The New York times has an extensive report on the fertilizer that fed the roots of Anders Behring Breivik's extreme anti-Islamic fervor, the extremism that led him to mass murder of children. Much of the substance that fed his beliefs came from the extremist right in America.
In the document he posted online, Anders Behring Breivik, who is accused of bombing government buildings and killing scores of young people at a Labor Party camp, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch Web site, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture. [...]
The revelations about Mr. Breivik?s American influences exploded on the blogs over the weekend, putting Mr. Spencer and other self-described ?counterjihad? activists on the defensive, as their critics suggested that their portrayal of Islam as a threat to the West indirectly fostered the crimes in Norway.
Mr. Spencer wrote on his Web site, jihadwatch.org, that ?the blame game? had begun, ?as if killing a lot of children aids the defense against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, or has anything remotely to do with anything we have ever advocated.? He did not mention Mr. Breivik?s voluminous quotations from his writings.
The Gates of Vienna, a blog that ordinarily keeps up a drumbeat of anti-Islamist news and commentary, closed its pages to comments Sunday ?due to the unusual situation in which it has recently found itself.? [...]
Mr. Breivik frequently cited another blog, Atlas Shrugs, and recommended the Gates of Vienna among Web sites. Pamela Geller, an outspoken critic of Islam who runs Atlas Shrugs, wrote on her blog Sunday that any assertion that she or other antijihad writers bore any responsibility for Mr. Breivik?s actions was ?ridiculous.?
?If anyone incited him to violence, it was Islamic supremacists,? she wrote.
Ah, yes, it's the fault of Muslims that a crazy person read Geller's and others extremist anti-Muslim screeds and acted on them by killing dozens of children. If radical Islam didn't exist, then Breivik wouldn't have been provoked, or something. It's not just Geller using this kind of twisted logic, as Media Matters' Simon Maloy points out. "Even though no Muslims were involved, they are still working hard to make sure Muslims share the blame."
manifestos of political parties what is a political party world politics news international politics news
No comments:
Post a Comment