My posting of yesterday may well turn out to be irrelevant with
regard to the childhood and adolescence of Anders Breivick, the
Norwegian assassin of Friday. He turns out not to have the 'loner'
profile that's often the case of perpetrators of similar acts of
violence. (And, curiously, he didn't turn the gun on himself when
faced by the police, as so often occurs.) His killing of 92 people
was highly political. Although he may have acted alone on this
occasion, he had already been enmeshed in an anti-Muslim,
anti-immigrant group called the Knights Templar, a putative
resurrection of those knights of the Middle Ages who rode forth to
Palestine to fight the Saracens and regain Jerusalem for the Roman
Catholics Church.
He turns out to be nearer the equivalent of Osama Bin Laden, though
with opposite religious polarity. Without doubt, the modern Knights
Templars are psychologically similar to the 19 extremists who carried
out the 9/11 attack. But there's a deeper and more disturbing level
to all this. Just as millions of Muslims in Middle East countries
were jubilant in the streets about the success of the New York
outrage in 2001, so there are possibly -- probably -- millions of
anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim Europeans who are equally, though
privately, jubilant about Breivick's act.
And this is what the more perceptive of European politicians will be
considering. Publicly, they'll express the pain that most of us feel
that so many Norwegians in the prime of their lives were cut down.
Privately, within their own enclaves, they'll realize that the
problem of multiculturalism among the masses in Europe will have now
risen further and that their pro-immigration policies of the last 20
years for tax-base reasons were not so clever after all. The
politicians have had more than enough hints already -- what with the
growth of numerous anti-immigrant groups, the appearance of would-be
demagogues here and there, and the broad shift to the right in recent
elections (and, no doubt, many confidential opinion polls and focus
groups) -- that immigration, and particularly that of Muslim people,
is now reaching the threshold of acceptability.
In times of high, and probably growing, unemployment in most European
countries, and the ghetto-like growth of concentrations of immigrants
in many cities, it's to be wondered whether even the present
threshold will hold in the coming years. Maybe it will, maybe it
won't. Maybe governments will be able to stem the level of
immigration. Maybe they won't. Maybe governments will be able to
afford welfare payments to both indigenous populations and immigrants
alike in the coming years. Maybe they won't. Maybe Anders Breivick
will regret his terrible act as he spends the rest of his life in
prison (surely even liberal Norwegians won't be able to let him out
sooner?). Maybe, behind bars, he'll quietly applaud subsequent
terrible events -- both by, and against, governments -- as they might
take place in the coming years.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/07/
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