More on the Norwegian Right Wing White Gun Loving Terrorist

From the AP, by way of the STrib:

Suspected gunman's background puzzles police in Norway massacre, no known links to extremists

STOCKHOLM - The 32-year-old suspected of massacring at least 80 young people at a summer camp and setting off a bomb in downtown Oslo that killed at least seven is a mystery to investigators: a right-winger with anti-Muslim views but no known links to hardcore extremists.
"He just came out of nowhere," a police official told The Associated Press.
Public broadcaster NRK and several other Norwegian media identified the suspected attacker as Anders Behring Breivik, a blond and blue-eyed Norwegian who expressed right-wing and anti-Muslim views on the Internet. Police have the suspect in custody.
Norwegian news agency NTB said Breivik legally owned several firearms and belonged to a gun club. He ran an agricultural firm growing vegetables, an enterprise that could have helped him secure large amounts of fertilizer, a potential ingredient in bombs.
But he didn't belong to any known factions in Norway's small and splintered extreme right movement, and had no criminal record except for some minor offenses, the police official told AP.
"He hasn't been on our radar, which he would have been if was active in the neo-Nazi groups in Norway," he said. "But he still could be inspired by their ideology."
He spoke on condition of anonymity because those details had not been officially released by police. He declined to name the suspect.
Neo-Nazi groups carried out a series of murders and robberies in Scandinavia in the 1990s but have since kept a low profile.
"They have a lack of leadership. We have pretty much control of those groups," the police official said.
Breivik's registered address is at a four-story apartment building in western Oslo. A police car was parked outside the brick building early Saturday, with officers protecting the entrance.
National police chief Sveinung Sponheim told public broadcaster NRK that the gunman's Internet postings "suggest that he has some political traits directed toward the right, and anti-Muslim views, but whether that was a motivation for the actual act remains to be seen."

The Norwegian Terrorist Attack - white, right wing, christian fundamentalist terrorist

Cross posted from Penigma, because I believe this is an important issue. Please note that MikeB's blog roll is different from the penigma blog roll; but there are plenty of working links to the Cole post.

The Norwegian Terrorist Attack: White, Right Wing, Fundamentalist Christian Terrorists

Let me direct our readers to a blog from our blog roll which has addressed this better than anything I can write, Informed Comment, Juan Cole's blog.  You can access the pertinent post by clicking here, or by clicking on the listing for it on our blog roll.  It is excellent, and rather than being ideology driven, it is factual.

Their headline: White Christian Fundamentalist Terrorism in Norway.

That the horrible terrorist attacks in Oslo on Friday that left some 90 persons or more dead– a bombing of the prime minister’s office and shootings at a Labor Party youth camp– were allegedly committed by a blonde, far right wing Norwegian fundamentalist Christian rather than by a radical Muslim group is being treated as a matter of surprise in some quarters. But if those journalists and analysts had been paying attention, they would not be surprised at all.

and

Europol reports have long made it clear that the biggest threat of terrorism in Europe comes from separatist movements, then from the fringe left, then from the far right. In 2008, only one terrorist attack out of hundreds in Europe was committed by radical Muslims. In 2010, according to Europol [pdf], 7 persons were killed in terrorist attacks. Some 160 of these attacks that year were carried out by separatists. The number launched by people of Muslim heritage? 3. It would be silly to maintain that Muslim radicals do not pose a threat of terrorism; indeed, many plots were broken up by European police. But as an actually-existing phenomenon, terrorism in Europe is mainly the work of Christian-heritage people. For more on the Norwegian far right, see Firstpost.com.

Cole addresses a topic I have written about on Penigma, the crisis in this country of Islamophobia, which is actively fear-mongered by the right wing of our politics.  It is not a problem unique to Norway by any means.  We have only to listen to presidential candidate hopeful Herman Cain, or look at the provisions of the Iowa pledge signed by Michele Bachmann and Ick, er, Rick Santorum, provisions which are promoted by Gingrich, Huckabee, Pawlenty and pretty much all of the other GOP hopefuls.  We have only to look at the number of states which have passed incredibly stupid and unnecessary legislation about Sharia law, which is NOT in any way, shape or form a threat to our law, our autonomy, or our way of life, legislation which singles out and demonizes a legitimate religion for treatment that is different from any other religion.

The right uses all kinds of fears to gain support, mostly from low-information people who believe wildly inaccurate things about people they identify as different from themselves, as different from conservative, white, Christians.  It is what that right will do, both legally and illegally, that threatens our life, liberty, pursuit of happiness and our very multi-cultural melting pot American way of life.
Quoting again from Cole:

The suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, is anti-multiculturalist and believes that the Qur’an commands Muslims to be extremists. His attack on the Labour Party appears to have derived in part from its insufficient hate of people of other cultures. Breivik’s discourse, about Islam and the Qur’an being *essentially* evil, is part of the Islamophobia promoted by some right wing forces in the west; and his actions show where that kind of thinking can lead.

Read Professor Cole; his post is EXCELLENT.  And then take another long hard look at the message of the right wing media, and the politicians who want to run for President (and governor, and senator or congressman).  It will make you think, and it might even scare you a little.  It should shake you up, because to be safe, we must focus proportionately on the actual, factual sources of potential terrorism, and not be distracted or diverted by Islamophobia, no matter how hard the right tries to make it an issue.