The Final Call

Violence blooms from Europe's seeds of hate

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'With these attitudes and realities, is it any wonder that Mr. Breivik felt a crusade was right? Is it any wonder that he would write a manifesto describing a modern Knights Templer organization devoted to purging and liberating Europe from the dark and Islamic hordes?'

Shock is visible in the eyes of those who survived a gunman's methodical slaughter of young people at a Utoya island summer retreat.

Shock emanates from the beings of those who lost loved ones and shock courses through the veins of a European nation rocked by killings once thought unimaginable—or the domain of foreigners on their soil.

The July 22 killings of some 80 people allegedly at the hands of Norwegian man Anders Behring Breivik have brought thousands into the streets of the Nordic nation and questions about how could this happen?

According to his attorney and media reports, the 32-year-old one high school classmate recalled as funny and likable is a murderer and a knight in the battle to purify Europe, and punish traitors who have bowed to multiculturalism and allowed Muslims to contaminate his country.

“The accused believes that he needed to carry out this act in order to save Norway and western Europe from cultural Marxism and Muslim takeover,” said the judge who presided over the July 25 court appearance by Mr. Breivik.

Mr. Breivik admitted to shooting and killing people and to the bomb blast that destroyed a government building, but has not pleaded guilty as he was on a mission to save his nation, according to media interviews with his defense attorney.

According to the judge, who ordered the blond-haired son of Norway held in isolation, the man who allegedly plotted and executed the deaths of his countrymen faces the possibility of a trial in early September. He is charged with terrorism and though Norway has no death penalty and a 20-year maximum sentence, authorities say there are other ways to keep him in prison, if he is deemed a threat.

While the deaths of innocent people and the taking of human life in such a hateful manner and outside of the law of God is condemned, the overarching anti-immigration, anti-African, anti-Muslim attitude expressed by Mr. Breivik is one shared by hundreds of thousands if not millions of Europeans.

The shrill voices of the right and far right echo across European society and these unwelcome foreigners are readily scapegoated. Though the outright violence may be rejected by many—especially now that violence has claimed the lives of White Europeans—the desire to be rid of Muslims and Africans remains.

In Germany, there has been disdain for Africans, Turks and Muslims and debates about how to deal with this menace. In France, there have been riots as African and Muslim youth fed up with existing on the fringes of society rebel and Muslim women face prosecution if they wear clothing that the state has deemed radical. In France and Belgium, Muslim women face prosecution if they wear face veils in public. In Switzerland, minarets, the tall slender towers usually part of a mosque with a balcony from which the call to prayer is issued, are banned. They were outlawed by a constitutional referendum in 2009.

Last March, a report by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance for the Council of Europe warned of continued violence and racial and ethnic injustice. In particular, it decried the respectability accorded the right wing British National Party, which included the election of two party members to the European Parliament in 2009.

“More racist incidents and racist offences have been reported, including antisemitic incidents, which remain high. Media is heavily criticised for regularly presenting Muslims, migrants, asylum-seekers and Gypsies and Travellers, in a negative light, especially the tabloid press, while mainstream media increasingly features antisemitic discourse,” the report said.

Meanwhile refugees “and asylum-seekers remain vulnerable to destitution, wrong decisions and wrongful detention, and the tone of public discourse remains frequently hostile towards them. … Black children are still around twice as likely as others to be permanently excluded from school, and outcomes in the field of de facto ethnic and religious segregation in schools also do not seem to have improved significantly. Not enough has been done to eliminate prejudices and discrimination in the workplace, for example against Muslims; Black and minority ethnic groups are also under-represented across the public sector.”

“Ethnic minorities continue to be over-represented in the prison population, and their proportion continues to rise. Overall, Black and minority ethnic people are more likely to be imprisoned than White people, and more likely than White people to die in prison. Black men are also around four times more likely than White men to be included in the national DNA database,” the reported added, pointing in particular to some conditions in Great Britain.

“Anti-terror provisions also continue to cause concern. Stops and searches under anti-terror legislation disproportionately affect members of Black and minority ethnic communities.Research has shown that Muslims feel stigmatised and alienated by these measures, and young Muslims who have been regularly stopped and searched feel increasingly marginalized,” the report noted.

With these attitudes and realities, is it any wonder that Mr. Breivik felt a crusade was right? Is it any wonder that he would write a manifesto describing a modern Knights Templer organization devoted to purging and liberating Europe from the dark and Islamic hordes?

In his manifesto, Mr. Breivik says he was mentored by an Englishman as part of a “group of like-minded extremists met to ‘reform' the Knights Templar Europe, a military group whose purpose was ‘to seize political and military control of western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda,' ” according to the Guardian newspaper in the U.K.

“In his manifesto Breivik said the gathering in London was ‘not a stereotypical ‘rightwing' meeting full of underprivileged, racist skinheads with a short temper.' Instead, he claimed those present were successful entrepreneurs, ‘business or political leaders, some with families, most Christian conservatives, but also some agnostics and even atheists,' ” the newspaper said.

So while respectable European groups and governments may want to condemn the ugly fruit that produced murder, the seeds of hatred and death were planted in fertile soil.

Yet despite it all and the alleged killer's self-professed political views and allegedly using violence to obtain those ends, he is not called a terrorist, in particular a Christian terrorist. Once again there is a refusal to admit the truth, the ugly truth about the disease of White Supremacy and its byproducts—whether the disease is manifested in Europe or America.

Or as writer Todd Green, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Luther College, noted, “Clearly there is a double standard. Muslims who make the same theological point as Christians—that violence and hatred are not a part of the Islam they know and practice—are routinely ignored. … Had Muslims carried out Friday's attacks (and the earliest media reports assumed as much), once again, we would be debating the face of Islamic terrorism. And once again, the religion of Islam and anyone connected with it would be on trial as suspected accomplices. As it happens, what we have is a Christian, not a Muslim, who is responsible for the attacks. What we don't have is a corresponding vocabulary and a set of unquestionable assumptions about some inherent relationship between Christianity and terrorism.”