En parallell betyr altså ikke at situasjonene er identiske, men at det å bruke den ene til å belyse den andre øker vår forståelse av begge. Ikke minst bedrer det på perspektivet. Når man står midt oppi den politiske debatten er det lett å glemme at flere av de evige, urokkelige sannhetene bare er en generasjon eller to gamle. (Selv Orientering var israelsvenner frem til slutten av 60-tallet, da de skiftet linje under press fra ml’erne.) Landskapet endrer seg, og plutselig blir den første den siste, og den siste den første.

Paralleller som dette forteller oss ingenting om hva som kommer til å skje, men de sier noe om mulighetsrommet, og de forteller oss både at det politiske landskapet kan endre seg raskere enn vi tror, samtidig som den underliggende dynamikken i politikken kan forbli den samme selv når alt tilsynelatende har endret seg.

Les resten hos, nettop, Document.

Jeg har nemlig et dilemma. Jeg elsker bøker, (jeg drømmer om å gjøre som Onkel Skrue – fylle en hel binge og bade i dem), og leser flere enn de fleste. Men det er vanskelig å rekke mer enn 1,5-2 bøker i uka, og når det er mange uforutsette aktiviteter, kommer jeg fort ned i 1.

Og det er tross alt ikke så mange bøker. I innkjøpslisten min på Amazon ligger det over 100. Så jeg må velge. Skal jeg bruke tid på en bok noen anbefaler, eller ikke? Hvilke anbefalinger skal jeg stole på?

Les resten hos Aftenposten.

Kort tid etter 22. juli sa Thorbjørn Jagland at terrorangrepet viste at «den gamle lærdom gjelder: All nasjonalisme kommer fra noe dårlig, og fører til noe dårlig». Nasjonalisme ble en gang sett på som grunnmuren i det norske demokratiet, men har kommet til å bety noe utelukkende negativt. «Nasjonalist» brukes nærmest som et annet ord for «høyreekstrem».

Men hva om nasjonalismen ikke er god eller dårlig i seg selv, men avhengig av hva vi fyller den med?

Les resten hos Aftenposten.

Cornelius Jakhelln skriver i Raseri – en hvitings forsøk på en selvbiosofi at han har en indre fascist han kaller Sturmgeist, et rasende mobbeoffer som ikke føler seg hjemme i Det Nye Norge, og tiltrekkes av norrøne symboler og autoritær estetikk. En indre fascist er det nok flere av oss som har. Min egen hilser jeg på når jeg ser tilstrekkelig heroiske filmer, og jeg lar ham iblant slippe ut i form av et uforsonlig hånflir. Deretter er det tilbake i dypet med ham.

Hos Jakhelln ligger han nærmere overflaten. Jakhelln kaller Sturmgeist en parasitt, men det er kanskje riktigere å si at de lever i symbiose, for det er dette raseriet han kanaliserer ut gjennom sine dikt og bøker, og bandene Solefald og Sturmgeist. Det er ikke alltid klart hvem av dem som til enhver tid har overtaket.

Les resten hos Morgenbladet.

Den beste oppsummeringen av debatten etter 22/7 er at alle har fortsatt å snakke om det samme etter terrorangrepet som de snakket om før, bare enda ivrigere, og med kraftigere skyts. Det gjelder nok meg også. Det er som om vi tidligere har slåss med hverandre med nevene, og så deler noen ut kniver til alle sammen, og vi fortsetter som før uten å innse at innsatsen nå har blitt høyere. Det ender ikke i blåveis lenger, men i blod.

Les resten hos Document.

Det er ikke alltid lett å tilhøre den innvandringskritiske siden av norsk innvandringsdebatt. Hvis du mistenker at den ikke-vestlige innvandringen nå foregår i et tempo samfunnet ikke klarer å håndtere, plasserer du deg på utsiden av det gode selskap, med begrenset tilgang til de viktigste mediene. Og du opplever at de som står på innsiden, gang på gang får lov til å definere deg og de du er enig med som dårlige mennesker. Du tar ikke bare feil, du har et tvilsomt menneskesyn. Du er «grums», et «troll», «høyreekstrem», «islamofob».

Det blir det gode mot det onde. Gode hensikter mot mørke fordommer. Og du er en av de onde.

Les resten på Aftenposten.no.

Jeg finner det dypt urettferdig at enkeltmennesker kan skrive seg inn i historiebøkene ved å gjennomføre spektakulære voldshandlinger, at de kun ved å drepe kan dytte samfunnet i nye retninger. Jeg protesterer.

Vi burde ikke la det skje. Vi burde være så sikre på hvem vi er og hvor vi vil hen at slike hendelser treffer oss som en stein treffer vannet, og drukner i basisfaktorer.

Les resten hos Minerva.

Riktignok er virkeligheten et terningspill, og de samme terningene som ga oss norgeshistoriens verste terrorangrep kunne lett ha rullet annerledes, og gitt oss alt fra et mislykket angrep til et som var langt verre.

Men dette er en naiv vinkling. Angrepet var usannsynlig, men det skjedde faktisk, og det både hadde en meningsfull årsak, og kan ha meningsfulle konsekvenser.

Årsaken var meningsfull til bristepunktet. Angrepet gir bare mening for de som lever i counterjihadistenes fantasiunivers, hvor vi har blitt forrådt av den politiske eliten, og står på randen av borgerkrig med muslimene, men slik er det alltid med ideologisk vold. Den er både meningsløs og meningsfull på en gang.

Noen foretrekker å beskrive Behring Breivik som gal. Manifestet antyder at han isåfall er gal slik Hitler var det: På en måte som ikke lar seg forstå uavhengig av ideologien hans. Å ikke lese mening i angrepet er å vike unna en tung men nødvendig oppgave.

Hvilke konsekvenser skal dette få for oss andre, mer jordnære? Igjen er det naivt å si at fordi knapt noen innvandringsmotstandere har oppfordret til vold, så kan innvandringsdebatten fortsette som før. På samme måte som bilbomben etterlot et krater i Regjeringskvartalet, har 22. juli etterlatt et krater i bevisstheten vår. Landskapet har endret seg.

Angrepene har vist oss innvandringsdebatten vi trodde vi kjente på en ny måte. Retorikk og ideer mange har tolerert og omfavnet fremstår nå kvalmende. Innvandringskritikere som harmdirrende har angrepet dobbeltstandarder og ryggmargsløshet blant sine motstandere ber oss nå holde dem selv til en lavere standard.

På motsatt side oppdager mange nå at innvandringskritikere kommer i både moderate og ekstreme varianter, og at de moderate ikke er så mye å være redd for.

X-faktoren er hvilken effekt 22. juli har hatt på en hel generasjonen politisk engasjerte unge, som mer enn noen andre følte seg rammet, og har mindre ballast av gamle tanker å beskytte.

Ingen vet hva den effekten blir. Men jeg vet hvilken effekt terrorangrepene 11. september 2001 og årene som fulgte hadde på deler av min egen generasjon. De sporet både meg og Peder “Fjordman” Jensen inn mot bloggkarrierer som omsider gjorde oss til motstandere i en nå tragisk aktuell debatt. Effekten på Behring Breivik kan vi bare spekulere om.

Ti år har gått. Hvor er 22. juli-generasjonen om ti år? Og hva skjedde med den norske identiteten den dagen vi sammen fylte gatene med blomster?

Ikke minst: Hvilken mening velger vi å gi til angrepet? Terroristen valgte å drepe, men det å snakke om åpenhet, demokrati, samhold og kjærlighet i dagene etter var også et valg. Det var vårt valg, ikke hans. Og nå er det også vårt valg hvor vi går videre.

Dag og Tid, 12/08/2011

(Post kommentarer her.)

The new models many of us embraced, ideas that were more in touch with the post-9/11 world, were often right-wing, and often critical of immigration and Islam.  The people who promoted them prided themselves in their honest approach to reality, and their well-adjusted moral compass.

Now, after the terror attacks in Norway on July 22, perpetrated by a fanatical opponent of multiculturalism and the Islamization of Europa, it happens again.  The wheel turns.  We won’t pretend that everything has changed, no more than everything changed on 9/11.  The threat from Islamist terrorism is the same.  The immigration challenges of Europe are the same.

But reality has shifted sufficiently that you cannot mindlessly apply the same old models to the new situation.  And, this time, the pundits who reveal themselves to be most out of touch may well be precisely those right-wing critics of immigration and Islam who took the lead after 9/11.

The problem that confuses them is that the terrorist came from their side of the spectrum.  The 32-year old Norwegian man who detonated a bomb in central Oslo and gunned down nearly 70 children and youths on Utøya island identified himself with the online counterjihad movement.  His 1500 page manifesto, published online immediately before the attacks, is largely a compendium of counterjihad thoughts.  His favorite author, a writer he identifies as to a large degree sharing his own analysis of the current world situation, is the pseudonymous Norwegian blogger Fjordman.  But the book also namedrops a large range of anti-Islam and anti-immigration writers, of various degrees of reasonableness and extremity.

I don’t want to apportion blame here, not now.  Clearly none of these writers have ever advocated violence.  But it is equally clear that there are parts of the anti-Islamic ideology that are compatible with violence, and use rhetoric that, although non-violent, carries the obvious implication of violence.

Consider the rhetoric that paints Europe’s political elite as traitors who have pushed Europe towards the brink of destruction with their multicultural policies, leading us inevitably towards a civil war with the Muslims.  Now, the people who say these things do not encourage violence.  But, ask yourself, what do countries normally do with traitors in wartime?  They execute them.  What does one normally do in a civil war?  One picks up a gun, and joins the side one agrees with.

The responsibility for July 22 rests with the terrorist who carried out these attacks, Anders Behring Breivik.  But what we see here is a relationship between words and action that we are familiar with from other brands of terrorism and ideological violence through history: Anarchists, Communists, Nazis, and Islamists.  There are, or were, in these movements, some who use words, and words alone, as they warn of the Great Conspiracy and the Coming Crisis.  And then somebody else comes along, a true believer, a martyr to the cause, and takes these ideas to their natural, bloody consequence.

There is, the wordsmiths argue, an Enemy that poses an existential threat.  What does the true believer, the man of action, do with such enemies?  He attacks.

The Enemy of today’s anti-Islamists is the political elite of Europe.  It poses, they believe, an existential threat.  The Civil War is coming, or has in fact already started.  This is what the non-violent counterjihadis argue over and over again.  And they really are non-violent.  But the rhetoric implies violence, is compatible with launching an attack on precisely this political elite, in order to recruit soldiers for this inevitable civil war.

The point isn’t necessarily that the wordsmiths are to blame, but that this is a tricky situation to untangle.  It requires a steady hand, as you attempt to find the line where legitimate criticism of political opponents turns into implicit justifications for violence.  You need to have a clear head.  You need to apply objective criteria that are equally appropriate for all ideologies, all forms of rhetoric.  If you condemn critics of Islam for painting a picture of a world in crisis where violence appears the only solution, then you must condemn Islamists who do the same.  If you instead exonerate the Islam critics, you must do the same with the non-violent Islamists.  The same standard must apply to all, whether you otherwise sympathize with their ideas or not.

So here’s the first test for right-wing critics of immigration and Islam.  The test is: Are you able to do this, fairly?  Are you prepared to either acknowledge the implicit violence in ideas you sympathize with, or forgive it in ideas you despise?

Another test, which is being applied at this very moment, is: Are you able to discuss the attacks that actually took place, attacks that at the very least put your own ideas in a bad light, without changing the subject back to evil leftists and Muslims?

Judging from the immediate reactions to the attacks, Islam critics on the right may have a hard time doing this.  The approach from many is: “Well, this is a tragedy, and I absolutely condemn it, but of course it wouldn’t have happened if Norwegians could discuss immigration openly.”  Or: “Let’s not let the deeds of this evil madman distract us from the real issue, which is that Europe is being overrun by Muslims.”

Rewind a decade, and the same out of touch sentiments would sound like this: “Well, the 9/11 attacks were a tragedy, but of course they wouldn’t have happened if the Americans weren’t such evil imperialists.”  Or: “Let’s not let the deeds of this evil madman distract us from the real issue, which is that America is the greatest threat to world peace.”

There’s also a defensiveness in many of these reactions that is disgraceful in the way it assumes that this is all about them, that the important thing now is to rescue the reputation of their own particular brand of Islam criticism, so that they can continue where they left off on July 21.

If you don’t have the empathy to realize how inappropriate this is right now, you should keep quiet.

As an example, I’m going to single out a writer I actually admire, and who is nowhere as radical as some of the counterjiadis the terrorist most sympathized with: Bruce Bawer.  Bawer has lived in Oslo for years, and is a critic of Norwegian multicultural naivety.  At least half of his book While Europe Slept is a stinging criticism of this naivety that I either agree with, or at last respect.  (The other half is a paranoid Eurabia fantasy, for which there is no excuse.)

Bawer has been mentioned a few times by the terrorist, both in comments on blogs and in the manifesto.  Although most of the mentions are in articles Behring Breivik copied from Fjordman, Bawer is clearly someone he is familiar with, and approves of, but also distances himself from, as Bawer is too liberal for his taste.

How does Bawer react to this?  In the Wall Street Journal he writes that, during the first hours of the attack, when he and everyone else thought it was an Islamist attack, “I wept for the city that has been my home for many years”.  But then, when it became apparent that the attacker was a non-Muslim, in fact an anti-Muslim, “it was immediately clear to me that his violence will deal a heavy blow to an urgent cause”, the cause of exposing the Muslim threat to Europe.

He dedicates the rest of the article to reminding us why we need to fear a Muslim takeover of Europe.

So, although he’s horrified to discover that the terrorist approves of his writings, what really frightens him is the thought that people will now take his warnings about Muslims less seriously, and will censor criticism of Islam and immigration even more than today.  Yes, that was awful, but, anyway, let’s talk some more about Muslims.

And this is what I mean by being out of touch, of remaining stuck in old models.  The problem is not that Bawer believes that immigration poses serious challenges to Europe.  I do.  This attack does not remove those challenges.  The problem is that a writer who lives in Norway during the worst terrorist attack of our history, an attack carried out by a Muslim hater who is at least somewhat in sync with Bawer’s own views, does not have the common sense, the decency, to shut up about Muslims even for the length of a single article.

Now, here’s what other Norwegians have been doing for the last few days: We have remained glued to the television screen.  We have asked ourselves if we may have lost anyone we know.  We have cried.  And tried to sleep.  And cried again.  We have gathered in solidarity with the victims  – 200 000 in Oslo alone, filling the streets with flowers.  And those of us who have criticized immigration and Islam over the years have thought long and hard about whether anything we’ve ever written could have encouraged the terrorist in his efforts.  (The honest answer?  Probably.)

Bawer has often written about the challenges of integrating immigrants into Europan society.  I wonder how well he himself is integrated in Norwegian society today, or whether he, like the immigrants he criticize, considers it disdainfully, from a distance, enjoying its hospitality but standing aloof, alone.

Norwegians have, and will continue to have, different views on immigration.  But today, to be a Norwegian is to agree that, although we may at times be naive, sanctimoneous and politically correct, there is also an innocent beauty to these ideals.  To be a Norwegian today is to acknowledge our flaws as a nation, but forgive them, because we have seen what can happen when one doesn’t.  To be a Norwegian today is to shake in frightened humility in the face of pure evil.

And yes we’ll get back to discussing immigration.  But when that happens, there will be a divide, as there was after 9/11, between those who truly felt and understood what have just happened, and those to whom it has all been one big distraction from the old debates and the old models that they knew so well.

(Post comments here or here.)

Correction: Bruce Bawer has lived in Oslo for many years, but apparently now lives in New York(?)

Update: A shorter, Norwegian version of this essay was published in VG.

In a book that is circulating on the net, Anders Behring Breivik describes how he has spent nine years and 300 000 euro working on the text, and preparing for the terror attacks.  But he adds that “all that is barely noticeable compared to the sacrifices made in relation to the distribution of this book, the actual marketing operation.”

The conclusion is grotesque but unavoidable: The terror attacks are part of the book’s marketing plan.

Behring Breivik thus follows in the footsteps of other violent fanatics before him. He uses the power he now has over over attention to force feed us to his fantasy worldview.

It feels sickening to write about his ideas. But we no longer have a choice.  The attacks happened.  Our job now is to understand.

Few people have had the time to read the entire book, which is 1500 pages long.  But a skimming of the text leaves no doubt about its nature: It is a manifesto for a European civil war, where a cultural conservative native Europe are the good guys, and an alliance of politically correct “cultural Marxists” and Muslims are the bad guys.

Large sections of the book are not written by Behring Breivik himself, but are copies of articles from the online counterjihad movement, who fear a Muslim takeover in Europe.  Some have labelled him a “right-wing extremist”, but if so, it is not the traditional kind with boots and Nazi symbols, but a new kind: A right-wing extremist for the internet generation.

Earlier right-wing extremists hated Jews and people with different skin color.  The counterjihadis consider skin color irrelevant.  Their enemy  is Islam, and the politically correct traitors who allow Muslims to take power in Europe and turn it into Eurabia.

Behring Breivik uses texts from anti-Islamic writers such as Robert Spencer and Gregory Davis, and he appears to have plagiarized parts of the manifesto of the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. But the one writer he is a particularly great fan of is the pseudonymous Norwegian blogger Fjordman, who he has copied tens of articles from.  Fjordman is a central counterjihad-blogger who for years has been predicting a civil war between the real and the Islamized/multicultural Europe.

We should be careful with how we apportion guilt, particularly at this moment, when the adrenaline boils after one of the deadliest terror attacks in history.  But it is possible that what we’re looking at here is a relationship between words and actions that we are familiar with from other violent fanatics: Anarchists, Communists, Nazis, Islamists.  In all such movements there is a majority who use hard words, but only words, about the Great Conspiracy and the Coming Crisis.  And then a true believer comes along and take the ideas to their “logical”, bloody consequence.

It is a task for a later, cooler time to discuss which guilt belongs where, but it can appear that paranoid Islam haters have built with words the ideological foundation Behring Breivik has built upon with bombs and guns.  But he has also built this foundation himself, through many years of working on this book.  What we safely can say is that Behring Breivik and the counterjihadis to a large extent live in the same world: A world where the Christian and secular Europe stands on the brink of (self-)destruction, and where a non-violent solution appears less and less realistic.

His association with the immigration critics at the blog document.no, where Behring Breivik has posted comments, is weak.  It may be hard to tell the difference from the outside, but there is a long distance between immigration critics who have their feet on the ground, and those who live in a civil war fantasy.  In the book we learn that Behring Breivik contacted Hans Rustad, the editor of document.no, to initiate a project that would also involve the Progress Party, but that he was rebuffed.

Behring Breivik considers document.no and the Progress Party to be forces it might be useful to cooperate with.  But they don’t realize the seriousness of the situation.  They haven’t understood that the time for democratic means is over.  Behring Breivik appears to feel particularly hurt by the way Rustad has ridiculed his favorite writer, Fjordman.

The book contains a detailed diary over many years, which describes how he has prepared the terror attacks.  The diary is intended to make it easier for those who come after him to carry out their own attacks.  In the world view of Behring Breivik, it is only a matter of time before the civil war starts.  After it has been won, future generations will thank him, and see him as a pioneer.

He claims that the roots of the project were planted in 2002, when he and a group of like-minded people founded a modern variant of the Knights Templars.  At their founding meeting, they condemned all European traitors to death.  Whether this is real or propaganda is something the police must decide, but what it shows us is how he sees himself: As the judge, executioner and knight protector of Europe.

Ironically, for someone who despises “cultural Marxists”, he expresses admiration for the Marxist organizational strategy, where an elite of ruthless believers would lead the masses towards paradize.  And now too the counterjihadi has copied the terror tactics of the jihadis.  He has stared too deeply into the enemy, and become one of them, become another of those who believe in the liberating power of violence.

His ideas are irrelevant fantasies, and we only care about them in order to answer a single question: Why?  Why government buildings?  Why children and youths?  What did he hope to achieve?

I will give two speculative answers.  One is that, in his world view, the political elite are traitors to the nation of Norway.  That’s why the bomb targetted government buildings in central Oslo.  And that’s why the Utøya massacre targetted the next generation of our political leaders – the people he believes would be on the wrong side in the coming civil war.

To ask what he “achieves” by doing this is to take his ideas too seriously.  We should not read too much into the actions of a violent fanatic.  He targetted the “enemy”,  and that is all.

Another answer is that he wanted to raise the conflict level in our society, and thus recruit soldiers to his civil war.  He writes that he expects the Progress Party to be associated with him, because he used to be a member there.  But he considers it a good thing if the Progress Party is sabotaged by this, because it will make their voters lose faith in democracy.

He also encourages attacks on Muslims in order to radicalize them.  A central tenet of the counterjihad ideology is that all Muslims have an inner Osama bin Laden.  By angering them, they will reveal their true nature.  And as the conflict level rises, it is Behring Breivik’s ideas the non-Muslims of Europe will rely on to understand the situation.

Or so he hopes.

Usually after a terrorist attack, we tell ourselves that if we do this or that, the “terrorists will have won”.  To think like this can mislead us into reading too much into the motives of fanatics who lost touch with reality a long time ago.

But in the coming days, we should keep in mind that part of what Behring Breivik wants is in fact to radicalize us all, and make us more open for using force and violence  against our political opponents, whether they are Muslims, “cultural Marxists”, or immigration critics.

There will be no civil war, but there may be more violence.  That’s something the last ten years of terror attacks show us is possible, when paranoid fantasies take root in men of action.

(Originally published in Aftenposten.)