For the past two weeks our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has been pondering the meaning of what happened to his country on July 22. The result is this essay about the Oslo attacks, and the political blame game that occurred in the aftermath of the killings.
Some thoughts on the Oslo terrorist attacks
By The Observer
July 22, 2011 will be a day Norwegians will remember for the rest of their lives. It was the day when the ugly face of terrorism made its appearance and delivered a decisive and deadly blow at the heart of what used to be a good and safe country to grow up in.
Many people naturally assumed that it was the work of radical Islamists when they first heard of the attack. It made sense, since radical Islamists are behind almost every single terrorist attacks in the world today. But when it was eventually confirmed that the perpetrator was a non-Muslim ethnic Norwegian, many reacted with utter disbelief. They found it almost impossible to comprehend. How could a Norwegian do such a terrible thing? Surely Norwegians don’t behave in such a manner? Personally, I wasn’t all that surprised. What surprised me was that it had taken this long for something to happen. The tensions have been simmering for decades now, and it finally came to a boil.
In the aftermath of any catastrophe or traumatic event questions needs to be asked. Could anything have been done to prevent this disaster, and should we have been able to foresee these attacks?
These questions will be asked for years to come and different people will give different answers. Some will try to be as honest and truthful as possible, but other more unscrupulous souls will use this incident ruthlessly as part of their political strategy. The mostly leftist media in Norway have chosen this later path. The debate has been raging ever since the attacks, and left-wing journalists and left-wing political commentators have had a field day ever since they discovered the identity of the perpetrator. When it finally dawned on them that it was a Norwegian male with “right-wing extremist” views who was behind it all, they started pouncing on the conservative wing of the blogosphere with gusto unlike anything we’ve seen in Norway for a long time.
It doesn’t matter to the MSM that the right-wing community in Norway have never advocated violence, but rather spoken out about the dangers of an unrestricted immigration and asylum policy. But why should the media let facts get in the way of a good story? It’s not surprising at all. Everyone with of average observational ability knows that the media in Norway have given Islam a free pass.
The cowardly deference Norwegian papers bestow on the practitioners of Islam is mind-boggling. One could be excused for believing that the majority of journalists in Norway are in fact Muslims. But this is not the case. The typical left-wing journalist in Norway is a radical atheist. But the way he or she keep idolizing the practitioners of Islam has almost taken on a religious character.
The Norwegian media still continue to praise and make excuses for Islam, just as they have done following every single Muslim terrorist attack since 9/11. They don’t call for measures to be taken to root out undemocratic and extremist views from mosques in Norway the way they are demanding of the rightwing Norwegian blogosphere at the moment. They still praise Islam, even though the intelligence services in Norway have stated that Islam poses a far more serious threat to the country than any right-wing Norwegian extremist.
Nor was it a surprise that they would stoop this low, to unscrupulously use a massacre to try and stifle the debate on Islam and restrict freedom of speech in Norway even further. The right was finally starting to gain some ground in Norway by sticking to facts and trends. The only way the left could hope to discredit them was by the use of deceit and intimidation, and the left have taken to this task since the attacks like a duck takes to water.
But no one in the left-wing media or the left-wing political establishment has so far addressed the pink elephant in the room, which is of course the sacred multicultural project, the highly prestigious pet project of the political elites. No one seems to be willing even to hint that Breivik’s actions could perhaps be a direct result of the totalitarian and autocratic nature of the current immigration and asylum policies that are in place in Norway today. The Norwegian authorities, like in most Western “democracies”, have chosen to exclude the majority of the population from having any say whatsoever regarding the matter. Only the privileged few in the higher echelons of the political establishment get to have their say on this matter, and they’re all enthusiastic proponents of the scaling down of Norwegian culture and Norwegian majority population in Norway. If they have their way Norway will soon resemble a miniature version of the UN, where people from all corners of the globe will have an equal stake in the country. In his manifesto Breivik prominently mentioned his hatred for the political elites and their undemocratic facilitation of the multicultural society.
I certainly don’t believe the pathetic hype that the extreme leftist MSM is trying to sell to the masses that Breivik had been brainwashed by these right-wing bloggers, I think Breivik, like any sane Norwegian, was able to see the consequences of the disastrous Norwegian deconstruction policies first hand, and decided that he didn’t like what he was seeing. He would also have realised after a while that there was very little the average person in Norway could do to change these things. He probably also came to the conclusion that the political elites were acting in a very undemocratic manner when it came to implementation of these policies.
In the last 20-25 years the multicultural project has resulted in a transformation of Norwegian society that is so monumental that it almost defies belief. The society that Breivik grew up in is completely alien to the society we have today. In 1980 there were only 1,000 registered Muslims in Oslo. Today immigrants and their descendants make up 8 to 12 percent of the total population of the country, depending on how you classify an immigrant. It is almost unthinkable that someone like Breivik would have carried out such an attack in Norwegian 25-30 years ago. It would never have happened, because there wasn’t any danger of Norwegians ending up as a minority in their own country back then. Today, however, this is a very likely scenario.
Breivik is rightly referred to as an extremist by both sides of the political spectrum. He’s an extremist in the way he behaved, willing to kill innocent people in order to achieve his political goals. But the authorities in Norway are also extremists. It’s an extremist ideology to try and completely alter the demographic makeup of your own country and to render your compatriots a minority. And it’s extremely undemocratic to make such a decision without first consulting the national populace.
Breivik is an extremist, but his view that Islam is the biggest single threat to the West today is not in my opinion an extremist view. It’s a realistic and truthful view. It’s much more extreme to accommodate and facilitate the mass influx of immigrants that Norwegian authorities have done for the last three decades.
Conservative and anti-Islamic blogs have only emerged into the light of day because of the gross misconduct of the governments of the West in this matter. The anti-Islamic political commentators haven’t appeared because the people of the West have a strong dislike people for people of Arabic descent. The people of the West are probably the most generous and tolerant people in the world today. The truth is that the people of the West have reached this stage because they are worried, and rightly so, about the undemocratic doctrines of the religion of Islam. They have foreseen an immigration policy and a cowardly appeasement towards Islam that is going to lead the continent towards a catastrophe if it is not dealt with properly.
This terrorist attacks clearly shows that there is a democratic deficit in Norway. One can only hope that the authorities are going to reflect on this and not continue on the same path they have for the last few decades, completely ignoring the will of the people. The Norwegian people rejected EU membership twice in referendums in 72 and 94. They rejected it because they didn’t want to be governed by undemocratic elites in Brussels, but the Norwegian authorities couldn’t care less, and they have as per today implemented more EU directives than any other country in the EU zone. And we’re not even members of this undemocratic organization!
The Schengen agreement — which has facilitated the enormous influx of asylum seekers — has never been submitted to a referendum, and the Norwegian people have never had a say in this matter. This is not what democracy is meant to be like. Democracy is supposed to enable majority rule, not minority rule. Nor has the EEA treaty, of which Norway is a signatory and which is basically a miniature EU membership, been submitted to a referendum.
Last year more than twenty thousand asylum-seekers arrived in Norway, most of them bogus, and most of them without any need for protection. Even the UDI (Department of Immigration) has admitted that 90 percent of all asylum-seekers arriving in Norway are bogus. Still these asylum seekers are allowed to stay, and with all the legal loopholes they’re allowed to remain in Norway for years, and many of them get to stay in the country permanently. Is that democratic? Even asylum-seekers who have committed rape and other serious crimes are allowed to stay. All expenses paid. This massive influx of asylum seekers would have been impossible had it not been for the borderless Europe, courtesy of the Schengen agreement — to which, as mentioned previously, the majority of Norwegians have never given their consent. And it’s all made possible thanks to a tiny minority of elite politicians that have indicated that they couldn’t care less about the wishes of the Norwegian people.
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg mentioned in his speech after the attacks that the ones who did this were never going to destroy our Norwegian democracy, but many Norwegians would argue that Norwegian democracy doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just a word without any meaning, used to describe the political system that we all pretend that we have in Norway. Breivik is merely a symptom of this democratic deficit. In reality the only real political influence Norwegian voters have these days is the opportunity to cast their ballot card every four years, and that’s about it. The voters get to choose their own dictators. There really aren’t any significant differences in the established political parties. They all embrace multiculturalism to varying degrees. I maintain that Breivik’s actions could only be possible in a country where democratic principles have been thrown on the rubbish tip, and Norway is most definitely such a country.
What will happen in the aftermath of this incident? In many ways I believe the authorities are relieved that the incidents were carried out by an ethnic Norwegian “right-wing extremist”, and not by Islamic extremists. It means they get to continue to abuse their power for another couple of years at least. It would have been a different story if it had been an Islamic terrorist attack. If that had been the case, the media response would have been completely different. True, there wouldn’t have been any unified calls for stronger measures taken against the Muslim community, nor would there have been any calls for clamping down on Muslim blogs and internet sites. We all know the mantra by heart now: Muslims are peaceful and Islam is the religion of peace.
But at least we wouldn’t have to listen to the hypocrites of the extreme left demonising the honest people of the right for their “fascist mentality” and supposed eagerness to aid and abet terrorists, all thanks to the action of a lone psychopathic madman who didn’t like the multicultural society imposed on him by the leftist authorities.
Whenever there have been Islamic terrorist attacks — and they have been quite numerous — the authorities and the media have always advised us not to draw any hasty conclusions. And they have always reminded us that the great majority of Muslims are peaceful and law-abiding. One single and very lone right-wing extremist strikes, and the entire right-wing community in Norway are made culpable. Blogs, authors and internet forums are instantly labelled breeding grounds for violent rightwing extremism.
The foreign minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Store, even went to a local mosque in Oslo in the aftermath of the attacks and apologised on behalf of the Norwegian people to the congregation for Norwegians having the gall to initially suspect that this was a Muslim terrorist attack. And I can guarantee that Gahr Store will very soon be back in the Middle East revisiting his buddies in Hamas and calling for a dialogue with the Taliban in Afghanistan, but then again those groups are “freedom fighters” and not terrorists.
Breivik’s actions are inexcusable and his motivation for targeting his victims is peculiar. But there is no denying that he planned his actions meticulously, and that there was a method to his madness. Unlike most terrorists, he also planned the aftermath of the attacks in great detail. He wrote a 1500-page manifesto in which he laid out with detailed precision and accuracy what is wrong with the West today and how a solution can be reached. He has made this manifesto public online, where it has gone viral. It has probably been downloaded by several million people by now. He decided to be captured alive so that he could use his court case as a media platform to convey his views and political ideas. These ideas would never have reached the MSM otherwise.
The authorities should ask themselves some serious questions about the effects of their multicultural policies in the aftermath of this event, and not give the impression that they’re even more determined to continue with these policies in the future. Is it a logical and rational response to an attack that came about as a direct consequence of this policy? Do the authorities really believe that the people share their enthusiasm about the destruction of their own unique race and culture? A question that is worth asking is how many immigrants the authorities believe Norway can accept before serious tensions begin to arise. The majority in Norway are opposed to this immigration, so why do the authorities till embrace it? Why don’t they listen to their own people?
The current political establishment is guilty of creating an atmosphere where attacks such as Breivik’s are possible. Many Norwegians feel that there is almost a complete breakdown of law and order in Norway at the moment. There certainly is a complete breakdown in border control which has enabled hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers to settle in Norway on unjust grounds, many of them criminals and many of them welfare recipients adding a great burden to Norwegian taxpayers. And this influx is going to continue in the future, because the authorities are unwilling to and totally inadequate at dealing with these issues in a proper manner.
Wherever there is an absence of hope, there’s fertile ground for desperation and radical reactions. For some time now we’ve had articles in the media predicting that within the next few decades ethnic Norwegians will become a minority in their own country, but there’s hardly any debate about this in political circles. The political establishment seems content with this scenario, but the people certainly aren’t, and that is something that the authorities need to realise as soon as possible.
