After the recent attack in Norway people on the left have been moving to accuse the attacker, Anders Behring Breivik, of being a right-wing extremist while the people on the right have been moving to accuse him of being a left-wing extremist. When you look at the available evidence though one thing becomes apparent, like most similar situations, this man wasn’t left, he wasn’t right, he was plain crazy.
This fact is reflect in a book that he wrote entitled A European Declaration of Independence [PDF]. You’ll notice that I’m hosting this file on my server. This isn’t because I condone any material in the book, in fact I firmly oppose this man’s viewpoints and manifesto, I’m hosting it because I feel it is required material to understand the fact that this man wasn’t left or right. I’m also guessing that there will be some pressure to have this document removed making any third-party hosting potentially unreliable.
The document is also quite long and thus I have not read it, I’ve only skimmed it to get a possible understanding of what “logic” was going through this man’s mind. The passages I’ve selected are purposefully selected to demonstrate the point that this man can’t be considered a right or left-wing extremist. Likewise the document is basically a criticism of Islamic religion which I’m not going to touch with a fucking cattle prod.
Others can accuse this person of being a religious extremist but I submit that a man who is willing to initiation violence isn’t right in the head to begin with. It doesn’t matter if a person is Christian, Muslim, Atheist, etc.; if you are willing to initiate violence in an attempt to advance your cause you’re not a sane individual. I don’t believe such people kill because of their religion but use religion to justify their desire to use violence as a means to achieve their goal.
Just think about most of the people who kill in the name of their religion, they select particular passages from holy books that seem to justify their actions but in the end what these people are always after is control over others. It’s pretty fucking easy to claim God, Thor, Shiva, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster told you that they were angry with the human race and have selected you alone to be their messenger. When these people are able to fulfill their religious crusades they always place themselves in a position of absolute power by claiming to be the prophet of whatever religious deity/deities they’ve chosen to use to justify their desire to rule over others.
Look at any secular state and you’ll notice that they’re generally run by one or, at most, a handful of people who have absolute authority over the populace. In the case of any secular state, unless those in power wrote the religious material, the holy passages they used to justify their rule can be countered in another holy passage of that religion. This is why I’m not going to touch the subject of religion here, I don’t believe it’s the religion that leads to violence, I believe a control-hungry person uses religion to justify their actions. Whether the person uses propaganda in favor for or against a religion is irrelevant as well, it’s still using religion as a justification for action.
Now that I’ve got that rather long statement out of the way let’s look at some of the entries that make this man appear right-wing:
I would personally say that the emphasis on the individual is our most defining trait as a civilisation[sic]. Both Muslims and internal collectivists hate our individualism the most, because it stands in the way of their ideologies.
Traditionally right philosophy is centered around the individual while left philosophy is centered around society as a whole. Stated that emphasis on the individual is a defining trait would lead people to believe this man was right-wing in his thinking.
The West has traditionally been a rational civilisation. We now have an emotional culture, which we see clearly in the immigration debate where emphasis is on whether you “feel good” and whether your “intentions” are good when you support mass immigration, not on rationally calculating the long-term consequences of your actions.
This criticism mirrors ones often made by the right against the left; that the left arguments are based around emotional instead of logical statements. It’s very common for somebody who identifies themselves are right-wing to accuse those identifying themselves as left-wing to be creatures of pure emotions and lacking any logical reasons for their arguments.
We are fighting for secular laws passed with the consent of the people, not sharia nor transnational legislation drafted by bureaucrats and technocrats unaccountable to the people. We do not want to be held hostage by international NGOs, transnational progressives or self-appointed guardians of the truth. Likewise, we are fighting for national sovereignty. No nation regardless of political system can survive the loss of its territorial integrity, but democratic states especially so. We pay national taxes because our authorities are supposed to uphold our national borders. If they can’t do so, the social contract is breached, and we should no longer be required to pay our taxes.
The idea of a country being independent of national organizations is generally considered right-wing, as is the concept of having strong border defenses. Likewise it is generally those on the right who state that we should withhold (or reduce the amount paid) taxes if our government is not doing the desired job.
It is insulting that two thirds of the Dutch, one of the founding members of the European community, voted against the proposed EU Constitution, and yet EU leaders will apparently just ignore this and force their massively undemocratic Constitution down people’s throats anyway.
Most people who identify a right-wing were against the establishment of the European Union Constitution as it was done without the consent (vote) of the government. Meanwhile many who identify themselves as left-wing claim the establishment of the Constitution was the right of the various states to form a more unified organization. As such a constitution promotes a unified European identity many large government advocates were in favor of its establishment.
Now that I’ve identified a handful of passages that establish this man as a proponent of right-wing philosophy let me bring up some passages that will establish this man as a proponent of left-wing philosophy:
Decrease global consummation through implementing protectionist policies.
Protectionist policies and other government interferences with the economy are traditionally left-wing ideas. Proponents of right-wing philosophy generally believe less government interference with the economy is better.
All globalist companies will be nationalised (a minimum of 50,1% ownership must bere- distributed to EF governments hands (combined) at any given time, for their respective countries).
Nationalization of means of production is a left-wing idea. Those who are identified as right-wing usually hold a strong hatred of nationalizing any business; instead they promote privatization of currently nationalized service.
Phase out diesel/benzin vehicles (and thus end our dependency on Muslim oil) and focus on commercialising electric cars/battery cells. This will be a lot more significant problem in the US due to their decentralised infrastructure but much easier in Europe. Larger vehicles (trucks/planes/ships) will in the unforeseeable future still have to rely on diesel/benzin/bunker oil until we have managed to develop battery cells with sufficient power. The development of these battery cells will be a prioritised task.
Trying to end our dependency on oil is generally a left-wing idea although the justification is usually environmental by nature.
First of all we have to ask ourselves. What population size can our planet support? This can be rephrased, in ecological terms, as “What is the carrying capacity of the planet”, as applicable to human populations, specifically. The carrying capacity is the number of individuals an environment can support without significant negative impacts to the given organism and its environment.
The idea that we need to control the human population is another idea that’s generally left-wing in nature. The justification, again, is generally environmental in nature. The desire to reduce the human population is another idea promoted by those who believe we need to move to a “green” society.
There are many more passages in this book that could be seen and either right or left-wing. My goal in this post isn’t to pull out every possible passage for analysis, it’s to point out the fact that this man can’t be seen as either a right or left-wing extremist. He’s fucking nuts, plain and simple. His book promote both individual and socialistic views which are generally incompatible. Although he views individualism as a defining aspect of European society he also believes in nationalization of global companies which is a very anti-individualistic view.
I’d also like to raise a huge fucking middle finger to those who started accusing this man of being a Muslim before any fact came to light. This type of jumping to conclusion is counter-productive and downright sickening. The reason I waited so long before making any statement about the Norwegian tragedy is because I wanted some kind of factual information at hand to make a judgement. The man wasn’t Muslim, quote the opposite is true, he hated Islam and blamed it for all the ills facing Europe.
As I said at the beginning on this article, a person’s religion is not what should be seen as the reason for his or her violent actions. All religions can be used by the violent to justify their actions. Claiming that some deity or deities demanded that you perform acts of violence is nothing more than an attempt to seek validity by these people. A majority of people on this planet are peaceful which is evident by the fact we have working societies. Most Christians, Muslims, Jews, Atheists, etc. are peaceful human beings whom hold no desire to harm their fellow people.
We need to stop looking at abstract groups as the source of violence and instead look at the individuals who commit violent acts. Just because a Christian, Muslim, Jew, or Atheist commits an act of violence doesn’t mean that their respective group is inherently violent. Let’s stop pointing fingers are groups and start holding individuals accountable for their actions.
As a final note I found this statement in the man’s book to be worth a brief discussion:
Needless to say, this is also why Muslims have such a poor track record in science.
I found the passage completely absurd and it demonstrates this man’s willingness to be very selective in his historical research. The portion of history often referred to as the Islamic Golden Age demonstrates that Muslims have a long history of scientific advancements. Islamic science made great contributions to the fields of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, geography, and many others. To say that Muslims have a poor track record in science is ignorant and a downright lie.