Tuesday, April 10, 2012

What Breivik Has in Common with the U.S. Extreme Right

If THIS is what it takes to 'save' European culture, if this is what 'European culture' condones, it should not survive.  From what I have seen of Europe, this has no connection whatsoever to their culture, and the act of blowing up innocent people, the act of hunting down unarmed innocent children and shooting them like slaughtering animals is anathema to that culture.  In much the same way that the actions of Timothy McVeigh and his co-conspirators Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier are profoundly un-American traitors and domestic terrorists to the cultural and societal values of this country.
None of the above are heroes or patriots; they are just thugs who dress up their brutality with delusions of politics, as a thin veneer over their hate and cowardice and heinous attempts to feel powerful through destruction of others where they cannot succeed in building anything themselves.
Too bad for Breivik that Norway doesn't have the License to Kill laws; he might try the same tactic as Zimmeman and claim to be afraid, only of cultural diversity.  That is the essence of his argument, however badly flawed.  It is more likely as a message to alienate the people he claimed to be defending, sending them away from his extremist ideas of cultural identity.
This video is of CPAC 2011, prior to the Breivik massacre.
And this is a YouTube video of the 2012 incarnation of another 'western culture' America-for-whites group after the Breivik slaughter of innocents.

It is a stain on the U.S. that our "gun culture" and right wing extremists contributed to Breivik's actions.  And sadly this is exactly who OUR  own right wingers are, as evidenced by their inclusion of White Supremacists with a similar message at the 2012 CPac just a month and a half ago, along with the Youth for Western Civilization.


I would include those individuals and groups who want to make the United States 'english only' instead of richly diverse linguistically - including the inaccurate remarks of Rick Santorum to the people of Puerto Rico about having to speak English to become a state - as part of the same end of the spectrum as Breivik and the others above.  American culture and our language continually adopts and adapts with words from the other cultures of the world, and we are richer and more expressive for it.  There are some concepts that simply do not translate easily, and must therefore retain their original word or wording.
The GOP and Tea Party - a mostly old bunch of out-of-touch white people wanting to return to the inglorious days of yesteryear that were violent and shameful then and are as intolerant and shameful now.

from Reuters by way of MSNBC.com:
Norway mass shooter Anders Breivik declared 'sane'
By Reuters
Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik was sane when he killed 77 people last summer in attacks he saw as punishing "traitors" who favored immigration, a psychiatric team said on Tuesday, in a report contradicting an earlier one that found him psychotic.  

Breivik himself has insisted he is mentally stable and demanded that the attacks - the most violent in Norway since World War Two - be judged as a political act rather than the work of a deranged mind.

The mental health experts' main conclusion is that defendant Anders Behring Breivik is considered not to have been psychotic at the time of the actions on July 22, 2011," Oslo District Court said in a statement.
A report completed in November found Breivik to be a psychotic who also suffered from paranoid schizophrenia during and after the July 22 attacks.
A final ruling on Breivik's mental condition will be made by a five-judge panel near the end of his trial. The latest report could give the judges grounds to sentence Breivik to prison if found guilty.
His trial on terror and murder charges is due to start next week and is expected to last 10 weeks.
Breivik, 33, has admitted detonating a bomb that killed eight people at government headquarters in Oslo, then massacring 69 people with gunfire at a Labor Party summer camp. Most of the summer camp victims were teenagers.

In a preliminary court hearing Breivik denied criminal guilt and suggested his actions were part of a war to save European culture.
If Breivik is found guilty and the judges side with the latest psychiatric report, he could face 21 years in prison with the potential for indefinite extensions to prevent him from repeating his crimes.
If he is eventually ruled psychotic, Breivik would likely face an indefinite period of psychiatric care in a locked facility.
Breivik's defense team has said its primary goal at the trial would be to prove their client sane.
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Too bad the defense team cannot prove their client a proper human being.  These people are not crazy for the most part - with the possible exception of Jared Loughner.  These people are just pitiful, nasty and scared of living in the real world as it exists - scared for all the wrong reasons, scared of all the wrong things, like fearing people who speak more than one language, like fearing unarmed teenagers.

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