Exclusive: A right-wing Christian fundamentalist has reportedly taken credit for the terrorist slaughter of scores of people in Norway on Friday. The alleged perpetrators’ stated goal was to spark a Christian war against Muslims, a reaction to what he saw as a growing multiculturalism, an echo of Christian Right extremism elsewhere, notes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
July 24, 2011
News that a Christian extremist has taken credit for the terror attacks in Norway, including the systematic slaying of scores of youth at a summer camp, may be shocking but it shouldn’t be surprising.
Over the past decade, the Christian Right and many Jewish neoconservatives have pushed the propaganda theme that Islam is a uniquely violent monotheistic religion that requires special suppression if the West is to avoid having Sharia law imposed on everyone.
Of course, in making that argument, one has to wonder if these Christian/Jewish zealots have ever read the Hebrew Torah or studied the history of Christianity.
The obvious truth is that the Torah (or Old Testament) is filled with story after story of ancient Israelites striking down their enemies with ruthless force and without remorse. Christianity, at least since its merger with the Roman Empire early in the Fourth Century, has been the world’s preeminent violent religion bathed in blood and steeped in hypocrisy.
It is certainly true that radical Muslims have misused the teachings of Islam to justify horrendous slaughter of innocents, with al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks as standing as the most outrageous example. There also have been cases over the centuries of Islamic armies acting in barbaric ways.
But those atrocities have nothing over the genocides and the massacres committed by Christian armies and Christian zealots.
When the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099, the crusaders slaughtered both Muslims and Jews, leaving parts of the Holy City awash in Muslim blood. When Jews sought refuge in a synagogue, it was burned over their heads killing everyone inside as Crusaders sang songs praising Jesus.
Divisions within Christianity itself set off centuries of killing across Europe, with defenders of the Roman Catholic faith devising new and ingenious ways to torture supposed “heretics” and with European explorers carrying their righteous Christian violence across the Atlantic Ocean to where Bible-toting Christians inflicted more centuries of genocide against the native populations.
In more modern times, the anti-Semitism of some Christians, including leaders of the Catholic Church and some Protestant sects, set the stage for the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews during World War II. After the war, Jewish refugees formed Israel as a “Jewish state” and immediately began persecuting and killing Arabs whose ancestors had lived in Palestine for centuries.
During the Cold War, Christian leaders justified widespread “death squad” operations to eradicate both “godless commies” and their sympathizers, including liberal clerics known as “liberation theologists.”
Christian/Jewish-tinged violence has continued into the new millennium with anti-Islamic sentiments an underlying factor in George W. Bush’s “war on terror,” which included the occupation of Afghanistan and the unprovoked invasion of Iraq, always somehow justified by the glories of Jesus Christ or the teachings of the Torah.
In fall 2002, Bush and his team created the propaganda framework for attacking Iraq, then took the Christmas season off in honor of the Prince of Peace, before revving the war machine back up for the March 19, 2003, attack.
That sort of hypocrisy praising Jesus for his commitment to non-violence while using the religion he inspired as a way to justify mass murder has been central to the history of Christianity.
So, who can be truly surprised that a Norwegian man, identified as 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, has reportedly admitted to his role in the Oslo terror attacks on Friday?
According to press reports, acquaintances describe Breivik as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.
Though not admitting criminal guilt, Breivik explained his actions in a detailed manifesto calling for a Christian war to defend Europe against the threat of Muslim domination.
The attacks on Friday included a bombing in central Oslo and then the shooting of young people at a camp sponsored by Norway’s ruling Labor Party.
[For more on these topics, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege and Neck Deep, now available in a two-book set for the discount price of only $19. For details, click here.]
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book,Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ are also available there.
What? That is not what we could “only” say! Could it be perhaps a person who was part of something meant to demonize “white people” as the “new terrorists” as the recent, highly circulated Homeland Security video propagandized. WOW,the day after the video was released. A coincedence, REALLY!?!
Now the so called chief executive is set to approve an embassy, HERE, that basically represents Al Queda, who are now HELPING the “insurgence” in Lybia. So I quess we need some “new boogy men” because the “old terrorists are now our friends. Apparently that is now the “white christians” NOT the oriental christians, or the black christians, but specifically white christians. Well, I guess we will believe what we are told to believe. After all, it’s on the television, it must be true.
The mass murdering psychopath is a sick brainwashed patsy, who the honest news, on record and confirmed, was meeting with “Very Wealthy” movers and shakers shortly before this event. Reuters reported that too. Crazy yes, a lone nut, hardly. Think about it. Where in the REAL world does someone end up in court, basically sentenced to a mental institution, forbidden from making ANY kind of a statement, whisked away with a grin on his face, never to be heard from again, all within 48 hours of committing an incredibly evil crime?
NOWHERE! Let’s not be naive here.
This guy could care less about racial purity and religion,that is what the mainstream media CLAIMS. The reality is that this guy was a die hard totally dedicated yes man that was part of the Knights Templar, and they are NOT HARSLY interested in pushing the religious and racial agenda, it is MUCH more diabolical and BIGGER than that. I could go on and on, but you would probably call it a conspiracy theory, even though it has been confirmed by the SURVIVORS of this slaughter, that there was definitely more than one gunman. This also reported by Reuters. That’s not a “theory” that is the definition of a conspiracy. The police arrested SEVERAL others in connection to this, but let them go quietly. ALSO reported by Reuters.
If you know history, the exact thing happened with JFK, A lone gunman did that too, yeah right. How many people did this guy kill? He was able to hunt down ALL these people, as they undoubtedly scattered in all different directions, in a very short period of time, all by himself? Come on,H-E-L-L-O, is anybody home?
Believe it or not folks, this incident has nothing to do with racism, belief systems or culture clashes. Laugh if you like but I think the “devil” entered this man. It’s said that demons like to roam in isolated places (that farm he owned for instance). This same thing happened to Judas betrayer of Jesus-off he went alone to buy necessities for the apostles, to Adolf Hitler, as he was alone while approaching the Holy Lance. Now the attorney representing the accused says he is insane. This legal definition failed to properly define what really happened. From Christian text it is said, the devil was, in the beginning, a murderer. By shedding the many false issues out there in the press, and in opinion at large, the real culprit is revealed. Old Nick, Diabolos, Azazil, Shaytan, Ibliss, Belzebub.
Only a psychopath and severely emotionally challenged person would commit this kind of violence. Indeed, no matter how committed you are to a cause or ideology, I think we can agree that vicious murderers like this have something very wrong going on.
That said, the trigger that sparked this violence was Islamophobia and a racist mentality that saw different people of different backgrounds as something to not only fear but to violently strike out against.
Does this psycopath still commit violence without a racist heart? Would he find some other cause to lash out against? We can’t say. We can only say that he committed these heinous crimes in the name of racial purity and religious intolerance.
The bible says, “the one called devil and satan that is misleading the entire inhabited earth.” There are not to many people to mislead on an isolated farm. Since the demons are minions of the one misleading everyone, they have orders, and much bigger fish to fry. The more important people, who pulled this guy’s strings, now they ARE possessed by evil for sure. But hey, you may be right, he was MAJOR drugged up, which is a wide open door for the evil entities to come on in. These creatures are so powerful that they can since evil and are drawn to it like a magnet, so maybe.
Has everyone noticed that the Murdock news outlets blamed Muslims for the atrocity? Jumped the gun big time. Report first, gather facts later.
Brevik is typical of the Right Wing Zionist Christian fanatic who is becoming all too common nowadays. He hates Muslims and the Left. But I am sure if you were to replace Muslims in Oslo with turbaned Sikhs, black-skinned Jamaicans or Hispanics he would have hated them too.
As for their support of Israel, it is justified on two grounds.
First, the Zionist entity is necessary for the return of Jesus. Because, as we all know, Israel will be the site of Armageddon in which all non-Jesusers will die (except for 144 000 Jews who accept Christ) and Jesus will herald in trees, bees, ….
Secondly, Christian Zionist support Israel because they kill Muslims. This allows them to support a Crusade against Muslims vicariously through the Jews.
Sick and evil bastards these Christians! If I was a Palestinian and I saw a Christian visitor to the Holy Sites, I would fix his little red wagon good!
What kind of crazy nonsensical ramblings are you vomiting out? If you STUDY the bible very closely, the Jews rejected Jesus, even though his purpose in the beginning was to “save the lost sheep of Isreal” the Sanhedrin knew EXACTLY who Jesus was, they had specific details from EVERY prophet before him of the things he would do and where he would come from. That is why he condemned them, calling them: “vipers and children of their father the devil.” He threatened the religious leaders power and they killed him for it.
At the Last Supper, before they murdered him, Jesus made a NEW COVENANT. The OLD covenant was with Abraham and his decendents. That ended with the NEW covenant and the Jews rejecting him. Look up “spiritual Isreal” which is those that “worship in spirit and truth.” It is no longer the physical Isreal that is “chosen.” Even though many (not all) think they are. It is the “spiritual Isreal” who are of “all nations, tribes, and tongues.”
I am sorry that I did not cite Book, Chapter, and Verse for the above quoted scriptures. It’s very late. You can however, go to an online Bible and search for these scriptures by typing them in and you will see them. You will also see that I am not distorting them and taking them out of context, like the churches of christendom certainly do!
Mother Jones has posted 40+ pages of this man’s rants. The whites he killed were liberals, less xenophobic, so it seems consistent with his political views.
I think it would be wise to wait until a detailed investigation tells us more about this tragedy before jumping to conclusions about what it means.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Brevik was strongly pro-Israel and fiercly supportative of Zionism and the Jewish state. He was quoted as saying “Let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxists/Multiculturalists.”
It sounds to me like this guy is no friend of either neo-nazis or holocaust deniers — two groups that are routinely associated with the extreme right. Parts of his manifesto read like they were written by Ted Kaczynski, the unibomber whose ideas could have come from leftist global warming cultists and green environmental extremists. Also, for a guy who was allegedly a right-winger he sure killed a lot of white people.
There may be something going on here that isn’t clear just yet.
It is interesting to see – not only here, but in a lot of talkbacks on this tragic issue – the amount of denial that’s taking place. Confronted with the information that the perpetrator of the Norway terror attack is not a Muslim extremist but a right-wing native European extremist some people manage to spin the whole story in such a way that eventually the “left” is to blame. The very same is happening presently in European forums and the like, where every connection with the current right-wing discours or movement in Europe is met with fierce denial and attempts to spin the story as to eventually blame the “left” or even (sic!) Islam. How people are capable of such newspeak without choking in their own hypocrisy boggles the mind.
Beautifully said.
Fascism, of which Naziism is a variety, are Right Wing elitists, with much in common with many US neoconservatives and Tea Party Republicans. The real target of the Right is, unsurprisingly, the Left, who defend fairness and justice for the poor in our societies, not the elite rich. That is what Jesus did, something the Right always ignore! This man physically attacked Left leaning youth, and the leftish government’s buildings, as we might expect.
Fascists want an unpopular victim. It does not have to be Jews, and in these times immigrants, particularly Moslems, are chosen for preference as being widely unpopular, and therefore suitable targets of Right Wing hatred. He invokes hatred of Moslems as an excuse because the Left is characteristically more tolerant than the Right, and can be attacked as being pro-Moslem when they are pro-fairness.
His obvious ally in attacking Moslems is Israel, which is fervently anti-Moslem and anti-Arab, and is implementing elitist laws favoring Jews above Arabs, and is pursuing typically Rightist policies in directing the world’s venom against their victims, the Palestinians. Moslems are today’s Jews, Gaza and the West Bank are today’s ghettoes, Zionists are today’s Nazis, and have justifiably been called Jewish Nazis. Right Wing Authoritarian groups admire and venerate Israel as their spiritual brothers. It all feeds well into this murderer’s Right Wing strategy.
Absolutely right on, Mike. It’s good to see people willing to speak the truth, regarding this issue.
It’s totally ridiculous. If you dig to find the real story you’ll find out something very different about the maniac demon that shot all these people.
He is NOT a religious fundamentalist.
His Facebook page, of which there are screenshots, said nothing of the sort. He stated point blank that he was a liberal, he supported homosexuality and abortion. That’s not a religious fundamentalist. Funny, but his facebook page doesn’t say all that now, wake up.
This guy is going to end up in a MENTAL INSTITUTION after killing all those kids. Are you kidding, who do you think that it is protecting this guy!?! Awaken from dreamland!
Search for JFK and Eisenhower speeches about an organization in this world that is so evil, so secretive, so organized, so ruthless that for years no one would even speak about it. This guy was admittedly part of that!
You think this guy did this on his own? Why then, did the most respected news man in Britain report that the police knew his name and exactly who he was before they even arrested him.
Get a clue, this had NOTHING to do with Muslims. White al queda, nazi, fundamentalist, which one is he? Come on mainstream, bail out money getting, front man, propaganda machines, get your story straight.
And… This racist jerk above that is talking about killing white people and how “white people” all want to kill people of color, this guy is a dillusional sociopath.
I am white and I have MANY friends that are people of color from many countries. It’s people like that make this world terrible. He’s part of the problem, get it?
The writer of this initial column is an ill informed double talker. The “opinions” he spews out are meant to do nothing but incite trouble. I can hardly believe that most of these people are so ill informed and bow down to the propaganda.
I am sure that probably the so called editors of this RAG won’t publish this because they THINK that they are really with it, but what is in store is in store for them too. They just THINK they are elite, but guess again.
AND… This Robert Parry doesn’t know the first thing about religious history. He is basically making it up.
The Roman emporer Constantine, in the fourth century declared, what HE called christianity, to be the state religion because the christians were becoming a strong POLITICAL force. He claimed that it was because he saw a vision of Christ on the battle field. Yeah right, on the battle field!?! I don’t think Christ approved of violence, come on. POLITICAL. The “church” sham came along later.
OK, be the open minded professionals that you claim to be and put this post on the blog!
The left and right, that is a smoke screen and suckers fall into that. The media pushes the “left” and the “right” but it is just a paradimn. This is designed to keep us fighting with one another, while the corrupt banking cartels, destroy the independence of countries through financial terrorism, strife, misinformation, and total wicked corruption. There are evil forces behind all this meant to deceive us all and bring us to our knees. And I have news for you: YOU are the US!
What are “normal” Mercans?
No need to bash Christianity in connection with this latest atrocity by a madman. Referring to hundreds of years old history in terms of things like “death squads” shows a mind imposing present standards on past history and different cultures. That is not to say that some awful things were done in the past in the name of religion.
As a resurrection believing Christian the Norwegian tragedy is beyond tragic, for the victims, their families, and the psyche of a nation. It is also a huge setback for Christianity, as if we needed another. This is not just past history. Disciples of Christ Johnson lied us into Viet Nam and incinerated thousands upon thousands. Born again President Bush II lied us into Iraq and killed thousands, renditions, and torture. The self declared Christian Obama has continued Bush II policies in Afghanistan. Over 95% of Congress claims Christian affiliation and our foreign policy has been oppressive toward weak countries since Wilson as we extract their natural resources. or their votes for us in the UN. I could wish our leaders would be as honest as Pete Stark of CA and say “I have no religious affiliation.” Foreigners may still like ‘Americans, but there is a reason many hate ‘America.’ And Christians vote these people into office—even giving Bush a second term. No wonder the early church had nothing to do with politics prior to Constantine. They understood Christ.
excellent and well said.
the church made its pact with the “devil” constantine and it has been profitable for the church ever since
You are still assuming that Muslim extremists (conveniently dead or torured into confessions) were responsible for 9/11. The enquiry was about as fair as the one on JFK’s death. This suspect sounds very like hundreds of “normal” Mercans.
Look, not all Muslims are extremists. I am even willing to say that the last few decades of ignorant Western actions created the modern day extremists. But in your opinion, if Muslims did not do it, who did?
the problem with the west / whites and more specifically american whites is that they do not want to admit that their behavior against people of color in the world for the last 300 years or so is the real problem. the arab muslims just happen to have access to enough money to strike back.; believe me if the south americans, or the africans or the folks in viet nam or the folks in australia / new zeeland had the money and weapons they would of been blowing up white countries too and non of them are muslims.
whites always call people “extremest/ or terrorist” who resist the bullying of white countries. Whites even called crazy horse one of the american indians who were fighting the outright theft of their entire country., a extremest terrorist.
what does God think about that level of theft and hypocrisy???!!!
This racist jerk Thomas above that is talking about killing white people and how “white people†all want to kill people of color, this guy, this goof, is a dillusional race bating sociopath grunting and muttering out hate and division.
I am white and I have MANY friends that are people of color from many countries. It’s people like this opinionated moron that TRY to make this world terrible for everyone else. This bitter little man is part of the problem, get it?
Oh and by the way Thomas, I am not 300 years old and neither is anyone else I know, so this “white” had nothing to do with any of the events you vomit about.
Race, for me and many others, including my friends of color, has nothing to do with anything and your ignorant unmitigated gaul is preposterous. Wherever you come from or WHATEVER you come from, go back there, sit down and quit showing people your ignorance. It’s like school in the summertime, no class. I’ll stop, but you go me started.
Plenty of evidence says ” MOSSAD ” Also don’t forget your BOY, Clinton’s war in Bosnia/Serbia and his bombing of Gadaffi
Do you mean MOSSAD did 9/11? If so that would run against a whole bunch of evidence. I would, however, like to know your source.
If you are referring to Clinton as “MY boy,” he is not my boy. I only gave examples because the list is too long. Note that I included both Democratic and Republican presidents. I do not play favorites. I do not vote precisely because I do not want to implicate myself in what power hungry presidents do, nor do I wish to impose Christian morality on a reluctant populace through legislative or judicial processes.
I may have misread you. If so, my apologies.