Anders Behring Breivik, suspect in Oslo attacks
As Glenn Greenwald suggested yesterday, reports on the horrific attacks in Oslo are already dropping the “terrorist” label in reference to the suspect, who, as it turns out, is not Muslim: he is a blond-haired, fundamentalist Christian, right-wing conservative.
From this report on msnbc.com:
Magnus Ranstorp, a specialist in militant Islamic movements and research director at the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defense College, said it was natural for people to initially conclude that the attacks were the product of a terrorist plot.
“Intuitively, the bombing is al-Qaida-related,” Ranstorp told the Norwegian Nettavisen news service. But the new information about the suspected gunman — especially his nationality — “points to an internal rather than external extremist,” he said.
“With this attack on Utoya, this could just be a crazy person,” Ranstorp said.
This man simply cannot be a “terrorist.” This is not “terrorism,” people. Sure, the slaughter in Norway may well constitute “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.” One might even accurately characterize it as “the unlawful use or threat of violence esp. against the state or the public as a politically motivated means of attack or coercion.” But terrorists are Muslim — not Christian. If he is a Christian, and he did these things, then he is just a “crazy person.” QED.
Glenn made this prediction yesterday:
I would add one point about Western reaction if indeed it turns out to be a domestic rather than “terrorist” (i.e., Muslim) attack: American interest in these attacks and the desire to be seen publicly denouncing them will quickly diminish — almost to the point of non-existence — if the perpetrators are not Muslim.
If Glenn turns out to be correct — and he almost always does — it is because right-wing conservatives are incapable of looking in a mirror and seeing anything other than Very Special Snowflakes staring back at them.
Well said, and my thoughts exactly.
I was around my group of right-wing colleagues when news of this broke. At first there was the usual talk of, “Them damn towelheads have done it again!!! See, even with Osama bin Laden dead, they *still* want to kill us!!! Fuck ‘em!!!!” But as news trickled out that this wasn’t a group of swarthy, beady-eyed Middle-Eastern radicals in keffiyehs right out of casting central, but rather a pleasant-looking Northern European businessman with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a gun permit, this was no longer about A Bunch Of Maniacal Others seeking our destruction and thus deserving of jingoist shouts for retaliation, but rather just a lone crazy person acting on impulse. Ho-hum.
Right. Very Special Snowflakes indeed.
I am getting this from a comment on a Pharyngula thread, so I cannot vouch for the veracity (I know. It’s on the Internet so it must be true!):
Again, I don’t know if it is accurate, but it sounds about right to me. I stopped watching CNN many years ago when I could no longer stomach the propaganda and journalistic malfeasance. If this d00d were Muslim, is there any question that we’d be hearing nothing but apoplectic right-wingers and their corporate media shills frothing at the mouth and pissing themselves over the Islamic Terrorist Menace, 24/7?
The playbook is so old it’s boring.