xenophobia

As we learn more about the right-wing terrorist in Norway whose deadly attacks left over ninety people dead, the anti-Muslim blog FrontPageMag led by conservative activist David Horowitz is arguing that the real victims of the attacks are…anti-Muslim bloggers.

Anders Behring Breivik routinely frequented popular anti-Muslim blogs and cited American and European anti-Muslim figures in his “manifesto” against progressives, minorities and “cultural Marxism.”

Mark Tapson of FrontPageMag claims that Breivik’s actions did great damage to the cause of “Christian conservatives and critics of Jihad,” insisting that the progressive movement can’t “contain its collective glee” about the shooter’s far-right views:

Now a new McVeigh has arisen, a symbol that the Left and Islamic supremacists themselves will use to bludgeon Christian conservatives and critics of jihad for the next sixteen years – Anders Behring Breivik. Breivik is in police custody for carrying out what some are calling Norway’s “Oklahoma City,” a reference to McVeigh’s 1995 bombing, of course. Breivik, who claims to have acted alone, set off a massive bomb that devastated an Oslo government building and killed seven, then traveled to a nearby youth camp for hundreds of teen children of Labour Party politicians, where he proceeded to massacre as many as 90 of them with ruthless, methodical gunfire.

…

The Left – including the mainstream media, and stealth jihadists themselves, like the ubiquitous Muslim Brotherhood legacy group CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations – won’t even bother to contain its collective glee over the fact that Breivik is a “right-wing Christian.” The narrative is already being constructed that will use him to tar everyone on the Right, particularly vocal critics of Islamic fundamentalism. This is the same Left that hijacks any and all discussions of Islamic terrorism by jumping up to insist that all Muslims must not be smeared because of the actions of a “tiny minority of extremists,” that not all terrorism is committed by Muslims and not all Muslims are terrorists. Of course, no responsible anti-jihadist has ever made such claims, but the Left never bothers to concede this. By contrast, instead of living by the standards they demand of the Right, Leftists will now be perfectly happy to politicize Breivik’s terrorism and use him to tar everyone on the Right – Christians, conservatives, anti-jihadists, the Tea Party – everyone. And in fact, they have already begun attempting to link the Norway terrorist to Sarah Palin, of all people.

Bruce Thornton of FrontPageMag contends that the terrorist attacks in Norway should not be used to claim that non-Muslims are capable of terrorism, arguing that violence is at the heart of Islam while uncharacteristic of Christianity. He goes on to say that the attacks “expose the bankruptcy of the EU,” although Thornton fails to mention that Norway is not a member of the European Union. He claims that the EU’s “cosmopolitanism” and “multiculturalism” stoked a right-wing reaction, warning that “violence [will] be increasingly regarded as a legitimate response to the EUtopian assaults against national identity and cultural traditions”:

This fact reflects the most obvious fallacy behind the moral equivalence argument: the complete lack of anything remotely resembling a theology of violence in the Bible. Yes, there is plenty of blood and guts in the Old Testament, but as Raymond Ibrahim points out, the references to those battles are “descriptive, not prescriptive,” and reflect history rather than theology. There is nothing in the Bible remotely similar to the numerous commands to wage war against the infidel that can be found in the Koran, the hadiths, the biographies of Mohammed, and 14 centuries of Islamic jurisprudence, commentary, history, and theology.

This reliance on moral equivalence not only obscures the causes of Muslim violence. It also leads to misunderstanding the true significance of European extremism. Rather than the expression of Christian or conservative pathology, acts like the Oslo bombing expose the bankruptcy of the EU utopian dream and its notion that nationalist loyalty and Christian identity are at best passé, at worst an expression of xenophobia or racism. EUtopia has marginalized legitimate nationalist and religious identity and exalted in its place some mythic transnational cosmopolitanism and sentimentalized multiculturalism alien to the lives of most ordinary Europeans. As such it creates the conditions in which extremist, if not neo-fascist varieties of nationalism, can flourish, particularly given the growing problems of marginalized and unassimilated Muslim immigrants.

This is not to suggest that anything is responsible for the Oslo bombing other than the actions of the bomber. But it is important to understand the correct context of those actions. As EUtopia continues to unravel, both economically and as a politico-social ideal, we can expect to see extremist parties in Europe grow larger, and violence be increasingly regarded as a legitimate response to the EUtopian assaults against national identity and cultural traditions.