Breaking News - Major Terrorist Attack In Oslo, Norway

[OttoVonBismarck]

Should a human be condemned to life in prison over an hour long act? 21 years is a lot of time to reform.

[Queequeg]

Should a human be condemned to life in prison over an hour long act? 21 years is a lot of time to reform.

Surely the fact that he was planning this for 9 years must go in to consideration?

[DGuller]

If 9 years of planning produces such a result, imagine what 21 years would do.

[Jacob]

Regardless, it's completely beside the point. Jacob insists that it's racism to villify a religion. [Or actually, he specified culture, so he sortof dodged it that way. But since no one was calling a culture evil, I guess his "argument" is a complete red herring. My bad.]

No, I don't insist that villifying a religion is racism. It is possible to villify a religion in a non-racist way, and it is possible to villify religion in a way that is racist.

When someone villifies a religion that is roughly contiguous with an external ethnic group, and they do so using rhetoric and methods that are indistinguishable from racist rhetoric then they're racist.

The rampant Islamophobia that is very common is, in my view racism. Similarly, the persecution of Jews through history is racist though occasionally it clothed itself as "mere" religious bigotry.

In any case, the exact taxonomy of xenophobic bigotry is frankly irrelevant; it's loathsome whether you call it racism or not.

[CountDeMoney]

21years in prison  max for this guy?!?

I read that too, but someone said Norway has 'forvaringsdomme' like Denmark, which means he'll be deemed unfit/dangerous for society and will probably serve more than the 21 years.

Let's hope for 24 years then.

[Jacob]

How about a position in between those two, such as a belief that a certain group has a higher proclivity for evil?  Racist or not racist?

Depends on how you define the group and what you mean by evil.

But frankly I'm not really up for using this incident as a springboard to go through the "what is racism" rhetorical argument yet again. Maybe later.

The fact of the matter is that this guy used xenophobic bigotry to justify murdering almost a hundred innocent people (if not more). Whether through rhetorical twists and turns his beliefs can be termed "racist" or not is not really that important. The people who subscribe to similar views, using similar reasoning ought to engage in a bit of self-reflection; ideally not focused on the ways the subtle shades of difference in their bigotry could be argued to make the glaring similarities irrelevant.

[Neil]

Weeeel. Apparently he's not a nazi.

Oh, I'm pretty happy if he is recognized as a Christian conservative nationalist instead.

He's gay, so he's devastating to your cause.

[Ideologue]

An ABC news report I saw said that the guy had a fully automatic weapon, which makes even a mass rush problematic.  600 people in one group, yeah, that's still a good option, but the 600 people in this instance were apparantly spread out in several groups.

The witneses appear to agree that he had an automatic weapon, so I think you are right.  Plus, people don't tend to think too clearly under gunfire, even when trained.  The Flight 96 people had a lot of time to consider their position, and didn't face gunfire, so their response probably has to be considered atypical.  Nobody rushed the Va Tech shooter, and even at Fort Hood, fully trained military people didn't rush Hassan until several minutes after he started shooting.

Yes, it's largely wishful thinking to say 14-19 year-olds should charge a gunman, especially as someone else has pointed out they were spread out across the island.  Plus I think his initial deception of asking people to gather to explain what was happening and then gunning them down would have put the fear of god into the vast majority of people on this forum if in a similar situation, saving those who've had military training or experience of combat.

We've all seen Sunshine, right?  No, Money, not the one about the Goddamn sun going out.

[Martinus]

No, I think the problem lies in the fact that you don't understand that Language is not permanent, and that the meaning of words can shift over time.

If you want to use the dictionary definition of racism, it's certainly not racism to call niggers "mud people".

Using a racial slur isn't a racist statement?  I know of no dictionary where that is true.  Swedish education in the English language is not a good as we were led to believe.

He said it is not "racism", not that it is not a "racist statement". Someone using a racist slur does not need to be a racist - and whether it is a racist statement or not depends on the context (one or two words are not a statement).

[Martinus]

At the risk of sounding a bit callous (and I am greatly moved by this tragedy), it places the guy ideologically exactly right in the center of the broadly understood populist right wing that's so popular in Europe (including, in Poland). Which hopefully will wreck huge political damage on them.

I don't think guys like him care.

Oh I know. It's just that his more rational ideological buddies will be tarnished by this, which is good.

[Martinus]

If I'd realized it was a contest, I would've started playing. 

Only in grumbler's mind.  For my part I haven't even stated my thoughts on this. 

-----

At first I thought it was Muslims because that's what they're often prone to do and we are collectively stupid enough to allow them within our borders in vast numbers.  Then it turned out it was a native with radical methods of enacting his beliefs/ideas.

If I really wanted to be callous I could say, from a purely detached intellectual standpoint, that one has to admire the determination and steadfastness of the man - to go through with this in a coldly methodical fashion - and then to allow himself to be captured.  This tells me that he intends to use the trial, and its sure to be massive media coverage, as a platform - or pulpit - from which to go on preaching his own ideas.

Everyone say this is a tragedy - I suppose it is - but is it more so than 80+ people killed in a plane crash?  Or the sinking of a ship?  Personally I regret the death of so many youths (especially the boys), but do I mourn?  Not really.  It would of course be different if this had happened here, on my own turn, with people who could have/might have been friends, family and such.  In other words, people I could have identified more... intimately with.  Naturally the predictable human reaction to such an event is to try and 'make sense' of it by attributing the clear-cut 'good' and 'evil' labels on every pieces of the puzzle.  However as most adults will know, life is gray, not black and white.

I imagine that many of those who died did so instantly, without foreknowledge, when the bullet hit them in the head or in the back.  There are worse ways to die.  Like being wounded and seeing the guy come up to you and knowing he will finish you off.  Or like those fleeing and drowning.  Or those in the blown up buildings being eviscerated...

I suppose that what I'm trying to say is that none of us value life in the same fashion or for the same reasons.  And that death will find us wherever and whenever it will.




G.

Ok, you fucking win the prize for callousness with this post. Incidentally, there is footage of many of the kids pleading for their lives. And yes, he was finishing off the wounded too.

I hope you burn in hell.

[Queequeg]

G.

I'm not sure which self-delusion I find more pathetic-your intellectual self-importance or  pretense to cultural superiority.  If it were up to me, you'd be permabanned for this post.  Rarely have I agreed with Martinus more.

[Norgy]

http://www.pccts.com/

Referenced in his writings.

This is getting weirder and weirder.

Well, for a nationalist, he certainly was a man with international connections.
I wouldn't say it's weird, more that it's a bunch of people that's previously been flying under the radar, mostly due to not beating up people or being loud lager louts. A new violent threat, like Baader-Meinhof-meets-Medieval-Fair.

Why didn't anyone tackle him? Obviously, that's a difficult question to answer, but given that there were people (locals) coming out with boats and rescuing some, I'd say the risk-reward analysis for the majority of the teenagers would be leaning to try and get themselves and their friends to the beach where the boats landed and a second option, hide and play dead. Since the gunman had not just an automatic rifle, but a shotgun and a Glock, tackling him when he was reloading would at least carry with it a degree of uncertainty. But I am sure any leftist organisation in Norway will have courses in how to act when under fire after this.

And Anders Behring Breivik is no nazi, nor a racist. He's a "national conservative", and wanted the Norwegian church to rejoin the Roman Catholic Church. He wanted a united Europe, it seems, but not under the "cultural marxists" of the EU. Hence the Templar stuff. The Templars never yielded to the Moslems.

[Martinus]

Yeah, he was almost a classic clash of civilizations guy with a boner for middle ages. The kind that plays Paradox games and is a Byzanteen.

Edit: not sure why I keep writing about him in past tense. I guess it's because people like this usually do not get captured alive.

[MadImmortalMan]

But I am sure any leftist organisation in Norway will have courses in how to act when under fire after this.

I hope it looks something like,"draw weapon, remove safety, aim center mass, fire, fire, fire".