I wrote that last post at 1am, thinking the matter so urgent that I’d better put in my two cents right away as the Right prepares for a worldwide onslaught. I don’t think I clearly stated my conclusion: Breivik is what people would call a moderate conservative. If he got in a conversation with us, he would surely accuse me of being a homophobe, Justin of being an antisemite, and Larry Auster of being a racist. And that’s what really makes it the worst of all possible scenarios. Any anti-terrorism investigator reading up on Breivik’s blog posts and also reading Throne And Altar, The Truth Shall Set You Free, and View from the Right would have tagged Breivik as the least dangerous, the least extremist. So, if being a Geert-Wilders type “let’s limit Muslim immigration to protect our Jews and queers” Rightist is basically the same as being criminally insane, what will they conclude about the rest of us?
Filed under: Europe |
Throne and Altar 
Would you elaborate? how do you mean that you’re more extreme than the Norwegian? Would you go as far as kill innocents to underscore your message?
I wouldn’t, but the theoretical part of his manifesto doesn’t seem to lead to murders either. I’m more extreme in that I reject the ideology on which the West is currently run more fully and categorically than he does. Suppose you had just heard that a right-winger had been arrested after a shooting spree, and someone gave you two exerpts–here and here, told you that one of them came from the shooter’s manifesto and the other from a mild-mannered physicist, and asked you to guess which is which, could you do it? I don’t see how.
He means in terms of politics. Breivik was relatively mundane as far as European conservatives go.
I remember reading an interview with an American criminal psychologist who believed that politics actually only played a small role in the Unabomber’s motives — the psychologist’s theory was that he was actually just a psychopathic sadist who enjoyed hurting people for its own sake, and that the anti-technology stuff was just a pretext he used to rationalize it. Given how mundane Breivik’s politics actually are, I’m becoming more and more convinced that this is the real explanation for his rampage as well.
Not that that will stop the Left from using it to demonize us as violent maniacs.
To be fair, I think the Throne and Altar version of conservatism is so completely outside of the mainstream that “the Left” (which is apparently an evil monolithic entity) would have a hard time getting riled up about it.
If Average Joe were to read this website he would probably conclude that the author was a D&D geek or something of the sort.
What if the guy had been a Jewish Maoist? Would you put any effort at all into separating his political beliefs from his actions then?
Yes.
I think the real comparison is, what if he had been a run-of-the-mill social democrat? I think we on the Right would find his behavior odd.
The word “extremist”, as previous comments demonstrate, can be confusing. It can mean “someone willing to go to extreme measures, such as murder, to accomplish his goals or promote his ideas”. Or it can mean “someone holding views that are further removed from the centre of whatever is currently regarded as being mainstream than other people.” There is no necessary connection between a person’s being an “extremist” in the first sense and his being an “extremist” in the second sense.
So, if being a Geert-Wilders type “let’s limit Muslim immigration to protect our Jews and queers” Rightist is basically the same as being criminally insane, what will they conclude about the rest of us?
I don’t want to find out. In his manifesto the Norwegian bomber:
– Doesn’t like racism and advocates the proposition nation
– Only has a problem with Muslim immigration and has exalted Africans as good immigrants
– Has no problem with homosexuality and transgenderism
– Was raised by a single mother (his father divorced his mother when he was young)
– Likes paganism and doesn’t consider himself religious (Christian)
– Despises how the left smears the right as fascist and advocates that he is against fascism
– And so many other things
What on earth makes him “far-right”? Is this some weird (possibly mentally ill) anti-government bomber being remodeled to leftist orgasmic fantasy?
To be fair, I think the Throne and Altar version of conservatism is so completely outside of the mainstream that “the Left” (which is apparently an evil monolithic entity) would have a hard time getting riled up about it.
You’re right that they would have a hard time getting riled up about it. The left is always accusing of libertarians and neoconservatives of being religious extremists, regressives and fascists. And they’re liberal “conservatives”. Go figure.
If Average Joe were to read this website he would probably conclude that the author was a D&D geek or something of the sort.
How long is the manifesto? 1500 pages? I heard he lived in seclusion for 1-3 years. The Average Joe would probably see an obsessed geek and for good reason.
Bonald, that’s another good point. If Breivik had been a Jewish Maoist, I would have been more willing right off the bat to consider the possibility that his beliefs led to his actions. (Although I certainly “wouldn’t have put any effort at all into separating his beliefs from his actions.”) This is not simply because I disagree with Communism, but because Communism has a much more extensive history of violence than does conservatism. (Jews aren’t very violent, I suppose, but Zionists often are.) I would have reacted in the same way if he was, say, a neo-Nazi. a Muslim extremist, an animal rights radical, a Basque separatist, an Irish Republican, or whatever.
I wouldn’t, and no double standard would be involved. Neo-conservatism and Communism are different ideologies with different histories, so that we expect their adherents to behave differently. Violence generally and copious murder specifically (directed against domestic enemies) is exactly what any sane person expects from commies because that’s what they do. Neo-conservatives are murderous in their own way, but they are mostly into murdering Arabs and Muslims in far away places using military power. Street murders are a commie and nazi thing. Not exclusively commie and nazi, of course, but definitely not neo-con.
I think that this is exactly right.
A good friend of mind is a convinced Jacobite (and has a website dedicated to the cause). In principle, he regards the Queen and her Government as illegitimate usurpers and wants to bring about a constitutional revolution. However, he is about as likely to take up arms to achieve this objective as he is to fly to the moon, so MI5 and Special Branch have (to date) wisely left him alone.
I agree – throne and altar conservatism is simply not “the enemy” in the way that Islamist terrorism has been and anti-Muslim right-wing terrorism (for want of a better term) now apparently is. I doubt that it’s on the radar screen of the likes of the FBI, and if it is, it shouldn’t be because the likes of the Count de Maistre don’t incite their followers to acts of violence to change society (as our host has reminded us, Maistre actually called for “the opposite of a revolution”, not “a revolution in the opposite direction”).
As for D&D, I’d amend that to Aristotelian-Hegelian philosophy, but either way, it’s a far cry from someone who would turn firearms on youths at summer camp.
The good news is, his blog posts were his “cover identity”, not reflective of his true ideology. He actually explains this strategy in his book. He is a hardcore Euro-Nationalist. He is calling for open warfare against European multiculturalists, including assassinations, followed by eventual revolution and deportation of all Muslims out of Europe. After reading his book, anything in our end of the blogosphere looks tame indeed.