A relatively frequent commenter on various blogs (Gates of Vienna, Jihad Watch, and occasionally here) named "Sagunto" has uncovered extended cut-and-paste plagiarization by Breivik in his manifesto.
Apparently, Breivik cut and paste extended passages from, among others, the writings of a rather crotchety conservative writer, William S. Lind, and in his paste job only tweaked words or phrases here and there, leaving them largely intact as is. (See the comment by Sagunto below for a fuller delineation of writers Breivik plagiarized.)
It seems William S. Lind and others on Sagunto's list represent a much more substantive source for Breivik's inspiration than was Robert Spencer. Why isn't The New York Times mentioning this and trying to interview Mr. Lind and the others? (Perhaps some of them have died recently; I'm not sure -- but at least they should be mentioned.) One anonymous unpaid guy on the Blogosphere is apparently a more diligent researcher than the well-paid staff at The New York Times.
As for Lind, he seems to be one of those leathery US military "experts" who has written books on military strategy and probably has advised and lectured US intelligence and high-ranking members of the US military (I believe there was something about his relationship with the US Marine Corps in this regard). I dipped into a little of his stuff: he seems to be one of those guys who seems like a no-nonsense realist "expert" on terrorism and geopolitics, and he has some good (albeit unremarkable) observations to make in his analyses; but mostly he's no less asymptotic than the counter-terrorism "experts" over at Jihadica -- i.e., he notices the problem pullulating out of the Muslim world after a hard-nosed analytical fashion, but still cannot step outside the TMOEWATHI Box. I suppose this would lead Lawrence Auster to reinforce his view that Breivik was just a "standard-issue anti-jihadist" -- except for one little detail: Lind seems to have subscribed to the same "Cultural Marxism originating in the 'Frankfurt School' has slowly overtaken the West in order to subvert and destroy us" meme which so consumes Fjordman and Baron Bodissey -- as well as Breivik, who apparently took it seriously enough to seek a way to fight back with violence and jump-start the "time of Disturbances" and "Discontinuity" perhaps as a way to pre-empt the pan-Western Civil War entailing the Fall of the New Roman Empire which they all seem to feel is imminent. Actually, Auster may not be far off the mark, even if he doesn't realize it himself: perhaps this quasi-Gnostic meme has become rather "standard issue" in the Counterjihad.
10 comments:
I can't post replies on my blog -- when someone comments and I try to post a comment back, I'm sent into a neverending loop of "please sign in." How can I be at the dashboard of my account if I am not already signed in? I've been searching for an answer to this question for days. HELP!
Hesperado, you frequently use the word "gnostic", I'm unsure of your meaning, I've been interpreting that as a synoynm for esoteric. Can you please explain? I appreciate all the good work you do. Thanks!
Rex Dyer,
My term "Gnostic" is derived principally from philosopher Eric Voegelin's adaptation of the term to certain modern moods.
By that term, Voegelin meant a mood or state of existential alienation from the world -- including an alienation from that part of the world constructed by our fellow humans: political existence and its institutional, authority and cultural structures.
This is not meant to be a precise blanket denotation: many people can have a mood or feeling of being disenfranchised or not rightly represented by their political representatives, for example; or can feel that too many of our "elites" are corrupt, etc. It's more a matter of imprecise degree, where the line that is crossed into excessive alienation is somewhat relative. I have sensed many times that the way Baron Bodissey, Fjordman, El Ingles, Lawrence Auster, and some others in the Anti-Islam Movement have gone too far in their sense that their surrounding modern West is beholden to, in thrall to, nefarious powers that control most of our important institutions and organs of sociopolitical culture.
The point of some of my recent posts here, then, is that, given the way they characterize the West around them, and the terrible devolution into tyranny, oppression, chaos, and possible civil war (all of which they have tended to denote with the disingenuously innocuous-sounding "time of Discontinuity" or "time of Disturbances") which they think is imminent), it would seem that a "resistance fighter" -- who takes seriously the evil of the Elites who control the West and the tyranny and destruction to all our values they are already well on their way to implementing currently (and that "youth camp" at Utoya was, apparently, teeming with the best and brightest of the evil "Cultural Marxist" elites) and who decides to jump-start that "time of Disturbances and Discontinuity" by pre-empting the tyrannical clamp-down the Elites may well initiate against Us Who Speak the Truth -- is not coherently objectionable by Baron Bodissey, Fjordman, El Ingles, Lawrence Auster, and some others in the Anti-Islam Movement.
Wow,thanks for the answer! So are you saying that you don't believe in the idea of a Marxist idealogical take over of academia, journalism, motion pictures, television etc, in the West over the last 40 years? I took that for granted as being true. What about a global agenda to establish socialism and world government? Also, wouldn't the logical conclusion to the meme that all the evil in the world, racism, colonialism, world wars, nuclear weapons, genocide, pollution, slavery, sexism etc, is caused by europeans and their western culture, be that the best thing to do is to effect the nonexistance of said people and culture. Do you doubt that Western elites (however you define that exactly) believe that? Have you read Peter Hitchens, The Abolition of Britain? He seems to think that the British elite loathe their country and have spent the last 60 years trying to obliterate it. I'd really like to know your opinion because this stuff can get confusing. To me anyway!
Hesperado -
These are the original documents, in order of appearance in the "Declaration", copy/pasted by Breivik (or perhaps not even by himself):
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005_docs/PC1.pdf
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005_docs/PC2.pdf
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005_docs/PC3.pdf
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005_docs/PC4.pdf
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005_docs/PC5.pdf
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005_docs/PC6.pdf
Six documents, plagiarised by Breivik in the exact same order as the numbering of the file names suggests. Here are the respective authors of the original docs, in order of appearance:
1) William S. Lind
2) Raymond V. Raehn
3) T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr.
4) Jamie McDonald
5) Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson
6) William S. Lind
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Sagunto, thanks for the additional info. I tweaked my post accordingly.
Rex Dyer,
(You can also read my comment to the commenter Olave d'Estienne in the post below this one, particularly my last one, to answer some of your questions.)
"So are you saying that you don't believe in the idea of a Marxist idealogical take over of academia, journalism, motion pictures, television etc, in the West over the last 40 years?"
I believe that some Leftists have wanted to do that for decades, and some still do; but that doesn't mean they have succeeded.
Just as I know Muslims want to conquer the West -- but I don't think they will ever succeed. All I worry about is the mayhem they will be able to perpetrate merely in trying -- but failing -- to succeed.
"Also, wouldn't the logical conclusion to the meme that all the evil in the world, racism, colonialism, world wars, nuclear weapons, genocide, pollution, slavery, sexism etc, is caused by europeans and their western culture, be that the best thing to do is to effect the nonexistance of said people and culture. Do you doubt that Western elites (however you define that exactly) believe that?"
I think there is a minority of Leftists who believe that in a seriously deluded, diseased way that would lead them to do dangerous things -- but the majority of Leftists, and non-Leftist PC MCs, may irresponsibly and glibly prattle on about how "shameful" and unethical their own West is, but they don't do much harm -- other than reinforce the myopia that continues to whitewash Islam and protect it from the harsh scrutiny it deserves.
I could go on at greater length, but I have a lot of typing work to do right now -- I'll try to answer you more fully in a day or two; and if you have more questions, feel free to ask.
Thanks,
Hesp
Hesperado,
Thanks for taking the time to answer me. I know how busy you are.
Questions:
When I talk to people about Jihad and terrorism,etc they often counter with the whole "the Koran forbids the killing of innocents" line. So I tell them that in Islam only Muslims can ever be considered "innocent" and also about the abrogation of the peaceful verses. Sometimes they'll bring up the fact that 30 odd Muslims were killed in the 911 attacks, so that must prove that Bin Laden wasn't following the "real" Islam.
How should I respond to that? Islamic terrorists do often have Muslim collateral damage. How do they justify that?
I've seen in interviews between CJs and Muslims that sometimes when the CJ brings up Taqqiya, the Muslim will claim,(if he concedes it exists) that only Shias engage in it and they only make up 15% of Muslims. Sometimes the CJ will stumble a bit.
What's the story with Taqqiya and Sunnis? How should one respond?
Thanks for offering to answer my questions.
Rex Dyer,
"Sometimes they'll bring up the fact that 30 odd Muslims were killed in the 911 attacks, so that must prove that Bin Laden wasn't following the "real" Islam.
How should I respond to that?"
Two responses come to mind:
1) Ask them: Does that mean that when Muslims massacre non-Muslims without also happening to kill Muslims in the process, those Muslim killers are following "real Islam"...?
2) The second response is more difficult: it would entail digging up information from the Koran, hadiths and tafsirs hopefully supplemented by various rulings by modern clerics that would show that it's ok in Islamic law for Muslims to kill fellow Muslims as "collateral damage". I don't have such information, though it should be readily available by now, but it isn't: one would have to go scrambling and Googling around for hours (at best) to nail it down, I fear.
"I've seen in interviews between CJs and Muslims that sometimes when the CJ brings up Taqqiya, the Muslim will claim,(if he concedes it exists) that only Shias engage in it and they only make up 15% of Muslims. Sometimes the CJ will stumble a bit.
What's the story with Taqqiya and Sunnis? How should one respond?"
This unfortunately is another area of our War of Ideas weakness. I have never seen an adequate presentation of the problem of Taqiyya (including the Sunni problem) where enough sources are referenced to nail it.
These two problems of sources which your questions raise demonstrate our urgent need for a comprehensive, definitive digital Anti-Islam Manual, where such complicated points would be accessible in seconds.
It would be a massive project and would require funding. It should be a #1 priority for all the bigwigs in the Counterjihad; but apparently, they disagree, and aren't listening to little old Hesperado.
Hesperado,
Ok, good, it's not just me then. Those two points have really stumped me.
I think your idea of an Anti-Islam Manual is definitely what is needed. The first page though, should be a really clear explanation of the structure of Islam. You know, Koran, Hadith, principle of abrogation, jurisprudence, all that. Part of the problem is that Islam is so hard to explain. We also need really good DVD's.
Thanks again.
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