Norwegian Right-Wing Anti-Islam Terrorist Cited Tea Party, Nazis

Breivik in uniform of revived Knights Templar
Breivik in uniform of revived Knights Templar
In the hours immediately after the dual terror attacks in Norway last week — the bombing of a government building and a shooting rampage at a summer camp for teenagers interested in liberal politics — that left 92 dead, many conservatives in the United States (particularly this one) leapt to the conclusion that al Qaeda or some other right-wing Islamic group was responsible.

In fact, for American conservatives, especially members of the tea partyist movement, the perpetrator of the attacks was much closer to home, ideologically speaking. Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist, has much more in common with American right-wing terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph than he does Osama bin Laden.

Here is Breivik, writing in his 1,500-page manifesto, titled “2083 — A European Declaration of Independence”:

We, the European Revolutionary Conservatives, know very well that it will take many years, even decades before we successfully manage to consolidate to a degree where we can seize political and military power in the first Western European country. In the US, the Tea party movement is one of the first physical, political manifestations which indicate that there is a great storm coming.

Another tangential connection to the tea party: In 2010, Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers-funded tea-party astroturf group, spoke at a conclave of the Progress Party, the right-wing Norwegian political party in which Breivik claims membership. There is no indication that Breivik attended the meeting.

According to the Examiner, Breivik also cited Nazism as having some “solid and good principles,” but that he had to hide his admiration for the National Socialist movement, which slaughtered 6 million Jews and started World War II, during which tens of millions more were killed, out of fear he would be persecuted for his views.

About Nazism, Breivik wrote:

It is uncertain whether we can achieve ideological progress and success without defending principles embraced by the N[ational]S[ocialists], such as monoculturalism. You cannot hope to implement a monocultural system model without a good portion of patriarchal oriented leadership.

In addition to his allegiance to European Revolutionary Conservatives, Breivik also claimed membership in an anti-Islamic cell calling itself the Knights Templar, a reference to the Medieval order of Catholic priest-warriors who played a pivotal role in the Crusades.

Juan Cole at Informed Comment puts the historical reference into context:

…Breivik spoke of being a member of the “Knights Templar,” and if anything is further terrorizing about Friday’s attacks beyond their own horror, it is the possibility that an organization was behind them or that there are other members of it as looney and violent as Breivik himself. Likely it was just a conceit, or the other members are not as maniacal as Breivik. The name, of course, refers to the medieval order coming out of the Crusades.

Breivik visited Malta, where the remnants of the real Knights Templar, having turned their resources over to the Knights of St. John the Hospitaller, had run a pirate mini-state for a few hundred years in the early modern period. Breivik, from a Protestant background, advocated a return to Catholicism, but not to the really-existing current church, rather to a pan-Christian revival of a Crusade theocracy…

[The Knights Templar] grew out of the Crusades, which was a murderous and unprovoked attack of European, Latin Christians on Byzantine Greek Orthodox, on Jews, and on Muslims in the Levant, involving sordid episodes like the ‘Children’s crusade’ and the slitting of the throats of all Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem when it first fell. (The Muslim riposte under Saladin was considerably more ambiguous, involving Christian alliances and internecine Sunni Muslim fighting).

The Knights ironically fell victim to the very Christian fanaticism that provoked the Crusades in the first place, being accused of heresy by the Inquisition, tried, and largely disbanded. Some off their considerable assets (deriving in part from plunder) were given to a kindred organization, the Knights of St. John the Hospitaller, who eventually were kicked out of Rhodes by the Ottoman Empire and continued their activities, including piracy, on the island of Malta, which they took over.

And, finally:

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 Knights, both Templar and Hospitaller, came to an end because fanaticism eats its own children, and because a new world was imagined by American and French revolutionaries and later on by people like Goethe and Ralph Waldo Emerson, in which sharp divisions between Self and Other of the medieval variety were replaced by a global, modern Self. As Walt Whitman put it, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” Breivik and his Knights are small, and hateful and isolated. The rest of us are building a global civilization.

How fearful is the American right of being connected with Breivik’s views? Big Government, the website operated by the right-wing racist provocateur Andrew Breitbart, already has a headline up that attempts to preemptively deflect blame: “Will the Left Blame Conservatives and the Tea Party for the Norway Tragedy?”

Hat tip to JS in the comments

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2 thoughts on “Norwegian Right-Wing Anti-Islam Terrorist Cited Tea Party, Nazis”

  1. The state interference in the social relationships of modern Britain leads to such hypersensitivity it really is hard to work what we are allowed to say any more. All I know is that if I insult my white, straight, male, non-disabled friend, then all will be OK. If I slightly insult anyone from any other category I can lose my job. To be honest, I’m not even sure on this? It seems like a giant race to the bottom to see who can claim to be the biggest victim sometimes.

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