The killer and the counter-jihad

To save more readers the trouble of telling me that I am mentioned in the killer’s manifesto, I am aware of the fact. There are two references to me, and they both deal briefly with well known positions of mine, including the separationist strategy of removing Muslims from the West and isolating and quarantining Islam from the rest of the world. The passages are part of the killer’s thousand page thesis about the Islam problem and other problems of the modern world. He doesn’t connect me to his demonic ideas.

In fact, which I didn’t realize at first, the killer does not mention me at all, but rather he quotes extensive passages by Fjordman in which I am mentioned. Here are the two references:

Non-Muslims currently have the wrong focus. Trying to export democracy to Islamic countries such as Iraq is futile. As American blogger Lawrence Auster [127] has pointed out, we should rather be protecting our own democracies at home against Islam.

That comes from this Fjordman article.

Here is the second passage:

In the post What Can We Do? [5], Gates of Vienna republished an essay by reader Westerner which was originally posted at American writer Lawrence Auster’s website. Westerner argues that the separationist policy[6] proposed by Auster and others of rolling back, containing, and using military force to quarantine Muslims would not be sufficient to make the non-Islamic world safe, because Islamic regimes would still exist and continue to seek ways to harm us. He therefore proposes a policy aimed at crushing Islam. Nevertheless, my general policy recommendation is to advocate separation and containment. The crucial point is to stress that Islam cannot be reformed and cannot be reconciled with our way of life.

That comes from a Fjordman article at Gates of Vienna.

Of course the killer mentions many other anti-jihad writers. From what I’ve seen, those passages are similar to his references to me—scholarly sounding summaries of those writers’ well known views, not involving any connection of those writers to the killer’s evil agenda.

As for whether the killer’s adoption of traditional conservative and anti-Islam positions means that conservatives and Islam critics are going to be associated with the killer and perhaps persecuted, I wouldn’t worry about that at this point. Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch has neatly addressed the charge of association and influence and dispensed with it entirely. But, some may wonder, what if this group of crazies carries out further mass murders like the one in Norway, polarizing the politics of the West and triggering a crackdown on people like us? My answer is, how many are in the killer’s group? Ten? Five? If there is some minuscule gang of murderous loons in Europe calling themselves the Knights Templar, what is that to us?

Look at it this way. I thought that what the federal government did at Waco, Texas in 1993 was evil and criminal. Timothy McVeigh also thought that what the federal government did at Waco in 1993 was evil and criminal. Did that mean that I was associated with McVeigh in any way, let alone with his mass murder of innocents in a federal office building? Of course not. Not only was there no connection between Timothy McVeigh and myself, but I felt great happiness, relief, and a sense of justice fulfilled when McVeigh was duly removed from this world, just as I would feel if Anders Breivik were duly removed from this world—which, tragically, will not happen, because the leftist Eloi of Europe have banned the death penalty.

In conclusion, it seems to me there is just one definite new development here, that in addition to the Muslim terrorists, there is another group, of unknown size, probably tiny, which also wants to carry out mass murder attacks. That is bad news. But it is not a qualitative change from the situation in which we already find ourselves. The authorities of Europe will investigate that group and work to stop its plots, just as they investigate Muslim terrorists and work to stop their plots. There is no reason for conservatives and anti-jihadists to be fearful or lose their heads over this.

That is the way I see it now, subject to change on the basis of new information.

LA adds:

On the subject of Waco, see “Waco: A Massacre and Its Aftermath,” by Dean M. Kelley, First Things, May 1995.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 24, 2011 02:18 AM | Send