Breaking News - Major Terrorist Attack In Oslo, Norway

[Ed Anger]

Nor did any deserve it as much. The Chinamen were a plague (still are in fact), and were horrible monsters that spread opium addiction and various other horrible things throughout the American west.

Such as clean clothes.

Ancient Chinese secret, huh?

Whoa, that dated me badly. 

[CountDeMoney]

Ancient Chinese secret, huh?

Whoa, that dated me badly. 

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

[Berkut]

Are you guys familiar with the maxim "hard cases make bad law" ?

One of the problems of the past 20 years or so is that this maxim has been forgotten or disregarded.  Norway is a lovely country, with excellent systems and laws that have made most people's lives there pretty good. What they need to do, imo, is change very little but just make sure that if this ever happens again that they have a more responsive SWAT team.

+1

[jimmy olsen]

I agree with this guy. I see this as an act motivated more by political ideology than religion. He's striking at the future ruling class of the party he opposes.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/07/the-decline-of-political-terrorism-the-rise-of-religious-terrorism/#more-13117

The media has been reporting a lot about Anders Breivik. I'm curious about the tendency of some to label Breivik a "Christian Extremist". Additionally, there is widespread repetition of the Norwegian official deeming him a "Christian fundamentalist." I think this is wrong on the specifics, but it also goes toward the general problem of our age where we attempt to fit everything into black-white religious dichotomies. For example, "moderate Muslims" vs. "Islamists." "Islamic extremists" vs. "Christian extremists." Because of the salience of notionally religiously motivated Islamic militant movements there has been a shift toward reinterpreting secular nationalist terrorist movements as religious ones. For example, the attempt to frame the Irish Republican Army as Catholic terrorists, or the Tamil Tigers as Hindu terrorists (in reality, both these are nationalist movements, often with a Leftist slant). Or consider the refashioning of Tim McVeigh into a Christian terrorist when he was a lapsed Catholic at best and probably irreligious by the time of his terrorist act. This religionization of all radical movements means that people have a really hard time today digesting the fact that 19th and early 20th century anarchists who committed what seem to be patently suicidal acts were generally atheists, motivated by politics and not religion! Similarly, the shocking raid on Harpers Ferry was executed by a cast of characters of diverse religious views. John Brown was famously Calvinist, but some of his followers, including one of his sons, were free thinkers who did not adhere to religion.


In our age it seems that consumer culture and post-materialism has totally vanquished the power of political religion, and the materialist messianism implicit in liberal nationalism and Marxism is barely recollected. Unfortunately forgetting the shape of the past seems to have coarsened our model of the present world, and I think a conception where religion motivates all extreme action leads to false inferences. If Christianity was the primary motivator of Anders Breivik's ideology one might presume he would favor the mass immigration of zealous African Christians to Norway to balance the waxing of the Muslim population. Do you think this is a plausible inference? No. Anders Brievik was a conservative nationalist, albeit an evil or crazy or unbalanced one. The attempt to emphasize Brievik's religious identity seems due to the need to inject parity and balance into the "religious clash" with Anders Brievik himself perceived in his political framework, and which is highlighted by Islamic radicals.

But we don't need to go that far back into the past to see the power of politics as opposed to religion in motivating acts of terror. And we don't even need to leave what we today often refer to as the "Muslim world". In the 1970s and 1980s there were a series of hijackings and other terrorist acts, often done in the name of Palestinian nationalism. The innovator who began the shift toward this mode of opposition to the Israeli state was a man of Arab Christian background, George Habash. Habash was a Leftist who was aligned with the Soviet Union, and despite his confessional origins in the Eastern Orthodox community he seems not have been a religious believer by adulthood. The audacious and shocking actions of his PFLP movement served to prod rival Palestinian outfits, Left nationalist movements all, to organize their own terror units. The most famous of these was Black September, which came into the spotlight during the 1972 Munich Olympics. I'm old enough to remember the tail end of this phase of the Age of Terror, and its explicitly nationalist and Leftist connections. Only these deep fundamentals could explain the collaboration between groups as distinctive as Habash's PFLP and the German Red Army Faction (which was being backed by the GDR, though that was not known at the time).

But this is all talk. As Michelle observes, I love charts. I plotted "Arab Terrorist," "Islamic Terrorist", and "Muslim Terrorist" in Google Ngram Viewer. Here are the results:

Chart

The secular phase of terrorism in the 1970s is rather clear. More recently you see that the terms "Islamic" and "Muslim" are starting to outpace "Arab" as modifiers. But Ngram is not always accurate after 2000. So I did some independent checks. I looked at these terms in Google Scholar and The New York Times archives, by decade. For the latter the period before 1981 is thrown into an aggregate pool. I log-transformed the y axis, but you can see the reported values on the plots. Yes, I got 0 hits for "Muslim terrorist" in The New York Times before 1981!

These results confirm the impression that the face of terror as a religious face is a relatively recent phenomenon. Less than a generation in fact. The collapse of Arab nationalism as well as the Soviet Union left the secular terror movements with fewer sponsors. Islamism's rise, and the more prominent role of religion generally in the Middle East, meant that politically motivated terror took on a religious cast. Robert Pape's work has shown that there's a surprisingly strong correlation between independent political variables and religiously motivated suicide terrorism. And scholars of religion who take a cognitivist vantage point have also illustrated how religious rationale is often integrated after the fact to scaffold and buttress actions which may have other proximate causes (e.g., Christian libertarian vs. Christian socialism). The human mind is a complex thing, and its incoherence is a structural feature, not an exceptional deviation.

And complexity and texture also apply to terrorists and terrorist movements. When it comes to men such as Anders Breivik, Tim McVeigh, and Nidal Hasan, who are de facto lone wolfs (in that they operationalized their ideology mostly as individuals, even if they felt they were part of a broader movement) there is a tendency toward incomprehension, and to push them into the category of inexplicable evil and insanity. But even insanity perceives its own sense. This is why Gore Vidal cautioned that we shouldn't view McVeigh as deranged.

When we ascribe purely religious motives toward people that amps up the tendency toward engaging in mysterianism when it comes to terror. Religion is a sensitive topic, and may people ascribe deep and sincere meaning to their religious beliefs. By connecting terror with religion one makes it harder to approach terror from a rational perspective because many resist decomposing and analyzing religion in a reductionist manner as if it was just another thing. In contrast, there are militant atheists who see in religion as the "root of all evil." The insanity of religious terror makes total sense to them. The root is poisoned after all. But by explaining everything, unfortunately they often explain nothing. Most religious people don't engage in terror.

And yet the broad family similarities between religious and secular terror remain. There is no hesitation in understanding the sense of Palestinian nationalist error, to the actions of the I.R.A. There are obvious proximate material causes. It is more difficult with religious terror, because terrorists such as Osama bin Laden who operate under the religious guise often elide the material causes of their actions and reframe it as an idealistic and metaphysical conflict. And yet of course we don't expect Islamic terrorists to attack arguably the most anti-God nation-state on earth, North Korea. Whatever metaphysical disagreement with North Korea they have, these terrorists have more serious material conflicts with a nation where most of the population adheres to a belief in what is notionally the same God of Abraham.

In regards to Anders Breivik there's a lot of esoteric material coming out. That's the noise. The reality is that Breivik had some political agenda, which seems to have been warped through a seriously unbalanced lens. In the short term confusing him for a genuinely religiously motivated terrorist, like Eric Rudolph, may seem harmless. But as we distort our map of reality one step at a time, the errors compound, and our coarse models may lead us to false inferences about the arc of the future. That's more than just abstract.

[Jacob]

Then it is kind of meaningless, isn't it?

Is there anyone out there within the Western world that would actually disagree with that? You are just labeling pretty basic liberal western values as "multiculturalism". Is there some problem in the West with non-multicutluralists demanding that we force other cultures to change at some pace others do not feel is appropriate? How would that even manifest itself in a political sense?

If it was meaningless, that'd actually be kind of nice but I don't think it is alas.

Some Moslems want to build a mosque in Tennessee. According to some US presidential candidates, that's a problem. It's not the only place in the Western world where building Moslem places of worship meets serious public opposition - sometimes enough to prevent the building taking place at all.

Jews want to eat meat that's slaughtered according to their customs. According to a number of Western liberal countries that's a problem.

Some women would like to wear scarves to cover their hair as according to their culture that's modest. That's enough of a problem in several Western liberal countries that they're outlawing the practice outright.

That's just off the top of my head.

So while I agree with you that the multiculturalism I advocate (and which I believe is what any government that actually has a policy of multiculturalism is pushing for in spite of the strawmen opponents set up) is clearly derived from and consistent with basic Western liberalism, the notion seems controversial enough that it needs its own label.

But yeah, if we could stop talking about multiculturalism but society actual tried to follow the notions I outlined I'd be more than content.

[Jacob]

You step on people often enough, you'd better make sure they're never in a position to step on you because it's going to get very ugly.

That goes for people you disagree with and step on as well.

[Jacob]

So by this logic, in 1859, in the wake of John Brown's raid, should abolishionists have re-evaluated their views and decided that human chattel slavery was OK?

I'm not familiar enough with American Civil War events to have that discussion in a useful way.

But when someone things an abstract political struggle* is important enough to start murdering innocents merely "to be heard" then I think the people should have a good long think about exactly what it is they're saying, what they want and how they're going about getting it.

*(and I think "cultural marxists vs nationalists" is much more abstract than "slavery yes or no")

[Berkut]

Then it is kind of meaningless, isn't it?

Is there anyone out there within the Western world that would actually disagree with that? You are just labeling pretty basic liberal western values as "multiculturalism". Is there some problem in the West with non-multicutluralists demanding that we force other cultures to change at some pace others do not feel is appropriate? How would that even manifest itself in a political sense?

If it was meaningless, that'd actually be kind of nice but I don't think it is alas.

Some Moslems want to build a mosque in Tennessee. According to some US presidential candidates, that's a problem.

I bet there are literally dozens and dozens of Mosques in Tennessee. There is no credible threat to the ability of Muslims to build mosques in America. The basic tenet that says they can build mosques in America is not "multiculturalism", it is freedom of religion, a principle we've had for quite some time.

It's not the only place in the Western world where building Moslem places of worship meets serious public opposition - sometimes enough to prevent the building taking place at all.

So there is intolerance in some places. So multuculturalism is simply the idea that tolerance is good? Why the need for a new term then? There has been this idea that tolerance is a good thing for quite some time now.

Jews want to eat meat that's slaughtered according to their customs. According to a number of Western liberal countries that's a problem.

So the definition of multicultaralism is that cultures get to to do whatever they like? I still don't see how this is differentiated.

Some women would like to wear scarves to cover their hair as according to their culture that's modest. That's enough of a problem in several Western liberal countries that they're outlawing the practice outright.

And if they were more multicultural, they would allow this? Funny that are your examples are specifically religious in nature. Why?

That's just off the top of my head.

But not one where there is any difference between your definition of multiculturalism and simple tolerance of religious differences.

So while I agree with you that the multiculturalism I advocate (and which I believe is what any government that actually has a policy of multiculturalism is pushing for in spite of the strawmen opponents set up) is clearly derived from and consistent with basic Western liberalism, the notion seems controversial enough that it needs its own label.

Well, no, not if it is just limited to what examples you have given. The labels for dealing with religious freedom and tolerance have been around for a long time and perfectly describe everything you've given so far.

But yeah, if we could stop talking about multiculturalism but society actual tried to follow the notions I outlined I'd be more than content.

For some reason I suspect that is not the case. I don't think there are too many people who argue that multiculteralism is simply tolerance of different religious views. If that is the case, we have that in spades in the US, for example, for quite some time. And yet people commonly refer to the term in a manner that implies that it applies more to Europe than the US. Why, if in fact it just means "Hey, lets let other people practice their religion without undue interference".

Your definition strikes me as similar to Republicans defining Conservatism as "Conservatism is about respect for core American values and love of the Constitution!"

[Jacob]

I think that what Jacob calls "multiculturalism" is what most Americans would simply call "tolerance".  "Multiculturalism" generally means something else.

Maybe it does now in many place, due to the concerted strawman construction of the people for whom even "tolerance" is unacceptable.

I'm pretty certain that the idea of multiculturalism as a government policy - and the term itself - originated from Trudeau in Canada and it meant what I'm describing (and still does today). I don't think many other places even used the term in the 70s and 80s when the term was coined and the Multiculturalism act was implemented.

Furthermore, I challenge anyone here to provide examples of serious advocates of multiculturalism who advocate a position much beyond what you call "tolerance".

Yes, representatives of individual cultures will argue that "you should allow me to kill my daughter for shaming my family because of multiculturalism", but I don't think you will find anyone outside of that particular cultural group claiming that's how multiculturalism should work.

The argument that multiculturalism means "yes, you can beat your son for being gay; these guys over here get to burn down the houses of people who blaspheme against their god; and these other people are allowed to stab people who look at their daughters the wrong way" is a strawman pure and simple. No one advocates that in any serious fashion.

[CountDeMoney]

Some Moslems want to build a mosque in Tennessee. According to some US presidential candidates, that's a problem. It's not the only place in the Western world where building Moslem places of worship meets serious public opposition - sometimes enough to prevent the building taking place at all.

That's just right out.

[Admiral Yi]

When I hear the term multiculturalism I think of positive efforts made to encourage minorities to hold on to their culture and traditions.  As opposed to the more laissez faire tolerance.

[Ideologue]

So by this logic, in 1859, in the wake of John Brown's raid, should abolishionists have re-evaluated their views and decided that human chattel slavery was OK?

I'm not familiar enough with American Civil War events to have that discussion in a useful way.

But when someone things an abstract political struggle* is important enough to start murdering innocents merely "to be heard" then I think the people should have a good long think about exactly what it is they're saying, what they want and how they're going about getting it.

*(and I think "cultural marxists vs nationalists" is much more abstract than "slavery yes or no")

Indeed.  The only way John Brown could've been cooler is if he'd killed more people.

[CountDeMoney]

So by this logic, in 1859, in the wake of John Brown's raid, should abolishionists have re-evaluated their views and decided that human chattel slavery was OK?

I'm not familiar enough with American Civil War events to have that discussion in a useful way.

But when someone things an abstract political struggle* is important enough to start murdering innocents merely "to be heard" then I think the people should have a good long think about exactly what it is they're saying, what they want and how they're going about getting it.

*(and I think "cultural marxists vs nationalists" is much more abstract than "slavery yes or no")

Indeed.  The only way John Brown could've been cooler is if he'd killed more people.

Amen, brother.

[Razgovory]

I bet there are literally dozens and dozens of Mosques in Tennessee. There is no credible threat to the ability of Muslims to build mosques in America. The basic tenet that says they can build mosques in America is not "multiculturalism", it is freedom of religion, a principle we've had for quite some time.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/29/tennessee.mosque.site.fire/index.html  I'd consider arson a credible threat.

[Neil]

So by this logic, in 1859, in the wake of John Brown's raid, should abolishionists have re-evaluated their views and decided that human chattel slavery was OK?

I'm not familiar enough with American Civil War events to have that discussion in a useful way.

But when someone things an abstract political struggle* is important enough to start murdering innocents merely "to be heard" then I think the people should have a good long think about exactly what it is they're saying, what they want and how they're going about getting it.

*(and I think "cultural marxists vs nationalists" is much more abstract than "slavery yes or no")

Indeed.  The only way John Brown could've been cooler is if he'd killed more people.

Disagree.  He would have been cooler if he had lobbied to make slavery illegal, started up a private law enforcement agency, and then attacked the slaveowners for kidnapping.

As it stands, John Brown is the same is the Norwegian guy.