Terrorism in Scandinavia

[Sinaan]

I, too, would like to extend my condolences to all Norwegians. My heart is breaking over the loss of so many, especially the children! It reminds me of what happened in Russia a few years ago when terrorists took a grade school hostage. So much useless loss!  :'(

[HockeyGod]

Living in Minnesota where the Sons of Norway formed and where around 1 million of our citizens call themselves "Norwegian Americans" I can only join in the thoughts and prayers being sent to our Norwegian cousins.  :'(

[Ironwolf85]

more stupid people being stupid...
madmen can turn up in any ideology, and while there are some islamic groups try and focus on a sort of what I'd call "Pan-Islamic Nationalisim" most of them are decent people. I'd like to have a religious debate with one of the moderates it could be fun.

if anyone's played dragon age, then you'll recognize this good quote. "where the heart rules over the mind, charlitans have a powerful tool" it doesn't just apply to faith, any idea can be twisted, corrupted, and turned into a monster by the wrong person.

take this dumb fucker, "I love my home land, I want to protect it, and make it great." fine. "outsiders bring us down, the government isn't in my favor so they must be wrong, we should rule all other lands" NOT FINE, NOT FINE AT ALL.

[HairyHeretic]

I will give this particular case the benefit of the doubt because nobody saw this coming. Everybody who purportedly knew him claimed that he could hardly hurt a fly, but one can always hope that the Scandinavians make an effort to kick up their vigilance a notch and don't just stare at the Muslims and potential jihadists.

Given this was carried out by a right wing white Christian, what have Muslims got to do with it? Why should they come under additional scrutiny?

[Zeitgeist]

An event like this, as tragic and disappointing as it is, will only serve to draw focus and attention away from the lion's share of danger, that being Muslim extremism. It provides the cover for liberals to point and say: "See! White Christians can be terrorists too!". And while that it certainly true, the disproportional number people committing these types of crimes are Muslim.

I hope it can be agreed that extremism, from whatever corner it comes from, needs to be dealt with swiftly, and firmly.

[Oniya]

Given this was carried out by a right wing white Christian, what have Muslims got to do with it? Why should they come under additional scrutiny?

I'd been tossing about the concept of whether this guy was more of a Ted Kasczinski type (lone nutjob) or Charles Manson type (charismatic), and the more I think about it, this bears a certain sick similarity to the 'Helter Skelter' plot of Manson's, where he carried out an appalling act (the Tate-Bianca murders) with the intent of starting a race war.  Everything I've read about this guy points towards a similar intent.  I only hope that he didn't have the charisma of Manson.

[HairyHeretic]

I hope it can be agreed that extremism, from whatever corner it comes from, needs to be dealt with swiftly, and firmly.

Yes, it does.

But demonising an entire group isn't going to help.

[gaggedLouise]

I'd been tossing about the concept of whether this guy was more of a Ted Kasczinski type (lone nutjob) or Charles Manson type (charismatic), and the more I think about it, this bears a certain sick similarity to the 'Helter Skelter' plot of Manson's, where he carried out an appalling act (the Tate-Bianca murders) with the intent of starting a race war.  Everything I've read about this guy points towards a similar intent.  I only hope that he didn't have the charisma of Manson.

According to news outlets here in Sweden and Norway, some stretches of his 1500-page manifesto (which was sent by e-mail to a few other right-wing nationalists around northern Europe an hour before the Oslo bombing; the recipients deny knowing Breivik) were quoted verbatim  from Kaczynski, the UNA bomber. He seems that kind of person, more of a lone nut than a commanding group leader, but on the other hand he was coldblooded and serious enough to achieve something most extremists would not have been able to do all by themselves. My guess is if he had had a group behind him - and we don't know yet whether he was completely alone in his preparations - he would not have been inept at leading them.

I suppose he had a background in the military of some kind. So far I haven't seen anything about that but it very much fits in with his knowledge of weapons, his view of himself as a warrior and the amount of careful planning that must have gone into this. And of course that's not to say I distrust the military as such, not at all. They will stand up for democracy and for a free society, here as in the U.S.

I think we have to count with the risk of copycat incidents. Other people, lone or in small networks, will want to emulate these atrocious acts.

[Jude]

An event like this, as tragic and disappointing as it is, will only serve to draw focus and attention away from the lion's share of danger, that being Muslim extremism. It provides the cover for liberals to point and say: "See! White Christians can be terrorists too!". And while that it certainly true, the disproportional number people committing these types of crimes are Muslim.

I hope it can be agreed that extremism, from whatever corner it comes from, needs to be dealt with swiftly, and firmly.

http://www.pointofinquiry.org/jonathan_kay_among_the_truthers/

I think you'd find that interview fascinating.  It's with a guy who studied conspiracy theorists and extremists for awhile.  He comes to an interesting conclusion in the end which basically is paraphrased as follows:  The reason why we notice more right wing insanity right now is that the right wing feels disenfranchised because we have a Democratic president.  When we had a Republican president there was the same level of shrill disconnection from reality on the left.  Neither side has a monopoly on crazy, but it takes feelings of oppression to generate craziness of that magnitude.

I'd say that's why you notice so many Muslim terrorists; they are largely living in squalor and disarray.  Their lives aren't as stable, productive, or prosperous as Christians' are on the whole.  People are driven to do desperate things largely by desperate conditions.

Of course, this guy's desperate conditions were all in his head -- and that's the danger of conspiracism.

[gaggedLouise]

Other terrorist causes? - A look back

The discussion here is extending into left-wing and islamist terrorism as well, and that's motivated of course. For perspective, I'd like to add that there have been no instances of political assassinations, killing sprees, hostage takings or kidnappings that

-were actually undertaken, not merely sketched
-killed anyone other than the instigator (added this one to account for the 2010 Stockholm suicide bombing, in itself unique)
-had a known political motive and
-were engineered by a group that had originated here in Scandinavia or which acted from some kind of motive based in domestic politics, or by a loner, not wholly on behalf of some foreign movement.

There's been a very few hijackings and hostage dramas carried out by terrorist bands from other countries, one being an occupation of the West German embassy at Stockholm in 1975 by an RAF (Baader-Meinhof Gang) commando where German diplomats were taken hostage. Two of them were killed in cold blood; then the building went on fire due to a packet of TNT exploding, most likely accidentally; the terrorists had to leave and were seized by the police, who also went in and rescued the remaining hostages who had been left tied up in a room on the upper floor.

The assassination of Swedish foreign secretary Anna Lindh in 2003 (she was stabbed multiple times in a Stockholm department store while shopping, in a ferocious attack by a Serb) may have been in retaliation for her support for the NATO air raids over Serbia a few years before, but the killer was very uncommunicative about his motive or even about his activities on the day of the killing. He basically said "I don't remember, I was high" or "I wasn't there" all through the trial.

The assassination of Swedish PM Olof Palme in 1986 on a street in Stockholm may have been carried out by some right-wing network, possibly in collusion with cops having similar sympathies, and acting on a notion that he was a half-communist selling out Sweden to the Russians, or by a foreign secret service; South African operatives have been hinted. Palme was a strong supporter of the ANC and there had just been an ANC conference in Stockholm, hosted by the Swedish labour party, where Palme had been one of the key speakers. Like Lindh, he had no bodyguards around at that point; he had been to the movies with his wife and they were walking home. The lack of bodyguards has been severely criticized but it was on his own expressed wish for that night.
'
The police inquiry was a trail of trouble and low competence and evidently evaded the possibility that there might have been a political motive; there wasn't even an analysis made of possible such motives after the killing (sounds incredible doesn't it?). A rowdy Stockholm criminal, who had never killed with a shotgun before, was charged with the murder a couple of years later, found guilty and then acquitted on appeal. Many people, including myself, do not believe he had anything to do with it, and the assassination will most likely go down in history as an unsolved enigma. So it just might have been a right-wing political murder but not really a terrorist act in the normal sense of the word.

In Denmark, a band of Danish PFLP sympathizers and communists, active in the seventies and eighties, made a string of some of the most professionally executed bank robberies ever in Danish history and delivered the booty to the Palestinian organization. At the same time, they managed to keep their ordinary working lives going; wives and husbands didn't even know what their loved ones were into and their skilful separating out of their criminal activities helped keep the very existence of the band shady to the police, though there was a rising suspicion that an obscure left-wing party had transformed into a bankrobber network. It helped that for most of their career they restricted themselves to bank heists and didn't actually engage in kidnapping or murder. In 1985 they planned an abduction of the son of a packaging magnate (from his apartment in the very same southern Swedish town I live in) but they pulled back at the last moment due to unforeseen logistic trouble. At a robbery against a major post office depot in Copenhagen in 1989 they got away with eq. of about two million dollars but killed a cop in a pursuing police car - that evidently shook the group and a few months later the police hauled in one of the key men on a different charge and gained a vital clue: the address to the secret apartment, rented under cover of a fictitious computer club and a bogus rent payer name, where they had been storing weapons, explosives and plans (the police already had a key to that place, found in a vehicle used at the Copenhagen heist, but had been unable to get the corresponding address) and the story began to unfold. This is a fascinating piece of history, not least because they managed to keep up double lives for so many years. But again, they only touched on actually carrying out political killings themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blekinge_Street_Gang

So, there have been no actual assassinations, kidnappings or violent hostage dramas, planned as such, brought into action and carried out by a native group or a native lone terrorist, for a political motive based on domestic political issues and tensions. None that we know of in the last hundred years or so, apart from during WW2, not until last Friday.

[Oniya]

*nods*  That's what makes this case so jarring, and has people speculating as to what was going through this guy's head.

[gaggedLouise]

Apparently the terrorist has now told the police his planned target on the island was former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, known outside Norway for the vital role she and her cabinet played in the run-up to the Oslo accord between Israel and the Palestinians. She had been at the camp to meet the participants and volunteers and to make a speech earlier in the day. The gunman had intended to shoot her dead, but he was delayed a few hours and decided to go for a mass shooting instead (actually it's my guess he would have killed a few more even if he'd got Mrs.Brundtland; getting away from the island undetected after the shooting would have been very difficult).

[Vekseid]

An event like this, as tragic and disappointing as it is, will only serve to draw focus and attention away from the lion's share of danger, that being Muslim extremism. It provides the cover for liberals to point and say: "See! White Christians can be terrorists too!". And while that it certainly true, the disproportional number people committing these types of crimes are Muslim.

I hope it can be agreed that extremism, from whatever corner it comes from, needs to be dealt with swiftly, and firmly.

And Timothy McVeigh didn't?

The guy who flew his plane into an IRS building and killed a Vietnam war vet?

The IRA?

Does the Mob's involvement in banking and investment scandals in the US and UK count?

The biggest danger extremism presents in any form is the threat it presents not to ourselves as people - we have more to fear from car accidents - but rather the threat to our rights as human beings.

Norway PM "The Answer to Violence is even More Democracy"

"The answer to violence is even more democracy."

...if the United States had shown half as much wisdom after 9/11, we would be in a much better place right now, financially, economically, and politically, both domestically and abroad.

[Hemingway]

The biggest danger extremism presents in any form is the threat it presents not to ourselves as people - we have more to fear from car accidents - but rather the threat to our rights as human beings.

"The answer to violence is even more democracy."

...if the United States had shown half as much wisdom after 9/11, we would be in a much better place right now, financially, economically, and politically, both domestically and abroad.

I absolutely agree. I guess I'm not alone in not putting much stock in what politicians say, but hopefully they will stay true to their word. The reaction from people in Norway through newspapers and TV, from my friends and from groups on Facebook does give me hope. Norway has, I think, the chance to do a lot of good now.

And the official number of casualties has now been adjusted. They're now saying 8 at the government building, up from 7, and 68 at Utøya, down from 84. They're still not done searching, however, and they expect the numbers to change again.

[Vekseid]

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/oslobomben/lenke.php

For those whom it may interest.

[Oniya]

...And shared.

[Alsheriam]

Given this was carried out by a right wing white Christian, what have Muslims got to do with it? Why should they come under additional scrutiny?

I referred to taking note of crazy right-wing groups instead of exclusively focusing their attention on jihadists.

[HairyHeretic]

You added the white power groups in an edited PS, but in your original post you said

one can always hope that the Scandinavians make an effort to kick up their vigilance a notch and don't just stare at the Muslims and potential jihadists.

That seems to be an exclusive focus on Muslims, both terms. If you meant it to be all types of terrorist groups, it was an odd choice of phrasing.

[Amelita]

http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/oslobomben/lenke.php

For those whom it may interest.

Thank you. Joined and shared.

[TheGlyphstone]

You added the white power groups in an edited PS, but in your original post you said

That seems to be an exclusive focus on Muslims, both terms. If you meant it to be all types of terrorist groups, it was an odd choice of phrasing.

For what it's worth, I had interpreted his original comment as hoping they would kick their vigilance up a notch in general, instead of focusing on Muslims/potential jihadists as if they were the only source of terrorists. He wasn't saying Muslims should come under more scrutiny, but hoping they wouldn't because it wasn't fair to them. Then again, I could be totally wrong.

[HairyHeretic]

Hmm, you could well be right. It's entirely possible I completely misinterpreted what he meant .. it's pretty easy to do with just text.

[Alsheriam]

Yeah... Glyphstone got it right. :P

[HairyHeretic]

In that case you have my apologies. I shall attempt to be better caffeinated in future ;)

[gaggedLouise]

During the police interrogations yesterday, which lasted for many hours, Anders Breivik made some amazing demands. In exchange for talking about his actions the friday before last, he wants 1)the abdication of King Harald, 2)the government and PM disbanding and 3)himself being appointed as supreme commander of the Norwegian armed forces. Umm, are we talking of a grandiose personallity here?  ::) According to the police, he is not really putting up a hard "I'm not speaking" attitude though.

[consortium11]

During the police interrogations yesterday, which lasted for many hours, Anders Breivik made some amazing demands. In exchange for talking about his actions the friday before last, he wants 1)the abdication of King Olav, 2)the governmant and PM disbanding and 3)himself being appointed as supreme commander of the Norwegian armed forces. Umm, are we talking of a grandiose personallity here?  ::) According to the police, he is not really putting up a hard "I'm not speaking" attitude though.

I think his "resistance to speaking" will last about 20 seconds. From everything that I've read about him he desperately wants to speak, thinking of himself as a more "up to date" and Europeanised protagonist from the Turner Diaries...