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The Bombs in Afghanistan Have Landed in Norway
A decade of Islamophobia to justify the war in Afghanistan is now spreading violence to the West. Right-wing Islamophobe Anders Behring Breivik has killed 91 people in Norway, through the explosion of a bomb near the Prime Minister's building and a shooting spree in a youth camp organized by the Workers’ Youth League.
The initial response by international media was to blame Muslims. But when the alleged perpetrator turned out to be a blond-hair, blue-eyed Norwegian Christian nationalist, some are now denying there’s any context whatsoever for the killing. As a Norwegian official said, "It seems it's not Islamic-terror related. This seems like a madman's work."
But Breiviks was not driven by "madness," he was driven by right-wing Islamophobic politics. From 1997 to 2007 he was a member of the xenophobic "Progress Party." Since that time police chief Sveinung Sponheim describe his internet postings as having “some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views”, and others have pointed out his an admirer of prominent anti-Muslim individuals and organizations like Geert Wilders and the English Defense League.
Islamophobia
Islamophobia existed well before the terror attacks of 9/11. After the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 (orchestrated by Gulf War veteran and right-wing extremist Timothy McVeigh), the media blamed Muslims, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee documented death threats against Muslims and vandalism of mosques. But for the past decade there has been a surge in Islamophobia to scapegoat populations at home and justify wars abroad. The Western countries with Islamophobic policies overlaps with those occupying Afghanistan: from the US (which incarcerated Muslims without trial in Guantanamo Bay), to Canada (which has rounded up Muslim men and pressured them to admit to terrorism, while Muslim Canadians have been abandoned abroad, and media have amplified fringe-group campaigns against prayer spaces), to France (which is banning girls who wear hijab from school, and women who wear niqab from public space), to Norway.
The website Islamophobia-watch has documented anti-Muslim racism around the world, which in Norway includes:
- 2006: the Directorate for Primary and Secondary Education of Norway banned girls and women wearing niqab form school
- 2007: anti-immigration politicians in Bergen threatened to use pigs feet to chase praying Muslims out of a public square.
- 2009: the Norwegian government tried to ban female police officers from wearing the hijab
- April 2011: attempts were made to set up a Norwegian Defense League -- modeled on the English Defense League--with a demonstration was called against the “Islamic occupation of Noway”. While only 10-15 Islamophobes turned up, up to 1000 people attended a counter-demonstration
- May 2011: a school in Bergen had to be evacuated when a national newspaper received a message threatening “A massacre at Gimle school Bergen. Everyone that stands in the way will die, especially Muslims.”
But police have refused to see Islamophobia as a threat. “It’s surprising, because the Norwegian police have long said that the right wing extremist community was under control,” said Hegghammer, of the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment.
Fight poverty, racism and militarism
As Martin Luther King famously said:
“The bombs in Vietnam explode at home. They destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America. If we reversed investments and gave the armed forces the anti-poverty budget, the generals could be forgiven if they walked off the battlefield in disgust. Poverty, urban problems and social progress generally are ignored when the guns of war become a national obsession.”
The horrific crimes of Anders Behring Breivik have exposed the consequences of war and Islamophobia, which are intensifying in the economic crisis. To counter this we must follow the words of King: "Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism."
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26 Comments so far
Show AllIMO, It's not any religion in itself. It's the conservative extreme fundamentalism along with it that I believe plays a factor in these acts of terrorism and shootings. This seems to be the common denominator.
Hmmm
It might be pertinent to mention here that the 91 people murdered had just finished a protest rally supporting Palestinian State Hood. Many of these teens were the sons and daughters of movers and shakers in Norway that are openly and actively calling for a boycott of Israel for refusing to stop the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank and denying Palestinians their own State. Clearly Israel had the means motive and opportunity here. It is also important to note that this was NOT the work of a lone gun man. Numerous arrests have been made clearly showing that this was a conspiracy that goes beyond simple religious bigotry. Which country or group stood to gain from this attack? Clearly Israel for one. An entire generation of leading youths advocating for freedom have been exstiguished.
You seem to assume that the Palestinian plight is THE cause for the most mainstream political party of Norway for the past 70+ years.
Never mind their building of the welfare state which is the single reason we're so well off today as we are.
Never mind they're the reason why workers have the right they have.
Never mind they are the bridge builders between ideologies.
There are only two parties openly against an Israeli boycott. Mossad came here 40 years ago and killed a Palestinian man, a Norwegian woman's husband in a case of mistaken identity, but then again there was a political shitstorm over it. You seem to assume that Mossad have free reign over the wiping out of the next generation of the largest left wing party of our country. From where do you get the inference?
Please stop with all the conspiracy theories, stop with the American partisanship. We follow different rules here in Norway. We are angry, we mourn, we weep. But don't for one second think you can compare yourselves to us. Don't think we will react as you did. Don't think we think the same as you. We are all "white" I guess, and by heavens do our radio waves get blasted by the same brain numbing shit as do you. But we are NOT alike. That doesn't mean I prefer one over the other.. Or I guess in some cases I do. I like "more democracy" better than I like "The Patriot Act", but leave that as it may. You might think us similar, but it is all superficial. We have VERY different psyches.
Well said.
I had also heard it was Israel. And why should this sound so off base? Israel has either bombed or invaded Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Iran. I think that's just about all it's neighbors. I don't see that all the neighbors are bombing and invading each other so that sorta leaves Israel as the extreme antagonist.... along with the United States (cause we give them money planes, bombs, arms and nukes). 9/11 - wasn't that because of, "the suppression of the Palestinian people" bin Laden. They know where all the money and arms came from. If we don't step away from Israel, we're going to be in some deep shit. . . . .again.
Nope.
A bunch of Norwiegian kids supporting Palestine do not matter to the point of Israel killing them.
Yes. It was NOT the work of a lone gun man. It was the work of right wing racists. Why are you so afraid of confronting the right wing racists?
I can't put it better than this from today's Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/24/charlie-brooker-norway-mass-killings
so much of our thinking is done for us...we are incredibly vulnerable to the lies and whims of those controlling such input...
even in a world arguably based on science, we are told, at times, to ignore science...to favor faith over fact...
facts would not support our current, decade-long anti-Muslim media barrage...no wonder it was so important to dispose of the 911 evidence...it makes any story so much easier to tell...
I'm with you, dubet. While this article does tie this terrible event to the larger context of the anti-Muslim wars and propaganda, like all such writings, it doesn't go to the heart of the matter, which is the false narrative constructed of the 9/11 events and all that followed. And yet this is the very foundation of the edifice of lies that has yielded such bitter fruit in Norway.
Nor is anyone in the MSM pointing out how closely these new European rightwing extremists dovetail with the extremism of Zionism and indeed feed off of it, especially in the distortions presented in the MSM's coverage of events in the Middle East and the world. And yet this is a very new development, as European rightwing extremism goes, and should therefore merit deeper analysis. These new fascists are not anti-Semitic or even anti-Zionist. On the contrary, they make common cause with the Zionists in defense of some vaguely defined "Western values." This Norwegian creep couldn't have been clearer on this issue in his dubious "treatises."
Lest anyone misunderstand me, I am not, at this point, positing any sort of "Israeli false flag" explanation for this event. It's timing is curious, coming as it did after some major official statements vis-à-vis Israel by the Norwegian goverment and the pro-Palestinian rally held by the same party on the same island the previous day, but there really is no evidence to support such a theory, at least so far. More interesting, and pertinent, I think, is the fact that the culprit himself had so absorbed the predominant Zionist narrative of present-day geopolitics as to be able to rationalize in his own mind an attack intended to "raise consciousness" about a "threat" that has been fabricated out of whole cloth by the Western MSM. It is only one step from that ugly anti-Muslim Tea Party rally in California, of which we witnessed videos here on CD and elsewhere, and the mass murder perpetrated by this self-styled paladin of "Judeo-Christian values."
The heart of the matter is not 9/11.
"And yet this is the very foundation of the edifice of lies that has yielded such bitter fruit in Norway. "
No it really isn't. Anyone who pays any attention to European politics knows it isn't. There are a slew of right wing racist parties and organisations in much of Europe, some of whom have even become mainstream. 911 is a factor, but hardly the foundation.
The Islamophobia fostered and promoted by the media after 9/11, despite the lack of evidence (aside from false planted evidence) linking Islamic estremism to the event, has played a very large role in stoking the racism and chauvinism of such European rightwing groups. Granted, they had always been Islamophobes and anti-Arab racists, but 9/11, and the ensuing propaganda, took the hatemongering to a new level.
Once again, Europe is not the US. 9/11 did not happen in Europe.
Bombings in London, or Spain did (you might argue that those were false flag attacks too, sure, but they are not 9/11). And those rightwing racist groups have been there before 9/11 (there targets even now, are not limited to Muslims / Arabs). Despite what people on CD think, Europe is not some paradise when it comes to race, much of Europe can be / is pretty damn racist once you start scratching the (liberal) veneer off (obviously that racism is often linked to class to: the racism is not targetted so much at wealthy / middle class non whites, but towards working class / poor non whites).
Apparently, Glenn Beck has compared the victims of this atrocity to the Hitler Youth:
http://www.nationalconfidential.com/20110725/video-glenn-beck-compares-attacked-norway-youth-camp-to-hitler-youth/
Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it.
C.C. Colton
Active insanity strikes again, another diseased mind has run amok. Or should we call them "muckers", as did John Brunner in his dystopia "Stand on Zanzibar". Whether it has come from genetic variations, an upbringing, pyschoticisms, a blinkered society, another mind has grown with unquestioning, deeply programmed intolerance, and the desire to do something about it. Only the mucker takes it out on defenceless innocents of his own kind, although here the targets were also political.
The mucker has identified the differences, and the enemies. The mucker cannot put up with the tolerant amoungst his own, and for some reason feels that a general war against tolerance is to be started.
So how was this ever supposed to work for the good of anyone? Islamophobes become haters of parts of their own society that do not share their own views. The targets of hate are contagious and everyone has become a hate target to the mucker. The contagion occurs in the corrupted brain of the mucker. The end result is the hatred of the muckers own society that was supposed to be the object of protection from the original targets of hate. It is a form of mental illness, with manifestations in everyday behaviour and discourse, a little bit of it with paranoia everywhere.
Some parts of our mental diseases are in patriotism and nationalism. The threats are not an evil external terrorist organisation out to disturb the world. They are in the thoughts and feelings of everyone walking amoungst us, when there has not been enough love to go around, and blame shifts to violence. At least in the English language, the end result is that we are all "mucked up", messed up, mixed up and buried in the dirt. Too many lives get mucked up. Premeditated violence unleashed. The accummulative effect is evil. Wounds scar over, but the disease continues.
This affair in Norway has nothing to do with religion. None of the invasions and occupations in the middle east do. Religion is just a distraction to divide the
people and cause chaos while the US and Israel steal everything that isn't nailed down, and for that they rip out the nails. Norway was a Mossad operation designed to divide the Norweigan people and make them suspicious and uneasy in their own country. The goal is to get them to disengage from supporting a palestinian state. Divide and rule is as old as the hills. A strong and peaceful Norway that defends the rights of the Palestinians is a threat to Zionism. It doesn't get much more obvious..
It doesn't get much more obvious that a whole slew of purposeful idiots are screaming in unison here that Israel has done the mass killing in Norway. Despite zero supporting EVIDENCE.
You are an ass, all of you are asses. You present zero evidence, you put together a string of inferences and suppositions, you are a group of ugly and despicable cretins.
Cui bono, the question is asked, who benefits? Cui bono? i'll tell you cui bono: fascism benefits from your lies and distortion, that's who benefits. You come here to sow confusion and doubt, while the real fruits of decades of sowing right-wing racist hatred and fantasy fall ripe in our lives again, and instead of digging into the multiple roots and branches of this fascist right-wing hatred and fantasy, there is a whole crew here who always finds one root for all evil: Israel and Zionism.
Well as has to be repeatedly pointed out by people who call idiots like you what you are, i'm not supporting Israel or Zionism. But you are a purposeful idiot, sowing confusion and distortion with a string of inferences and suppositions.
Based on the logical tool of cui bono, i infer that you are a supporter of the continued successful sowing of fascist fantasy and hatred. STFU.
if mossad were behind the norway attacks, i'm sure they wd have made it point to a muslim extremist, not a conservative anti-muslim. mossad wants to make muz look bad. if mossad had done this to undermine norwegian support for palestinians, they wd not have co-opted a blond haired, blue eyed norwegian. they wd have used an arab. i have to say, your 'theory', which is based on nothing, is not only not 'obvious', it is counter-intuitive, and down right nonsensical.
I have to say that you have a strong argument against this particular conspiracy theory against the Jews. From where I look the hatred of rightwing extremists for leftwingers is almost palpable. We had the McCarthy witch hunt before now and we see the virulent phenomenon of the Tea Party just months ago. Can anyone imagine another country where a rightwing corporate panderer like President Obama is called a "socialist", and some bleeding heart useless liberals are called "Pinko" and "Commie"???
I can. It is Norway now. I could be Denmark. It could be any European country where adverse living condition bring out the dormant racists, and other stripes of CULTURAL SUPREMACISTS. In many cases they could merge in one individual (I mean the race and cultural supremacist deseases) at the flick of a "SWITCH", like the word-trigger planted into a hynotised patient and then activated post hynotically.
The author of this article states, "Breiviks was not driven by "madness," he was driven by right-wing Islamophobic politics. From 1997....he was a member of the xenophobic "Progress Party."
How would the author define "madness"? The absurd excuse given by Breiviks for his murderous rampage is accepted by the author. But the hateful personality type of Breiviks will always find a reason to murder. Furthermore, the author himself states Breiviks was anti Muslim since at least 1997, long before Afghanistan.
no, not 9/11, but the "war on terror" yes that. the decision to spread hate and fear of Islam as a reaction to 9/11 implemented and enforced by the world's only super power has spread u.s. madness to the world. bush and obomber are crazy for what they have been doing, this guy, also crazy, learned islamophobia from them