Oslo reflections

I haven't commented on the Oslo horror since the first reports came in because I'm still technically on holiday and the story is still developing, but I felt that it's time to make some sort of assessment of the situation.  These are just casual observations, so please excuse the lack of links.

First off, it doesn't need saying that this was an act of pure evil.  The deliberate and cold blooded targeting of innocents with the direct objective of killing as many as possible is inhuman and beyond the pale in any decent morality.  What Mr Anders Behring Breivik did in Oslo and on that now infamous island was a calculated deed of terrorism that makes me heartily sorry that Norway abolished the death penalty.  However, despite his changing claim to be part of a terrorist cell, there's no hard evidence that he isn't lone wolf working with, at worst, only a possible accomplice.  Indeed, what I find significant is how utterly alone Mr Breivik is.  No one has tried to justify his actions except himself.  No one has made him an oppressed victim lashing out against his tormentors.  No one is saying "He's a monster, but..." followed by saying exactly the opposite.  And, most significant of all, no one is dancing in the streets handing out sweets in celebration of the innocent blood spilled.  Mr Breivik will have a lot to answer for when he stands before his Maker and it will be a very lonely standing. 

This is an episode that is, thankfully, very rare in the modern world, but happens often enough to have the depressing air of an unwelcome story coming around again.  There is the usual mixture of the insightful and the fatuous, the hand wringing and the finger pointing, but now has been added an air of hypocrisy and even triumphalism from certain quarters that is positively ghoulish.  On the very day of the massacre, the authorities and the MSM, always so careful to avoid speculating about motive even when the suspect is a Muslim US Army colonel dressed in Pakistani garb and shouting "Alllah akbar" at the top of his lungs while emptying an automatic into a crowd of his fellow soldiers, are perfectly comfortable with immediately saying that an ethnic Norwegian is a "right-wing Christian fundamentalist".  Actually, Mr Breivik turned out to be more of a moderate politically and "not much of a believer" in his own words who seemed more happy in his Masonic apron, but "Slightly Right of Centre Freemason Goes on Murder Spree" isn't a headline that provides much political ammunition. 

Over the past few days, I've run across some astonishing opportunism.  I've seen conservative bloggers and columnists blamed for the attack–indeed, anyone mentioned in Mr Breivik's rambling, strangely Anglocentric 1,500 page manifesto, though, to be consistent, that means that Gandhi, Sir Winston Churchill, Edmund Burke, and John Locke are all in trouble.  So is Sarah Palin, who has also been called into the dock.  Even Jeremy Clarkson, for the love of heaven! (Thanks for the link and comments, by the way, Ironmistress.  Spot on.)

Then there are those who call this an act of "Islamophobic terror". As Mark Steyn points out, this is a stretch given that no Muslims were targeted.    It's right up there with those who now smugly declare that the entire anti-Jihadist movement is exposed as a sham by this single crime, that anyone who for a moment thought that the Oslo bombing might have been the work of Jihadists is a bigot (even if a Jihadist group did claim credit for a while) and that "right wing" terrorism is the real threat.   Some go even farther and claim that anyone who opposes the Left's agenda on culture, immigration and the rest is just another mad killer waiting to explode at any moment.  I know of one lefty pundit who even went as far as to blame freedom of speech and that it would be so much nicer if everyone was forced to read the Guardian exclusively. 

I can't help feeling that they're not taking any of this seriously.  So what if seventy odd people have been brutally murdered and the Norwegian Eden has sprung a few serpents?  We've got political opponents to embarrass.

What I find truly worrying about all of this is that this lone killer may prove to be the first vulture of a bloody season.  God forbid, but it's entirely possible that the world could slide into a sort of similar madness.  For years I've been banging on about how Western governments have got to start taking the entire Jihadist war seriously.  That means aggressive diplomacy, military action, and economic measures as well as immigration reform and dumping the poisons of multiculturalism and political correctness.  If we keep on pretending that there's no problem or make matters worse as New Labour did by treasonously encouraging an invasion of Britain for their own political ends, then the future could get very dark. Dismissing the concerns of those who see the Jihadists for what they are will only leave the field to the madmen and the thugs.  The actions of this bland-faced Scandinavian who went in in leaps from sensible talk to seditious calls to overthrow Western governments to mass murder may one day become the unwitting harbinger for the network of anti-government, anti-Muslim terror cells that he fantasised about.  If it gets to that point, it won't mean a response of writing stern Guardian leaders and calls in the Commons to further curtail civil rights to deal with this distraction from more important affairs of state while the Left sits back and sees their opponents muzzled once and for all.  It will be the Scylla of Jihadism versus the Charybdis of sedition; both armed to the teeth and both determined to use force to get their way.  It will mean civil war and fighting in the streets and God help us all.  I do not want to be caught in between a load of Breiviks and Mohammeds trying to outdo one another in the atrocity sweepstakes and I have no desire to see London renamed Balkans on the Thames. 

As for poor Norway?  They have a lot of dead to mourn and a lot of thinking to do.  Let's say our prayers for them and leave them to it.  I've been to enough Norwegian funerals in my day to know that there's some hard grieving for them to get through.

Update: The Oslo horror and gun control.