In addition to committing mass murder, Breivik harmed the reputations of the very people whose ideas he adopted

A writer named Henry Rochejaquelein writes at Jihad Watch:

Meanwhile, the peaceful efforts of patriotic citizens of Western countries to limit the assertiveness of orthodox Muslims who favor sharia have come under a terrible, blood-red cloud thanks to the actions of a single, vain pseudo-intellectual, who was willing to kill in order to draw attention to himself and happy to tarnish the reputations of dozens of non-violent writers and activists, whose ideas he shoplifted to provide himself with a manifesto.

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Daniel S. writes:

The author of the article seems much too dismissive of Breivik and unwilling to take his ideas seriously. Breivik was much more than a drug-addled video gamer who lifted ideas from Robert Spencer, Bat Ye’or, and Mark Steyn to gain some fantasy-inspired notoriety. Yes, Breivik gave much fuel to the leftists in mentioning Spencer and the others in his manifesto, but that is hardly the only or most serious problem to be analyzed and discussed. Breivik was not merely a loser, lashing out at the world. He was the unfortunate outcome to the multicultural regime that now reigns supreme in Norway and much of the West.

According to Breivik, he witnessed on numerous occasions the widespread crime and rape directed against white Norwegians by Muslim immigrants, and the utter indifference of the government in addressing these problems (much like the British government’s current refusal to crack down on black rioters and looters). In much of Europe, a man like Breivik has no real political recourse, as “right-wing” speech is tightly policed and any group or individual who doesn’t stick to the leftist, multicultural script can expect the full weight of the state and the media to be directed against them (just ask Geert Wilders and Lars Hedegaard).

Breivik, unable to ignore the evil around him and feeling powerless to stop it, embraced despair and this despair became the starting point for his revolt against the world that the liberal-left had constructed. Having no faith in the Transcendent his revolution took an ugly turn, as noted by Mark Hackard:

It was not faith that sustained Anders Breivik, but death. The living God is conspicuously absent from his esoterically atheist Europe of the future. When Christianity is mentioned in his manifesto, it is but a folkway or a construct employed for utilitarian purposes. The mainstay of the Norwegian killer’s actual ideology was unremarkable right-liberalism grounded in the Enlightenment, and as such it could offer no serious alternative to the democratic-hedonist society he opposed. Breivik instinctively rebelled against the Brave New World and with keen perception would catalogue its many revolting manifestations. Yet he was a man adrift in a Cosmos emptied of meaning. Seeing the ruin of the West before him, he only descended further into its abyss.

Breivik correctly identified Western elites’ doctrines of multiculturalism as an abomination. He would also warn of the catastrophe resulting from Muslim immigration to the Continent. The fate of European peoples was Breivik’s reason for action, but the action he took in their defense was evil. Death is the ultimate currency of any culture that has abandoned Transcendence, and Breivik reminded self-congratulatory, bourgeois Norway of this cruel truth. But by visiting death upon his nation, the young Norwegian did not fight against nothingness—he willed it. Nor could Breivik escape the desolation of radical autonomy—he heralded its dreadful consequences. Another massacre fades from the news cycle, and postmodernity still careens toward annihilation.

To dismiss Breivik as a dope using, basement dwelling loser is to miss the point entirely. Stripped of faith in the transcendent Truth, those, like Breivik, how are able to perceive the ugly social and political reality around them have no where to turn but a violent, reactive nihilism. The greatest tragedy to come out of the Norway terror attack (aside from the innocent blood shed) is not that the New York Times wrote a couple of nasty articles about Robert Spencer (after all, does he really expect otherwise?), it is that the West has become so spiritually bankrupt that even many of those who want to fight to defend it, see no where to go but descend into the very same abyss of nihilism that gave rise to the leftist, multiculturalist regime in the first place. Neither empty rhetoric about the “rights of man” (continuously spouted by the right-liberals), nor terrorist violence will save the West. Hackard says (and Henry Rochejaquelein should take note):

If the survival of Europa’s tribes in their own lands is non-negotiable in an incipient Reconquista, then even more so must be the integrity of our souls. Persecution in various forms may very well intensify over the coming years, but suffering and sacrifice, concepts alien to the ruling anti-culture, form the basis of any worthwhile victory. Knightly virtue lends no occasion for cheap hipster irony; loyalty, charity and honor descend upon our hearts and run in our blood.

Reject all murder and lies. We stand fast not for what we despise, but for what we actively love, and what we join to eternity. He who would lay down his life for a friend wields a weapon that conquers death itself. Love, be Thou our strength.

We must remain rooted and guided by the transcendent truths that sustained our ancestors for over a thousand years. The counter-jihad activists need to move past the distractions provided by the New York Times and the rest of the liberal media and reaffirm a commitment to truth and a just and honorable defense of the West.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 10, 2011 09:50 AM | Send