initiate a European ‘civil war’ against ‘enablers’ – cultural marxists and multiculturalists who are ‘aiding and abetting’ cultural genocide, most significantly in efforts to accommodate Islam within Europe. The challenge, as the author sees it, seems to be to eliminate Islamic migration to Europe, assimilate or force emigration of Muslims, and to excise all Islamist or Arab influenced culture, art, and architecture from European countries. The Knights Templar, described as an ‘ancient Christian European military order,’ is being re-founded not by Christians alone, but by 12 individuals, including a ‘Christian atheist’ and a ‘Christian agnostic.’ Eventually, p. 1309, the manifesto is clear that its appeal is to ‘cultural Christians,’ although it invokes the Bible and Church crusading history, especially the work of Bernard de Clairvaux, to justify the contemporary initiative. One of many elements is the crucial proposal to engage in asymmetric warfare – a vein that is classically that of the apocalyptic warring sect, using a ‘clandestine cell organization,’ combining the rhetoric of ultimate belief in a cause with the cold, rational logic of how to operate. In considerable detail, the manifesto outlines a mode of operations that foreshadows the actions in and near Oslo, including the chilling note, page 886, that it will take ‘the SWAT team 10 – 40 minutes to reach you,’ and therefore, it is worthwhile to divide up the components of a planned action accordingly.Similarly, the author mentions, p. 995, ‘announcing your operation’ ‘only seconds before you initiate’ it, and suggests, p. 927, ‘hide a knife behind a smile,’ a recommendation, along with subsequent ones, that foreshadows the killer’s use of a police uniform and a story about helping to ensure the safety of the island camp participants before beginning to slay them – a technique that he used twice, in different places on the island.

In a variety of passages, the document offers a detailed handbook of asymmetric operations of war, including attacks and sabotage, and evaluation of a variety of targets, accompanied by a detailed catalogue of equipment, weapons (including bombs made from fertilizer – see esp. p. 1015), and armor, where to buy materials, and how to create weapons, detailed discussions of chemical, biological assaults, and attacks on nuclear reactors, as well as dietary recommendations, and an outline of a training regimen, recommendations concerning alliances with certain criminal networks [a theme that reprises the analysis of Eric Hobsbawm that I cited several weeks ago].

The author also announces that the apprehension of a Knights Templar is not the end of the operation: it ‘will mark the initiation of the propaganda phase’ (p. 948), and afterward, the task will be one of ‘countering the misinformation campaign’ (p. 1073), and comments on the use of trial opening and concluding statements for propaganda purposes (p. 1108-14). Alternatively, if you die, you will live on as a martyr in the memory of those carrying on the cause.

The scope of the publication is almost encyclopedic. It also includes historical analysis of how the past millennium of European history lead to the present crisis and need for re-formation of the Knights Templar, as well as a sketch of the umbrella organization, membership, military uniforms for dress occasions, medals, appropriate tombstones, a proposal for subsequent compensation (upon victory) for people who contribute to the resistance movement (a sort of rational-choice approach to mobilizing supporters), and on and on.

In short, the document envisions apocalyptic war as the means to reach a new European conservative/nationalist/Christian utopia. Yet unlike many other visions of apocalyptic war, this manifesto goes far toward detailing what that utopian world would look like. Even if, as it seems, this action is that of a lone individual, it is a dangerous development that we ignore at our peril.

John Hall

[ by Charles Cameron — analysis of 2083 manifesto, John Robb ]

.

Just a quick note — section 3.18 of the 2083 European Declaration of Independence reads as follows:

3.18 “Open source” warfare – clandestine cell systems – the most efficient way of warfare in Phase 1

A clandestine cell structure is a method for organising a group in such a way that it becomes virtually immune to detection, penetration and decapitation. As such, it is a critical strategic element of our operations. It is not in any way lead under a fixed, fragile hierarchy but works as an extremely distributed movement, a resilient network made up of small, autonomous groups or cells. Each group is lead by a cell commander, often working solo, who makes all the decisions based on fixed fundamental principles. We therefore avoid the use of electronic communications (including mobile phones, email and internet chat), because electronic intelligence, signals intelligence, ELINT, SIGINT, is a strength of conventional militaries and counterintelligence organisations.

Solo Martyr Cells are completely unknown to our enemies and has a minimal chance of being exposed. The relatively indestructible and impenetrable nature of the Cell System allows the individual to stay hidden until he is ready to “activate” himself. Even then he will escape the scrutiny often reserved for young men of Arab descent. Optimally he should not have any affiliations to “extremist networks” or to any extreme right wing movements for obvious reasons. This will disallow the National Intelligence Agencies to place the individual on their “radar”/under surveillance. As with the “open source” concept in general our core principles which include armed resistance against the cultural Marxists/ multiculturalists are made available for public collaboration. Our evolving approach to conducting warfare makes it extremely quick to innovate and share tactics rapidly from cell to cell without the direction of a vulnerable leadership hierarchy.

Each European country has tens of thousands individuals who are affiliated with far right conservative movements (from moderate to extreme). In addition, there are several thousand individuals who sympathise with armed resistance groups against the cultural Marxists/multiculturalists (many of them being in the police force and the intelligence agencies themselves).

National Intelligence Agencies have very limited resources and will not be able to monitor tens of thousands of people efficiently (they will not waste excessive resources on individuals who are not considered an immediate threat). They will not have any chance whatsoever to implement efficient means against Solo or even Duo cells because you are not on their “priority watch list”. Even if you are on a watchlist you have several opportunities.

Weaknesses

Groups and individuals who use terror (spreading fear and means of intimidation) as its primary weapon (even if concentrated on specific individuals or government buildings only) will always have limited “open” support in the population.

The rather excessive secrecy and decentralised concept of our command structure can contribute to a reduction or distortion of information about our goals and ideals. This would only be a problem if f. example a cell commander fails to send an announcement to predefined news agencies and blogs. The biggest threat is that media or government agencies might attempt to distort our messages and material and present it to the media as NS or racist in nature in an attempt to de-legitimise us. This has the potential to prevent the wanted effect of our operation, support for our cause and political pressure on current regimes (to halt Muslim immigration and Islamisation). However, if the cultural Marxist/multiculturalist governments attempt to falsely give credit to racist organisations they risk creating more activity among the NS movements so it is a double edged blade even for them.

There appear to be two references to “open source warfare” in the document: this one is the main one, on p. 840 of my downloaded .docx version. There’s also a mention of “open source intelligence”.

I haven’t found a reference to John Robb in this context — but given that John pioneered the concept of OSW in his writings, I will be interested to see his comments on the brief version described above.

[ by Charles Cameron — index of graphics, first 800 or so pages of the “2083 European Declaration of Independence”, with some analysis ]

.

A great deal of work needs to be done on the 2083 European Declaration of Independence, and I thought a useful place to start would be a catalog of images.

The document opens with a graphical title:

— title page —

That’s probably the largest single graphic in the entire work, and it puts the work squarely in the context of the Knights Templar — with e Templar cross and the full name of the order, “Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonic” or Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon.  The Templars were a Western Christian chivalric order strongly associated with the Crusades — and the topic more recently of much historical, occult and fictional speculation.

The date 2083 is a date SFE (in the Science Fictional Era) as was 1984 before it — but it was almost certainly chosen for its echo of the 1683 Battle of Vienna, which is commonly taken to represent the turning back of the Ottomans by the Habsburgs, and thus the victory of Christendom over Islam.  Two maps show the Umayyad Conquests:

— p 228 —

and the Second Islamic Wave, turned back in Spain and at the gates of Vienna:

— p 243 —

These can fruitfully be contrasted with a map of “tomorrow”:

— p 487 —

it being the author’s contention that France will be the first European country to fall to Islamic dhimmitude.  I suspect much the same is implied in this version of the French tricolore:

— p 781 —

There are some pointed attacks on leftist intellectuals:

— p 33 —

and on media perceived as left-leaning, notably the BBC:

  — p 384

— that’s the Saudi flag mashed up with the BBC logo and star and crescent — and:

  — p 804 —

giving both “ancient” and “modern” variants on the theme…

There are some strange items which I’ll drop in here for a breath of fresh air…

  — p 381 —

which appears to be a commentary on the respective attractions of Venus and Mars, since it’s situated in a commentary on Feminism…

this really is a strangely mythic document… and…

with its reference to “mind control agents” — and those whose minds have been controlled are clearly sheep:

— p 803 —

which may be the right moment to mention that the British, too, come in for a measure of contempt, via a quotation from none other than Osama bin Laden:

  — p 707 —

“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse”.  Perhaps its unsurprising that the author is something of an admirer of bin Laden’s means, if not his ends.

Of course, that’s largely the fault of the Labour party:

But that’s probably enough for one post — in my next, I’ll consider how weak we are, what the jihadist strategy against us is, and how the new Templars hope to turn the tide…

against:

— p 674 —

the worst threats to mankind.

[ by Charles Cameron — leads related to Anders Breivik, suspected in Oslo bombings / Utoya shootings ]

.
I may follow this post up with a longer and more detailed version, time permitting – but for now, this presents the lines of inquiry I am following.

The alleged Oslo bomber and Utoya Island shooter, with 90+ deaths to his credit, was not a Muslim jihadist, as many at first suspected, and as at least one Islamist-identified group claimed. Anders Behring Breivik was a Norwegian with strong anti-Islamic views.

Large gobbits of his posts on the Norwegian blog site “document.no” are now available for serious study: there’s an English translation (possibly mechanical) on ScribD and a better one appearing in sections on Leo’s Passagen blog.

Juan Cole titled his blog comment, White Christian Fundamentalist Terrorism in Norway, referencing a Norwegian police spokesman who called Breivik a “Christian fundamentalist”. Breivik was not a Fundamentalist. He was a Protestant – but one who hoped individual Protestants would gradually join the Catholic Church, and one who was himself (paradoxically) active in Freemasonry. But his religious views, as expressed in his document.no postings, were peripheral to his main concerns.

He was an entrepreneur, a millionaire, and a political “conservative” who claimed to be anti-racist. His major political emphasis seems to have been on resisting the “Islamization” of Europe, which he regarded as a form of “demographic warfare” waged by Islamists with passive facilitation by the “multikulti” or multiculturalists. In one of his posts, he suggested the formation of a “cultural Euro-version of a Tea Party movement”.

He was also the owner of a successful farming enterprise, with a reported 700 employees — hence his ability to obtain large quantities (6 tons) of fertilizer of a kind useful in making bombs.

According to the Swedish “Expo” site, he was affiliated with a Nazi web forum.

Two other possible sources for information:

• Breivik may be the Norwegian blogger Fjordman, who has posted on a number of sites including Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch — see this extensive listing of Fjordman’s posts.  [ edited to add: as alleged by one Elise Hendrick; Robert Spencer has apparently refuted this allegation, saying he has received email from Fjordman since the incidents occurred ]
• Breivik may also be the player identified as “conservative” in this World of Warcraft discussion – the link goes to page 2, the next 7 or so pages contain reactions from his fellow gamers.
• [ added ] — and a third, which looks to be the most interesting of all: A manifesto in book form, titled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence and attributed to Andrew Berwick, is also available in a video version here.

This is not standard evangelical behavior, this is not standard white, male, or white male behavior, this is not standard blogger behavior, this is not standard Norwegian behavior, this is not standard gamer behavior, this is not standard right wing behavior — but it is all too tragically human, this behavior…

There’s a lot to untangle here; this is one complex individual, and we’d do well to get a detailed and nuanced understanding of the various drivers in play…