Mass Murder Is The Problem By Anthony Gregory
(2011-07-26 at 19:43:17 )

Mass Murder Is The Problem By Anthony Gregory

The emerging prof ile of Anders Behring Breivik is not what was f irst
expected. On Friday, President Obama and the mainstream media immediately
jumped on the murder of 92 people in Norway to aff irm the war on terrors
importance. Putting aside the establishments tendency to cite both
failures and presumed successes, both acts of mass violence that came to
fruition and ones that were preempted, as vindication of the war on
terror, we should note that the administration was politicizing an
atrocity in the only way that it is ever considered appropriate: The
state can respectably pat its soldiers and enforcers on the back for
their waging wars and bashing heads; all other political points made in
the light of mass death are considered gauche.

Yet as it turns out, the alleged murderer is not the Islamist that so
many assumed. He was, instead, an anti-Islamist of the very sort that
has become commonplace in the last decade. He is a self-described
Christian and nationalist worried that Muslims will overtake the West.

He enjoyed the same neoconservative blogs read by millions of Americans.
Despite this, his act continues to be spun as a reason to worry about al
Qaedas supposed inf luence in inspiring acts of mass violence, rather
than as a warning about the threat of anti-Islamism.

And that threat is real. Many Americans think that Muslims should be
outright prohibited from building mosques in the United States. At least
one Republican presidential candidate has articulated this position
unambiguously. Conservatives ludicrously warn that Muslims will impose
Sharia law through the U.S. court system, abolishing American liberty.

Anyone who reads conservative message boards can sense the possibility
that we are one dirty bomb away from seeing our Muslim neighbors rounded
up and sent to camps. The hundreds seized without due process and
detained for months after 9/11 are forgotten, but their story reminds us
of how fragile liberty and tolerance can be.

Just because Breivik has much in common with neocons and theocons,
however, does not validate the lefts attempt to turn this into another
excuse for cracking down on rightwing thought crime. The center left
always sees such incidents as a pretext for institutional resolve against
"rightwing extremism" - Timothy McVeigh and James von Brunn come to mind.

Liberals are correct when they identify the double standard of labeling
Breivik an "extremist" and bin Laden a "terrorist." They are being
logically consistent when they say such "extremism" should be treated
like any other terrorism. But the very scary thing about this tragedy is
that the killer is not an "extremist" at all, at least not ideologically.
He is not anti-government, either, despite what many good-government
liberals imply. He loves Winston Churchill, like most neocons and
liberals. He’s very pro-Israel. His views on domestic and foreign policy
and the supposed clash between Islam and the West are all too usual in
Europe and the United States.

Anti-Muslim fear is a problem in America, but it is not that disposition
alone that should most concern us, and we must be careful in addressing
such fear. It is everywhere and usually no direct threat to anyone,
certainly no crime in itself. When Juan Williams lost his job at NPR for
saying that he felt a little uncomfortable f lying on airplanes with
Muslims - a fact that he disclosed candidly with humility toward those he
felt ashamed of fearing - his purge was most regrettable, for it only
shut down discussion and guaranteed that civilized contemplation of these
complicated issues would be unwelcome in that major media venue. It also
emboldened conservatives in their anti-Muslim sentiment.

The problem is not just fear of Muslims, but rather hateful, violent
fear. Even such feelings, however, and even the most dehumanizing of
thoughts, cannot be ameliorated by the very political system that
encourages conf lict and violence. Any attempt to turn the Utoya and Oslo
tragedy into a rationale for an anti-rightwing witch-hunt would be
misguided and counterproductive - especially coming from the very
institution, the federal government, that is more responsible for
antagonism toward Muslims than any other actor on the planet.

Indeed, even neoconservatives should be protected from government thought
control, as should have the communists during the Cold War, despite both
groups having very dangerous views when put into practice. It is not the
thoughts but the deeds that are criminal. Mere discontent with Muslims
is not the same as banning their mosques or restricting their liberties.
As for Breivik, his beliefs are poisonous; inf initely worse was his
acting on them to commit murder on a mass scale.

And this is where the real cognitive inconsistency comes in. Everyone
knows that Breiviks actions were unjustif iable. Everyone knows the same
about those who f lew the planes into the World Trade Center. But what is
not as universally understood is that mass murder is unjustif iable even
when conducted by executive order and carried out by men wearing
uniforms.

If not for the "terrorists" of both the Muslim and anti-Muslim variety,
the war on terrorism would not be easily sustained. The relationship is
mutual, as the armed conf licts incite the resentment and blowback that
are in turn pointed to as the reason to continue the wars. At any rate,
the war on terror itself is nothing but one act of terrorism after
another, day after day. Together, Bush and Obama have probably piled up
ten thousand times as many corpses as did Breivik. A week of pure terror
for Oslo, London, or Manhattan resembles an average week for Pakistan,
Afghanistan, or Iraq, thanks to the United States wars of liberation.
Norway, too, having dropped hundreds of bombs in Obamas NATO war on
Libya, is a belligerent junior partner in what many see as a U.S.-
Israeli-U.K. crusade against the Muslim world.

Sometimes the governments wars kill thousands whose lives are disregarded
as "collateral damage," since the deaths were only a side effect of the
main purpose of the war. This argument is weak, since the deaths are
completely predictable. Moreover, many modern actions of the U.S.
government involve deliberate, calculated cruelty and killing. The
sanctions on Iraq throughout the 1990s directly targeted the most
vulnerable segments of the Iraqi population. Misery and death were
purposefully inf licted on them by the hundreds of thousands, in the hopes
of prompting regime change. If this is not terrorism, then there is no
such thing.

A terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment
has said that Breiviks operation "seems to be an attempt to mirror Al
Qaeda, exactly in reverse." Yet this description just as well f its the
foreign policy of the U.S. and its satellites: Altering geopolitical
realities by treating men, women, and children as disposable pawns to be
targeted and liquidated. Killing people in large numbers for diplomatic
reasons is the very essence of modern war. Do it without the right
paperwork, and it is terrorism.

Breiviks action separates him from the millions of bigots calling for
total war but not performing it. If we look at Breiviks crimes as a
problem of ideology and not only one of action then we are stuck with an
uncomfortable truth: Engaging in mass violence that will inevitably kill
innocent people is always wrong, and yet it is not only on the fringes
of nationalist politics or on radical Islamist websites that we see
endorsements of slaughtering dozens, hundreds, thousands or even more.

The majority f inds it defensible, even honorable and righteous, to do
what Breivik did, so long as the civilian deaths are "collateral" or the
result of bombings and sanctions initiated by the president - and, for
those who are really old fashioned or progressive, ratif ied by Congress
or the United Nations, respectively. The greatest trouble with
neoconservatism, neoliberalism, and most other statist ideologies is that
they favor mass murder. It does not matter, morally, what we call it. It
makes no diff erence who arms the bombs and who f ires the weapons, whether
the hatred of the enemy is instilled at boot camp or gleaned from the
blogosphere.

Many of Breiviks targets were pro-Palestinian, likely eliciting his
special animus for daring to side with the cultural enemy. When a fanatic
takes up arms in the delusion that he is part of the war effort, we must
remember that his actions are not materially much diff erent from those of
some of the most revered warriors and leaders of history. Perhaps he is
not as deluded as those who try to diff erentiate his freelance violence
from the formal violence celebrated in parades and on national holidays.

Of course I will be accused of the great crime of "moral equivalence" -
the sin of saying that deliberately killing innocent people is always
immoral, no matter who does it or for what reason. So be it. In this
case it will be harder for the charge to stick, for all the usual blather
that typically accompanies it - "they hate us for our freedom," "they
want to wipe Israel off the Earth," "their religion commands them to
kill us all" - is the same kind of hysterical lunacy indulged in by
Anders Behring Breivik before he put his ideology of hateful
collectivism into action.

July 25, 2011

Anthony Gregory is research editor at the Independent Institute. He lives
in Oakland, California.

Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or
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