Source/Credit: Tribune
If the 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik had not published his 1500-page ‘manifesto’ just before embarking upon the killing spree that left 76 dead in Oslo and a nearby island hosting a Labour Party youth camp, there would have been a tendency to dub him as a ‘lone wolf’.
European commentaries would have been dominated by portraits of a psychopath who perpetrated a monstrous crime for rather inexplicable motives. The manifesto documents the formative influences from prophets of hate on both sides of the Atlantic and shows linkages with anti-Muslim, anti-left and, above all, anti-immigration groups that practice violence to out-match that done by Europe’s right wing anti-immigration political parties. The state apparatus is mostly committed to the war against al Qaeda and the surveillance of small groups of ‘radical’ Muslim immigrants. A relative tolerance of neo-Nazi and white extremist groups has given them space to grow into a menace not only for Europe’s Muslims but also for the host states themselves.