In his latest analysis of Breivik, the Oslo mass-murderer, Auster describes him in this way:
...there are two Anders Breiviks: Breivik the standard-issue counter-jihadist, and Breivik the mass murderer of innocents.
And he goes on to note how some Norwegian official quoted by The New York Times, Kari Helene Partapuoli, director of the Norwegian Center Against Racism, agrees with this Jekyll-and-Hyde analysis when she said that “The distance between the words spoken [and written, by Breivik] and the acts that he carried out is gigantic..."
However, one has only to move one's eyes slightly to the right while reading Auster's piece to his list of his recent postings to see the following title:
The killer has a manifesto -- he's a self-styled Knight Templar seeking to start an intra-European war
This is further corroborated by a quote from Breivik's manifesto which I noted in a previous post below, in which he compares himself with Fjordman (whom Auster no doubt considers a "standard issue counter-jihadist"):
I found that Fjordman had written about many of the same topics I was writing about. The only difference being that he was a professional essay writer and I was not. Our views are quite similar with the exception of me being an actual armed resistance fighter.
Okay, let's review: a self-styled Knight Templar seeking to start an intra-European war, who calls himself "an actual armed resistance fighter". I ask the reader: Does this sound like a "standard issue counter-jihadist"...!!!???
Once again, I think Auster is stretching himself too thin in his hectic everything-but-the-kitchen-sink blogging. He doesn't even have time to synthesize and smooth out the contradictions among his own posts posted in the span of a few days. Or perhaps, just as we have two Anders Breiviks, we have two Lawrence Austers...
Update:
Auster just published an excerpt from Breivik's manifesto that supposedly corroborates his (Auster's) theory that there were two Anders Breiviks ("Breivik the standard-issue counter-jihadist, and Breivik the mass murderer of innocents."):
"I have never been happier than I am today and I do not find it problematical [to] hide my true ideological agenda from everyone else. To all I know I am a moderate right-winger and not a resistance fighter."
(Note: I added the word "to" in brackets because clearly there's a typo of omission there.)
What this remark -- written in the same manifesto, mind you, where he calls himself "an actual armed resistance fighter" -- demonstrates is not that there were actually two Anders Breiviks, which is what Auster is implying, as though Breiviks were either schizophrenic or as though this real "standard-issue counter-jihadist" Dr. Jekyll half of him makes his Mr. Hyde's terrorist act baffling; but rather, it demonstrates what it clearly states for freaking crying out loud: he was purposefully fooling people with his toned-down language -- "to hide my true ideological agenda from everyone else". There is, and always was, only one Anders Breivik: the anti-Modern-West Resistance Fighter.
The rest was a ruse -- and apparently a very intelligent one, lest his extremism had been picked up on the radar while he was in his long planning stage, lasting years, of a very complex and difficult terrorist attack. Apparently, he felt no need to vent his true feelings on the Net, because he was not an incoherent and/or hypocritical armchair extremist -- as are Lawrence Auster, Fjordman, El Ingles, Baron Bodissey, et al. Rather, he could take daily solace and comfort in the fact that he was planning a Great Act in Defense of the West against the Evil Cultural Marxists who are controlling, oppressing and destroying it and its people. And meanwhile, his Manifesto was his diary, as it were, where he could express his true feelings.
6 comments:
I haven't figured out how Fjordman and the Baron are hypocritical armchair extremists. I guess I haven't been reading your stuff enough.
Olave d'Estienne
You left out one crucial adjective -- "incoherent". It's their incoherence that redeems them (even if that's a dubious redemption).
Breivik, on the other hand, was coherent in following through with the logical conclusion from the premise that the West is under the control -- in nearly all sociopolitical institutions and organs -- of Evil Cultural Marxists who are oppressing us, soon to destroy our civilization.
An analogy that might better demonstrate what I mean about Fjordman and Baron Bodissey:
Let's say two guys, Peter and Paul, live in a house. Peter claims -- at great length and detail -- that the house is going to implode cause them great suffering, if not destroy them. Peter predicts a "time of Disturbances" or "Discontinuity" when the house will unravel and there will be mayhem leading to not only to the ruination of the house, but to the entire town and all its people. Paul listens to him, then says: "What are we going to do about it?"
Peter answers that he doesn't know; or he doesn't give any answer at all. He merely says he is describing the situation, then goes back to his morning paper and tea. Meanwhile, another resident of the house (let us call him Malcolm), who has been hiding in the attic for years, has been himself reading and writing about the same problem, and has even eavesdropped on Peter's writings and oral claims, and has found them more or less harmonious with his own views.
One day Malcolm blows up the house, in order to save the town. He also murdered the guests who were staying there, convinced that they were part of the problem. Luckily, both Peter and Paul were down the street at the pub at the time, and only heard about it on the news.
Peter is horrified and utterly dissociates himself from Malcolm's act. Paul points out that Malcolm was only trying to save the house from the very same ruination both Peter and Malcolm agreed were imminent. Peter merely responds, "Poppycock!" but provides no argument showing how his own alarm at the situation -- declaimed at length and great detail over the years -- should not have reasonably led to taking extreme measures.
Paul concludes that either Peter has been indulging in armchair alarm -- not really serious about the terrible imminent emergency he was otherwise describing; or is lying. Knowing that Peter is a decent fellow, Paul is forced to conclude the former, and cannot think of a third explanation.
(Paul would be me in this analogy.)
I'm still pretty confused, because I thought you were warning of the same thing that "Peter" (the denizens of GoV and VFR) was. I thought your answer to "What are we going to do about it?" was to continue to develop the AIM. I thought the difference between your position and the others was that they are asymptotic while you say the problem is Islam per se.
I expressed the more or less the same confusion at Unqualified Reservations. He believes that "Of course they are responsible for Breivik's terrorism, just as communist intellectuals are responsible for Islamic terrorism." I asked him why he is less responsible. Unlike you, he hasn't answered.
Olave d'Estienne,
I have been warning of one thing -- Islam and Muslims. The others have also been warning of Islam and Muslims -- but in addition, they have described the myopia of the West in terms so exaggerated (an evil tyrannical system of "cultural Marxists" (or "Elites" or "Leftists") already in control and trying to destroy the West), they have in effect Two Enemies they warn about:
1) Muslims
2) Western Elites.
I don't warn about #2 in terms of being evil enemies; only in terms of being complexly and paradoxically benighted by an "intelligent stupidity" that makes them sincerely myopic to the danger of Islam. For the most part, I see our "elites" as relatively good, decent and intelligent people who are in a paradigmatic Box that reflects a sea change in worldview which the entire West has undergone over the past half century or so, whereby PC MC has become dominant. But to me it is not a nefarious crypto-tyranny; and thus I would never see any reason to initiate pre-emptive attack upon them, as Breivik did, and as the others I mentioned logically imply (even if they incoherently fail to unfold their own logic).
I see. That makes things much clearer.
In a way this makes you the opposite of Mencius Moldbug, who sees the elites (the Cathedral, as he calls them) as a matador and the Muslims as his cape.
Given the view of this Mencius Moldbug, there is no reason not to justify Breivik's act -- other than pragmatic expedience relating to mistaken tactics. Indeed, it would be reckless from the Moldbuggian view to condemn Breivik (while from my view, it is at the very least incoherent -- see my latest essay on this).
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