THE LAST DITCH
Just saying…
Is he mad?
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I saw the “makes a” comment and I thought “No LDR has it wrong” for a sec, till I read it all. I am pretty sure the facist salute was open handed.
That is something else.
And you make a really good point.
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I thought this was the sign of the black power movement.
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Quibbling about the nature of the salute is kinda silly. Breivik is an open book, his position is clear, he is all about nationhood and the defense against a religion he sees as aggressive and invasive. He is in short, a Nazi. The salute was a Nazi salute with a closed fist. Surely the aggressively closed fist does not significantly detract from its Naziness.
I hold all socialists in contempt but I reserve a particular repugnance for national socialists.
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I don’t think “nationhood and defence against a religion seen as aggressive and invasive” makes anyone a Nazi. It makes them fairly normal in fact-most people have a sense of identity at least partly influenced by feeling part of “a nation” (i.e. a larger group of similar mindset). Most people would seek to defend against an aggressive and invasive idea alien to their own culture.
There is no evidence that he believed in any form of socialism, is there? He seems quite simply to be a social inadequate, presumably frustrated with the political system not producing the result he wanted (who isn’t?), not getting the attention he thought he deserved, and who did something to get attention. Both he and the news media are more than happy to “big up” the right wing bit because it suits both their agendas of getting attention.
A similar thing happened with Osama bin Laden, a minor figure, who achieved huge impact by a major act. The correct response should have been to say a small number of criminals has murdered a large number of people, that they would be caught and punished according to US criminal law. Instead the media and Bush insisted it was a huge conspiracy to destroy the US-and went to war on a tenuous “organisation” (which it wasn’t-it was just an idea)and effectively gave the thing the validity it was seeking.
it is probably best just to treat this man as a criminal of little overall significance-great crimes do not make criminals great-just wicked.
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I agree with Mick C.
Also I don’t think it is unreasonable to think some powerful and influential variations of Islam are extreemly agressive and invasive and a threat to enlightened values and liberty.
We see clear evidence every day. It true as well that even “reasonable” moslems are reluctant to critiscise this and can act as a medium for those others to move amoungst less obviously.
I think Breivic wants to claim connections with the right to make himself seem/feel more of a power/force.
For all the destruction and murder he has done he seems somehow inadequate. In the end I guess he is another terrorist. And in some ways pretty stupid also.
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My quibble (and I did say “tiny point of information”) is with the Daily Mirror. Breivik is clearly either a fascist or a nutcase or both. Watch out in coming weeks however for the leftist media smearing all “right wingers” (by which they mean non left-wingers) by associating them wrongly with someone who is closer, as a race-driven statist, to their views as class-driven statists than ours. I am a lot further from Breivik’s views than are most Mirror readers. So keen is the Mirror to start the smear campaign that it pictures the salute used by leftist revolutionaries and calls it “fascist”. My unusual brevity seems to have confused readers used to more prolix posts. Sorry!
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In everyday terms, yes. On the definition used in English courts, no. I don’t know Norwegian law and await the verdict with interest.
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Actually Breivik is making a very pertinent point: he is making fools of the media. By showing their ignorance about his salute he has proven the point that he was making about the poor quality of the mainstream media’s reporting of certain subjects.
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indistinguishable from those of fascists.
Many of them supported at some level by the Daily Mirror
Really?
Fascist?
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If anyone is interested in what Breivik was attempting to signify with the salute, here it is straight from the horse’s arse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYIPCqChFa8
Not particularly enlightening, just the expected quasi-martial Templar stuff.
The danger here is that Breivik seems to think he speaks from a fairly libertarian right perspective. He rather misses the point that thinking it’s okay to slaughter the children of your opponents, for the common good, is about as collectivist as it’s possible to be.
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I am having a bad hair day today, sorry. It was the “others whose attitudes to free speech and other liberties were indistinguishable” that were often supported by the Daily Mirror, not the fascists themselves.
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Tom is a retired international lawyer. He was a partner in a City of London law firm and spent almost twenty years abroad serving clients from all over the world.
Returning to London on retirement in 2011, he was dismayed to discover how much liberty had been lost in the UK while he was away.
He’s a classical liberal (libertarian, if you must) who, like his illustrious namesake, considers that
“…government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”
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The Last Ditch by Tom Paine 
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