87 Replies to “Charles Adler on Anders Behring Breivik”

  2. bak (Just because none of you have yet to gun down innocent people in response doesn’t change the fact that your rhetoric, which borders on eliminationist, could inspire other Breiviks.)
    For goodness sake, if any sort of debate, even of the more heated kind, is sufficient to provoke someone to go on a killing spree, we should never discuss any controversial topic. Your argument would then suggest that if you’re an environmentalist, you support groups like Earth First and ELF.
    Perhaps when discussion is suppressed that allows extremism to fester and erupt in such horrible ways.
    By the way, I don’t consider my comment any more of an explanation and justification than yours. Such individuals and groups exist in a different mind space. I don’t think they are so devoted to a particular cause as they are attracted to violence. They just fabricate a whole structure to fit in with their tendencies. Or they join groups that appeal to those tendencies.

  3. Charles gave me a thrill up my leg with that rant of his. So perfect, so correct.
    More Charles. More.

  5. bak: “If [sic] fact, he was a Christianist.”
    Would you care to explain what this means. I don’t usually go over to Andrew Sullivan’s blog.

  6. And, bak, now you can apologize for saying that Breivik is “a Christian fundamentalist.”
    We’re waiting.

  8. Brievik’s religion is by now well documented. He was raised as a Christian and still regards himself as such. He has not for some years been actively associated with any church. He has never been associated in any way with any fundamentalist church. His background was mainstream-liberal Christian. His religious beliefs were neither strong nor extreme, and they had nothing to do with his actions.
    It also seems pretty clear that he was not in any meaningful way a racist, let alone a white supremacist. However, none of that matters. What matters is, if you are consumed by insane hatred for some target group, then he simply has be made to be made into a member of that group, by fair means or foul. If our friend bok had a phobia about clowns, he’d have drawn a red nose on Breivik’s picture and be haunting circus blogs today, demanding that the carnies confess their guilt.

  9. I never claimed he was a Christian Fundamentalist. But I suppose writing stuff like this might lead some people to that conclusion:
    “I’m pretty sure I will pray to God as I’m rushing through my city, guns blazing, with 100 armed system protectors pursuing me with the intention to stop and/or kill. I know there is a 80%+ chance I am going to die during the operation as I have no intention to surrender to them until I have completed all three primary objectives AND the bonus mission. When I initiate (providing I haven’t been apprehended before then), there is a 70% chance that I will complete the first objective, 40% for the second, 20% for the third and less than 5% chance that I will be able to complete the bonus mission. It is likely that I will pray to God for strength at one point during that operation, as I think most people in that situation would….If praying will act as an additional mental boost/soothing it is the pragmatical thing to do. I guess I will find out… If there is a God I will be allowed to enter heaven as all other martyrs for the Church in the past.”
    I think Sullivan is correct in calling him a Christianist:
    “Christianism is all about power over others, and it has been fueled in the last decade by its mirror image, Islamism, and motivated to fury by hatred of what it sees as is true enemy, liberalism. Both Islamism and Christianism, to my mind, do not spring from real religious faith; they spring from neurosis caused by lack of faith. They are the choices of those who are panicked by the complexity and choices of modernity into a fanatical embrace of a simplistic parody of religion in order to attack what they see as their cultural and social enemies. They are not about genuine faith; they are about the instrumentality of faith as a political bludgeon.”
    A description which also suits many sda regulars.

  10. Bak, leave “many sda regulars” out of your definition of “Christianist.”
    Andrew Sullivan isn’t exactly the most reliable of commentators with his own, gigantic, partisan and “progressive” agenda.

  11. If I had the time, I would go back and re-post some choice comments from the Christianist regulars…but alas, I don’t. However, batb, you spend plenty of time on here and you get to read these disturbing comments. As someone who likes to remind everyone of your Catholicism and desire to live your life according to Christ’s teachings, perhaps you should be pointing out the sinfulness of such comments. Silence is acceptance. Perhaps you are a Christianist, too?

  12. In his comments, PMSH described the attacks in Norway as “barbarous”… has boy Trudeau come out yet to call the PM’s comments an exaggeration and over the top?

  13. Bak, I’m not here to “point … out the sinfulness of … comments” by other Christians — or those who say they are.
    I’m here to make comments on political issues. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof: God can judge. That’s not why I’m here.

  14. Adler got it right. Which is why the trolls abound. They can’t part with their Christian loathing.
    Yet they love Islamists who hate gays & Athiests. The irony is so thick you can eat it.

  15. One major difference between the SDA regulars and ABB is that the SDA readers are unequivocally opposed to terrorist activities. ABB is not.
    The main difference between the SDA regulars and the Islamists that ABB and SDA regulars dislike is that when this happens SDA readers have no problem condemning and not supporting his actions. There is no celebrating in the streets of SDA land.

  19. What Charles Adler said.
    I’m still waiting for naysayers to prove conclusively that there is a huge body of blond-haired murderers out there but I suppose I shouldn’t hold my breath.
    Why is it that some people can’t bring themselves to spell Christian properly (hi, bam-bam, ect)? Is it education or something else?

  20. It puts a knot in my gut to see Nahlah Ayad and other CBC reporters telling bald faced lies in a desperate effort to smear Christians.
    Suppose Canadian police apprehended a mass murderer of Middle Eastern extraction who hadn’t set foot in a mosque in over ten years, who described himself as “first and foremost a man of science” who believes “it is essential that science takes an undisputed precedence” over the teachings of the Koran. Would the CBC trumpet, hour after hour, over and over again, that the killer was a “fundamentalist Muslim”?

  21. Yeah, EBD, Nahlah Ayad’s covering this story and labeling Anders Behring Breivik “a Christian fundamentalist,” given that she’s from a Palestinian background — and I’m thinking not a Christian Palestinian background — is the CBC’s purposely rubbing salt in a wound.
    Their smug contempt for pretty much all things Christian — and not being able to tell the difference between fundamentalist Christian and cultural Christian, which Breivik claims to be over and over again in his Manifesto — is sickening and unprofessional, to boot.

  22. That’s a good point, Bak. Sullivan isn’t completely insane or anything. He hasn’t spent years obsessed with promoting promiscuity while also promoting homosexual marriage even as he forwards unhinged conspiracy theories regarding a beautiful and powerful conservative woman’s reproductive system or anything. He doesn’t insist he’s a conservative while professing no conservative views of any kind. He’s not gone into great personal detail about the mood and judgement altering effects of the testosterone with which he regularly injects himself. He’s not on a cocktail of medications, as well as being a likely candidate for AIDS-related dementia.
    Anyone who might “pray” or something is a “Christianist”? Anyone who wants “power” of some kind is a “Christianist” even if he’s not a Christian?
    You are a fool, begone.

  23. bak said: “It must be very uncomfortable for the majority of sda regulars political and moral views are so similar to Breivik’s.”
    Yeah. I hear he drank milk, too. It must be very uncomfortable for the majority of milk drinkers to realize that their choice of beverage is so similar to Breivik’s.
    I’m totally giving it up, man. I mean, what if the milk made him, like, do it eh? Woah.
    bak said: “Just because none of you have yet to gun down innocent people in response doesn’t change the fact that your rhetoric, which borders on eliminationist, could inspire other Breiviks.”
    Is this like the Sarah Palin web page picture of a “cross hair” on Gabrielle Giffords’ district, which “caused” know fruitcake Jared Loughner to shoot Giffords and others? So we should all just shut the f- up and sit down before something bad might happen, right bak?
    That doesn’t sound very humanist and tolerational, you ask me. Gee, maybe your telling me to sit down and shut up will inspire me to go self-explode on a bus full of nuns or something. Or maybe me saying that just inspired some weirdo someplace to kill a puppy!
    Or maybe you’re just a freakin’ idiot and I’d have to be crazier than Loughner and Brevic tied together in a sack to give a rat’s @ss about your regurgitated opinion.
    You know what’s uncomfortable? The thought that you might actually have a driver’s license. Its terrifying.

  24. Why is it that the MSM, and it’s mindless, gutless, leftist followers, are so afraid of saying “Muslim terrorist” because it might encourage some “disenfranchised youth” to become a Muslim terrorist, and have no problem describing every other terrorist as a “Christian fundamentalist”?

  26. batb and Phantom, well said. You know of course this moron is trying to get you to say something he can use against you. The left can say all kinds of things and denigrate conservatives and Christians and it does not get on the news, but heaven, forbid the reverse be said and it gets front page news day after day.
    When CBC advertises on FoxNews, I puke and flip the channel for a full minute.

  27. It’s so sad to see the utter lack of self awareness, along with the utter lack of reading comprehension, being displayed here. However, don’t stop being yourselves on account of me…I’m sure the RCMP appreciate every comment posted on sda.

  28. And, as if to prove my point,along comes this little gem:
    “…if Anders Breivik is all we got..he’ll have ta do….desperate times…desperate measures…
    It has been suggested that Anders Breivik is Norway’s “John Brown”.”
    Posted by: sasquatch at July 26, 2011 10:54 PM
    More to come…

  29. “However, don’t stop being yourselves on account of me…I’m sure the RCMP appreciate every comment posted on sda.”
    Yes, the posters here who are RCMP officers tell us how much they enjoy SDA! Very astute, there, bak!

  30. bak
    “And, as if to prove my point,along comes this little gem:”
    And every day one sees someone wearing the ever ubiqutous Che Guevera T-shirt proves the mirror-image.
    Maybe you need to get more Customs Officers reading SDA as well.

  31. bak: “I’m sure the RCMP appreciate every comment posted on sda” … yeah, and a whole lot of other people who read this blog to see what Canadians are actually thinking sans the pc-MSM/HRC spin.
    Here’s what Harvard professor, Harold Putmam, discovered, much to his chagrin, in a study he did on multiculturalism: “immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating impact on social capital, the fabric of associations, trust and neighborliness that create and sustain communities [emphasis mine].
    I’m sure the RCMP could verify his findings because they see this every day. They’re not unaware of the chaos mass immigration has brought to our country — heck, to every country where this is the policy — nor of how their hands are tied in trying to get justice when the criminal is a member of a protected visible minority. Multiculturalism has made a farce of our justice system — not to mention pretty much every public institution in Canada.

  32. I am a small necked clam with extraordinary typing skills. I think, therefore, I am.

  34. Breivik wasn’t a Christian in the way we think of Christians. The Bible doesn’t teach you to go out and mass murder people who have different thoughts than yours. So obviously he wasn’t following Christian values.
    He referred to himself as a Christian. Doesn’t make him one.
    There was an article I read the other day that pointed out several examples of people that have done terrible things and self-described themselves as Christians. But we don’t call them Christians.
    Hitler had a Christian upbringing and he did self-describe himself as a Christian in some of his writings. German soldiers fighting for Hitler had the words Gott mit uns on their belt buckles — God is with us. Yet we don’t call him a Christian.
    There was Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. He was baptized and confirmed a Catholic and identified with an extremist group called Christian Identity. Yet we don’t call him a Christian.
    The Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was responsible heinous acts of racist violence. But the Klan also considered itself Christian. The Klan emblem was a cross with a drop of Christ’s blood in the middle. And as Christians they felt they were fighting to preserve the white race, rid the country of Christ-killing Jews, and oppose the great anti-Christ, better known as the Catholic Church. But we don’t call them Christians.
    In the 1930s there were a number of pro-Nazi Christian groups in the United States that felt anti-Semitism was completely justified given the role of Jews in the death of Jesus — forgetting conveniently that Jesus, his followers and the early Church was Jewish. There was even Father Charles Coughlin, who ran a group called the Christian Front. The good priest could have taught Hitler a thing or two about being a good Jew-hater — before or after mass. But we don’t call them Christians.
    The point he was trying to make is that when a Muslim commits acts of terror and self-identifies himself with his faith, we take him at his word and blame his faith. When a self-described Christian commits acts of terror we insist that he’s not a Christian.
    I personally don’t believe he’s a Christian because I am one and there’s no way a “true” Christian would do this or even think of doing this. I also don’t believe a “true” Muslim would either.
    There are extremist on both sides. Far more on the Muslim side and many even willing to blow themselves up. I don’t believe we should ignore the one’s on either side or stop to ask why he went to such extremes.
    He posted on right wing blogs. There wasn’t any indication at all in his postings that he was violent or would resort to that. He obviously took the messages to heart. They’ve retrieved some of his postings. He held many of the same opinions on here and didn’t sound any more radical than here.
    So I don’t know what the answer is.

  35. Les, I’m no expert, but I believe the difference is in the holy books of Judeo-Christianity and the Koran. The New Testament rejects the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” morality of the Old Testament (while retaining the Ten Commandments). On the other hand, the later, more adhered to, passages of the Koran are the more violence prone—and advocate the use of lies, deceit, and the violent suppression and overthrow of “the infidel’—anyone who’s not Muslim.
    There’s also “by their fruits ye shall know them”: the free West—rule of law, equality of men and women, education, hospitals, economic prosperity, artistic masterpieces, technological advancement, and generally sound infrastructures (decaying as we spend the last of our Judeo-Christian capital), etc.—evolved from Christianity. On all those measures, what has evolved from Islam has been quite the opposite: decrepitude, inequality, cruelty, slavery, poverty, ignorance, and violence—even against themselves. Holy and bloody jihad is central to Islam and has been openly and unrepentantly practised for centuries: “Allahu Akbar!” Christianity has no such injunction. There is the doctrine of a “just war”, but that is for purposes of self defence in extreme cases—like fighting the Nazis.
    Yes, a bad Christian may carry out atrocities—but it’s not as a result of following the tenets of Christianity: in fact, such actions would be counter-Christianity. On the other hand, atrocities done in the name of Allah are altogether consistent with the teaching of the later Koran—and are carried out all the time, militantly and unapologetically.

  36. Les – McVeigh and Hitler were not Christians. If they had been Christians they would have identified themselves as Christians, attended Church, something along those lines. The Nazis invented a whole ersatz paganism. They conducted NSDAP paganist wedding ceremonies for their higher-ups. How can you not know this? (I was baptized; twice, in fact. Please note for future reference if I go on a killing spree that I am an agnostic and not a Christian, ‘kay?)
    As for what a “true” Muslim would or wouldn’t do, I have no idea. It isn’t a question that concerns me terribly; lots of people who definitely think they’re real Muslims commit acts of horrible violence in the name of their religion all the time.
    “He held many of the same opinions on here and didn’t sound any more radical than here.” I posted a link on Readers Tips last night @11:14 PM. You might want to glace at it.
    “There are extremist on both sides.” Not really. It’s nice that you want to be so open minded but the left will pile blame on Christians for this without your help. I’d prefer logic and accuracy right now.

  37. Hitler was indeed a Christian, but at a time in his life when he was doing nothing wrong and leading a life that no one would object to. He abandoned Christianity as an adult, and turned strongly against it. He didn’t self-identify as Christian, but as Catholic; and this was because he had to deal with an expressly Catholic political party and wanted to emphasize his qualifications to do so. And it was then, as an active and violent anti-Christian, that he started doing the things we associate with Hitler. Saying “Hitler was a Christian” is exactly like saying “Hitler wore diapers”. It’s true and it tells you nothing.
    McVeigh and Breivik were both raised Christian, but stopped being active Christians and seem to have stopped believing. In any event, neither was in any respect motivated by Christian faith or acted out of religious belief of any kind. They considered what they did to be politically necessary and never gave a thought to religion. You can certainly be a Christian and kill your enemies out of necessity; that’s why they have chaplains in army units. But for such a Christian it’s important that you act because you must and not because you want to, and to understand that you need to be forgiven for what you do. I’ve never seen a scrap of evidence that such thoughts ever crossed the minds of either McVeigh or Breivik.
    If you’re an anti-Christian bigot, you can never see a corpse without picking it up by the heels and using it to bludgeon Christianity with. It’s a form of mental illness at least as malignant as anything Breivik might suffer from.

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