Flowers adorn a statue after an estimated 100,000 people attended a "rose march"in Oslo, Norway, in memory of the victims of Friday's bomb attack and shooting massacre.The self-described perpetrator of the mass killings in Norway told authorities there that he expects to spend the rest of his life in prison but two other cells in his terror network could still launch attacks, officials said Monday.There is no comprehending the twisted mind of a mass murderer, particularly one whose crime hinges on a deranged ideological crusade to rally public consciousness against a perceived threat to an ideal society by creating a blood bath among that society's most innocent members.
Still, it's necessary to survey the mortal carnage and the mindset of perpetrators of such crimes to recognize the sanguine insanity that hovers in the haze of extremism. The massacre of dozens -- 76, according to Monday's revised account -- apparently unleashed by a 32-year-old Norwegian, Anders Behring Breivik, against his own people is a grim reminder of that civic necessity.
Breivik, now reckoned by police to be a fundamentalist Christian extremist, quickly admitted after his arrest that he was the man who detonated a massive 6-ton fertilizer bomb in a government building in central Oslo before taking an automatic rifle to the nearby island of Utoya, where he gunned down scores of people, including many youths, one as young as 12, before a Norwegian SWAT team belatedly arrived. His appointed lawyer, however, said Breivik told police that he rejected the idea of "criminal responsibility."
"He has said that he believed the actions were atrocious, but that in his head they were necessary," the lawyer, Geir Lippestad, told Norwegian news media. "He wanted a change in society and, from his perspective, he needed to force through a revolution. He wished to attack society and the structure of society."
Breivik attacked the governmental pillar of his society. Most of the victims, adults and young people, were attending the annual summer picnic of potential members and leaders of Norway's governing Labor Party. It apparently was the Labor Party's support of policies on immigration and multiculturalism, and tolerance for Muslims, that spurred Breivik's anti-Islamic rage.
A flurry of police and media research in the wake of his arrest revealed the apparent source of Breivik's hatred as the large underbelly, in Europe and the United States, of anti-Islamic websites. Their influential voices informed the 1,500-page manifesto that Breivik had put together in the last several years. By his own words, and the words and theories of "counter-jihad" writers whom he quoted, he believed that Islamic extremists are out to take over Europe and the western world and have to be stopped. In his mind, his slaughter would inspire his fellow Norwegians to do their part against Muslims.
Parts of his manifesto also reportedly resembled or copied the writing and theories of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous American Unabomber. But where Kaczynski railed at leftists, Breivik assailed "multiculturalists" and "cultural Marxists."
One of the anti-Islamic blogs in which his anti-Islamic venom marinated is reportedly the "The Gates of Vienna," run by a Virginia consultant. The blog title reportedly refers to the 1683 Muslim siege of Vienna. The consultant and other anti-Muslim writers, of course, deny any appeal to violence.
Though such disclaimers may well be true, that's a distinction without much of a difference in the mind of a rising extremist. Incantations to religious and ideological hatred of particular groups of people can nurture a propensity for violence, even if they do not specifically advocate violent actions.
The western focus on Muslim extremists since the attacks of 9/11 has largely neglected the hate groups of neo-Nazis and Christian extremists like the Hutaree, the Michigan militia accused last year of plotting to kill policemen and public officials who failed to crack down on Muslim immigrants. In fact, extremism is fueled far more by irrational hate than by specific religions. It's the haters in all groups, not the religions, that must be tracked.