THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 183, July 27, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
NORWAY'S TERRORISM IN CONTEXT
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK'S MANIFESTO: THE NEED OF A CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION IN EUROPE & ARMED
RESISTANCE TO THE SPREAD OF ISLAM -- THE INHERENTLY EVIL & VIOLENT NATURE OF ISLAM -- THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF
PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE WITH MUSLIMS -- THE IMPERATIVE THAT MUSLIMS BE REMOVED FROM EUROPE IN PARTICULAR
& THE WEST IN GENERAL -- PRESERVATION
OF TRADITIONAL EUROPEAN CULTURE BY CUTTING IT OFF FROM IMMIGRATION FROM THE MUSLIM WORLD -- THE
POSSIBILITY FOR EUROPEAN COOPERATION WITH JEWISH GROUPS IN ISRAEL, BUDDISTS IN CHINA, & HINDU NATIONALIST
GROUPS IN INDIA TO COMBAT & CONTAIN ISLAM -- COUNTERING THE IDEOLOGIES OF "POLITICAL CORRECTNESS" &
MULTICULTURALISM
FULL STORY:
Scandinavia may look idyllic from a distance, what with royal families and prime ministers almost without security, but it
has endured its fair share of violence, from the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme to two school
massacres in one year in Finland, one killing eight, the other ten. Anders Behring Breivik's rampage, in other words, was
hardly unprecedented.
In the past, one had the cold comfort of knowing that deranged acts such as his were carried out by individuals under
the sway of extremist ideologies. Not so Behring Breivik. This terrorist lists among his favorite authors George Orwell,
Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, John Locke, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Ayn Rand, and William James. The
disconnect between Behring Breivik's mainstream political Conservatism and his psychological derangement presents a
shocking new dilemma and challenge.
That said, there is no reason to think that Behring Breivik has a single follower, that any other mainstream political
Conservative will emulate him and massacre Socialists. This has never happened before and will probably never happen
again. This is a gruesome, freakish exception.
And, yet, this exception does tell Conservatives that we have to be aware of a danger we had not thought of before. We
may oppose Socialists, but not vilify them.
Given how meticulously Behring Breivik planned not just his bombing attack and gun rampage, but also his posting of a
manifesto and a video, and given his plans to turn his trial into political theater, his terrorism appears ultimately intended
primarily to bring attention to his political views. Indeed, during his initial court appearance on July 25, the Associated
Press reports, he presented the violence "as 'marketing' for his manifesto," 2083: A European Declaration of
Independence.
In this way, Behring Breivik resembles the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who engaged in violence as a means to market his
1995 manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future. Indeed, the tie between these two is very close: Hans Rustad
documents how extensively Behring Breivik plagiarized from Kaczynski, changing only some key words.
Add to these two Timothy McVeigh (the 1995 Oklahoma City bomber) and Baruch Goldstein (the 1994 Hebron mass killer)
and one has the four outstanding exceptions to the dominant rule of Islamist mass murder. One website,
TheReligionOfPeace.com, counts 17,500 terrorist incidents on behalf of Islam in the past ten years; extrapolating, that
comes to some 25,000 since 1994. We are dealing with two very different orders of magnitude. As David P. Goldman notes,
"there is a world of difference between the organized use of horror by terrorist movements and the depraved actions of
individuals." Yes, we must worry about non-Islamist violence too, but the Islamist variety prevails and, being a vital
extremist movement, will continue to do so.
Ravi Shankar, Executive Editor of the New Indian Express, writes that "What happened in Oslo Friday may be the
early beginning of a new civil war — Europeans fighting each other, both Muslim and Christian." He could well be right.
As I argued in a 2007 analysis, Europe's Stark Options, the continent's future is likely to consist of either
Islamization or protracted civil conflict. I sketched the possibility of --
". . . indigenous Europeans — who do still constitute 95
percent of the continent's population — waking up one
day and asserting themselves. 'Basta!' they will say, and
reclaim their historic order. This is not so remote; a
chafing among Europeans, less among elites than the
masses, loudly protests changes already underway."
Although he attacked Socialists, not Muslims, Behring Breivik clearly fits this chafing. More broadly, he fits into a pattern
of growing Christian-Muslim violence visible from Nigeria to Iraq to the Philippines.
Not surprisingly, Behring Breivik belongs to the "Islam is evil" school of thought, as he frequently signaled in his
manifesto:
". . . a tolerant Islam is a contradiction, and the 'creation'
of a tolerant past for Islam to appease the position of
liberal Muslims is a lie."
". . . to take the violence out of Islam would require it to
jettison two things: the Quran as the word of
Allah and Muhammad as Allah's prophet. In other words,
to pacify Islam would require its transformation into
something that it is not."
Islam today is what it has been for the last fourteen centuries: violent, intolerant, and expansionary. It is folly to think that
we, in the course of a few years or decades, are going to be able to change the basic world outlook of a foreign culture.
Islam's violent nature must be accepted as given.
Many moderate cultural Conservatives have suggested that banning Sharia will solve all our problems and force the
Muslims to integrate. Unfortunately, Islam is a lot more resilient than most people can comprehend. Taking Sharia (and all
political aspects) out of Islam is simply not possible.
This position differs fundamentally from my own, which holds that "radical Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the
solution." While sharing common opponents, these two outlooks differ on the nature of Islam, its potential for change,
and the possibility of allying with Muslims.
Beyond massacring innocent Norwegians, Behring Breivik damaged Conservatism, the Counter-Jihad, and (in particular)
those authors he cited in his writings, including myself. A close reading of his manifesto suggests this may have been
purposeful. Noting that his former membership in Norway's Conservative "Progress Party" would do it harm, he evinces
satisfaction that this will forward his revolutionary goals:
"I anticipate that the Norwegian media will persecute
and undermine the Progress Party for my earlier
involvement in the organisation. This is not a negative
thing, as an increasing amount of Norwegians will
then have their "illusions of democratic change"
crushed (if the Progress Party is annihilated by the
multiculturalist media) and rather resorts to armed
resistance."
In a similar spirit, he writes: "America as a polity is scr*wed, and thank the gods for that."
By extension, Behring Breivik may well have wanted to harm those analysts of Islam cited in the manifesto. He calls me a
"moderate," which obviously is not meant as a compliment, and dismisses even the hardest-line critics of Islam as lacking
in courage:
"The reason why authors on the Eurabia-related
issues (Islamisation of Europe) — Fjordman,
Spencer, [Bat] Ye'or, Bostom etc. aren't actively
discussing deportation is because the method is
considered too extreme (and thus would damage
their reputational shields). . . . If these authors are
too scared to propagate a Conservative revolution
and armed resistance, then other authors will have
to."
Behring Breivik hopes to undermine anyone he perceives as obstructing his dreamed-for revolution. Temporarily, at least,
he has succeeded.
© Daniel Pipes 2011. All rights reserved.
Originally Published in National Review Online, July 27, 2011
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, July 27, 2011
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/10007/norway-terrorism-in-context
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Europe, European States, Politics, & Public Policy
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and President of the Middle East Forum,
Publisher of Middle East Quarterly,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for National Review Online, Front Page
Magazine, the New York Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and
developments in the Middle East have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network
television, as well as at universities and think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the
U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately
twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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