Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto quoted 64 times from anti-Muslim American bloggers.
A number of people in other threads have been compelled to go off-topic to discuss it, and it was suggested to start a thread about it.
My condolences to anyone who has been effected by this. I really can’t get over the fact that he shot, at close range, well over 100 young people.
I’m usually not one for crime and punishment, but this seems kind of insane:
taken from: Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera
21 years maximum, seems pretty light.
The guy has strong links to a fascist, street thug outfit here in the UK called the English Defence League.
check this out to see the face of fascism in the UK today and why anyone UK based should be down in East London to confront them on September 3rd.
Fascism has been allowed to spread in the current atmosphere of islamophobia promulgated in the right wing press here in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. If something good can come from last week’s awful happenings in Norway it’s that people will pay closer attention to casualised islamophobic attitudes and put more energy into confronting the fascist groups and far-right parties that have been gaining ground over the last decade.
It’s not quite that bad. The numbers were adjusted downwards today, and now they are 68 at Utøya and 8 in Oslo, 76 in total (from a previous max of 93).
The penalties are fairly low in our country. 21 years of prison is the maximum sentence anyone can be given, but when someone is considered a threat to society they may be instead be sentenced to up to 21 years of “forvaring” (containment: a nice word for “storage”, really) and unlike an ordinary prison sentence this may be increased, in 5 year increments, for as long as it is considered necessary to protect society. So imprisonment for life is possible, even though a life sentence isn’t. The death penalty is not an option though, and it is my impression that it has very little support in Norway even now, which I’m glad for.
I’m not sure if fascist is the right term for this man. He’s certainly not a neo-nazi, he is for example supportive of Israel. According to the analysis I heard on the radio his hate for muslims is the most dominant aspect. He’s also a christian. He calls himself a “true conservative” and a defender of christian values and European culture. He calls his enemies “multi-culturalists” and “cultural marxists”. The analyst calls him a reactionary, wanting to revert Norway to the 50s, with no immigrants, patriarchy, christian dominance, and no “moral perversions”.
One reason for attacking the Labour Party youth camp rather than for example a mosque is that he considers people who let muslims into his country worse than the muslims themselves - he refers to the politicians as “traitors”. He is extreme, but he has a lot in common with, say, the most far-right 5-10% of Norwegians, apart from the actual massacre bit. He was planning to be arrested, and wants to use the trial as a podium to preach his views.
Where he completely loses contact with reality, is in his expectation that his massacre will help start a war against muslims. His actions have done more for the acceptance of muslims and curbing of racism than anything the pro-immigration community could ever do.
The memorial march in Oslo today gathered 150.000 out of 600.000 inhabitants.
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/oslo/article4183678.ece
In my hometown the estimate is 50.000 out of 50.000 (people arriving from neighbor towns as well).
http://www.varden.no/nyheter/telemark-samlet-seg-i-sorgen-1.6384237
I guess I have some of the old Texas/Wild West mentality in me, but I believe this guy should fry. I support the death penalty when there is overwhelming evidence of guilt. As we say here in Texas, “try 'em, fry 'em, throw 'em in the hole.” Why waste taxpayer dollars keeping this guy alive?
+1
Some call it old Texas/Wild West mentality, some call it common sense. Even if it were free to keep him alive… why should we?
Not wanting to over-simplify, but - fascist is as fascist does.
Fascist ideology isn’t exclusive to German’s oppressing jews. Fascist ideology rests on essentialising certain qualities of an “out-group” such as race or religion, whilst praising certain qualities of its “proponents in-group” and usually promotes violence as a tool to realise its desired changes to society.
The most saddening thing about the Palestinian struggle is that those doing the oppression and promoting dangerous, extreme nationalist policies have suffered so greatly, and so relatively recently, from similar ideology and practices.
Villification of the left and intense “Marxo-phobia” is also a classic marker of fascisitic, far-right thinking. As is some sort of claim to being the true defender of a country’s values or morals - as if there’s some ideal, homogenous set of them that absolutely every native adheres to and desires to see in others.
Because killing people is cruel and unusual punishment, hence why society deems it necessary to punish those who kill.
Here’s a simple test to see if someone’s “solution” is in line with their religious beliefs. If it involves murdering children, they’re probably off the reservation of whatever religion they claim to be associated with.
Or am I oversimplifying things?
[QUOTE=
Because killing people is cruel and unusual punishment, hence why society deems it necessary to punish those who kill.[/QUOTE]
Its not cruel because its relatively painless and it is not unusual because death sentences have been going on for a long long time. We are way to soft on criminals. Fifty years ago, prison was not a place anyone wanted to be…at least in the U.S. There was no gym, no basketball hoops, no air conditioning, no television, and prisoners had to work to eat. This taught them at least some sort of self sufficiency. I have no sympathy for this asshole. It seems he has been a punk all his life. To quote Ron White, “In Texas if you do something really bad, you don’t wait for years on death row, you go straight to the head of the line. Other states are trying to abolish the death penalty, my state is putting in an express lane.”
Because we’re better than him. Because if he stays alive, he will be shown how wrong he was, when his wild predictions will fail.
Right, I’m with you on this.
aren’t “thou shallst not kil” and “love thy neighbor” at the top of christian values?
Cite any ideal and you will find someone who will pervert it for the name of it 
!
I know little about his beliefs or politics but the death penalty should not be reinstated for this, or any crime. Once it came back it would then set a standard to where the death penalty could be used which would mean that the standard could drop and soon enough the bar could be at killing 2 people opposed to 76.
I do agree that prisons should be made harder or a certain portion of some prisons become sectioned, with less comforts and made especially for scum like this.
Its interesting that he had links with the EDL. a group which originally gained attention because it was seen to be the non aggressive/ non nazi form of BNP. However in my veiw this has slowly changed possibly due to BNP trying to change there image to a professional political party.
The thing thats more worrying about the EDL / BNP is that they recruit young white brits in the towns with most immigrants. Where I live and many other small ex-mill towns in greater manchester are a prime example of this. Young aggressive lads with poor education and little money will always be up for a fight, and the EDL/ BNP just brainwash them with crap and tell them who to fight against. These groups need to be stopped or atleast forced underground, so that less people know about them, as everyone one of these group members are potentially as dangerous as the guy in Norway.
To me this what seems to have happened in Norway, the guy is angry at a certain group, and has taken action against another group which he holds responsible from some far outstetched link.
Word.
Imagine how different the world would be today had Americans taken a similar stance after 9/11.
As a proportion of population, Norway lost more people last week than the US did on 9/11.
One can hope that the events here may hinder their recruitment for a while. Same goes for the right wing nutters in the US.
In other news, local right wing nutters Kristent Samlingsparti (Christian Union Party) says that “The secularisation of Norway is a bigger threat than A. B. Breivik.” Good thing they have near zero support.
When the EDL march on Tower Hamlets on September 3rd it’ll be a great opportunity to embarass them by getting overwhelming numbers confronting them. Come down for it, it would be fun to start a new UAF (Unite Against Fascism) - Unicyclists Against Fascism.
Sadly I think it’ll be difficult to push the EDL and other far-right street organisations underground whilst a favourable ideological landscape is created by the tabloid press and their incessant lies about migration and Islam. Hence why we have to confront them on the streets wherever they try and whip up conflict in communities.
Yaxley-Lennon, their glorious leader, was found guilty in court this week for being the ring leader of a football brawl. Somehow he’s managed to so far avoid prosecution for and of his EDL activities.
Americans?! The invasion of Afghanistan (just to hunt for bin Laden) escalated so quickly Americans did not have a chance to voice their objections.
But millions of Americans objected to the invasion of Iraq.
It was GW Bush, not Americans.
Fair cop. I was thinking whilst writing that it was a lazy abbreviation.
Maybe…maybe not. He may never see that he was wrong, but if he does, will he ever be able to integrate back into society? It doesn’t look good on a resume to say you were in the pen for killing 70 or 80 people. I do see and understand your side of this, but for what it takes to feed and cloth this guy every year you could fund a fine arts program at a school, invest in youth programs, feed the poor, stimulate business etc. My vote is still to fry the bastard! In Texas he would be in the express lane headed to Huntsville to be tried, fried and thrown in the hole.