At the very least, the tragic murder-spree of Anders Behring Breivik has highlighted just how strange and foreign much of Europe can still appear to Anglosphere eyes — even in this late age of globalization.
The victims of Utoya island, for example, were not only gunned down in a mysterious place most of us have never heard of, but were participating in a political party "youth camp," which, though common in European societies, have no real equivalent in North America. In the wake of this site's recent debates over language, it was similarly somewhat jarring to note just how effortlessly bilingual the killer apparently is, a reflection of a growing European understanding that one's native tongue is essentially reserved for the private and familial, while anything public or important — even murder manifestos — are best done in English. Likewise, the context of Breivik's unique brand of Muslim-hate was similarly forged in the thoroughly particular setting of his own distinctly European upbringing, an affluent Olso suburb with a heavy presence of Muslim gangs. Even in our most paranoid, Herman Cain-esque moments, it's hard for us on this continent to fully appreciate what a western society with a significant Muslim presence is actually like. It's a reality most of us will never directly experience, so comparatively weak and scattered are our Muslim populations.
Yet more than anything else, it's the unusual politics of Breivik that have proven to be the greatest American obstacle to understanding the man, since the distinctive right-wing intellectual tradition he hails from is nowhere near as mainstream here as it is in Europe. We've thus been subjected to lazy descriptions of the killer as a "Christian fundamentalist," "white supremacist," "fascist," or "neo-Nazi," because these are all labels we can wrap our sheltered brains around without much hard work. But none come remotely close to describing the actual reality of the ABB worldview or the imagined pressing context in which he was able to justify killing over six dozen men, women, and kids.
Online, there exists a thriving strain of ferociously intellectual right-wing sentiment that is busily forging bold new conceptions of what it means to be "conservative" in the 21st century. I touched on this theme somewhat in a 2009 article I wrote about a phenomenon I described as "
douchebag conservatism," referring to a growing trend among right-wing youth to unapologetically reject the social norms of a smotheringly politically-correct society, and "raise the lifestyle of a douchey jerk to the highest embodiment of traditional masculinity (and traditional western culture) and to ague for its rehabilitation as the respectable and proper standard of life." This rejection of what is taken to be an excessively "feminized," "beta male," "dhimmi" driven society also entails a great deal of what is alternatively referred to as "race realism," "human biological diversity" (HBD), or "white consciousness," which holds that western society is also being severely crippled by a culture that has lost its ability to say honest things about nonwhites, namely their supposed criminal and violent tendencies, savage cultures, and general stupidity. In such a context, a staunchly anti-immigrant position is always present, as is a sort of grander "hierarchy of desireability" of non-western races and cultures, to which Islam is almost always placed at the very bottom.
It's an ideology which is also fairly irreligious and modernist, in the sense that many of its proponents actively look down on the superstitious beliefs of poor, working-class Christians, the unthinking bigotry of neo-Nazis and traditional racists, and may have a great deal of tolerance for groups like Jews and homosexuals, who they're likely to view as common-sense allies in the fight to oppose the regressive cultural influences of a growing Islamic population.
In various forms, this is the ideology of Europe's famously "fast-growing far right" which we are always hearing about in North America. Until 2006, Breivik himself was a member of the Norwegian incarnation of the movement, the Progress Party, which is now the country's second-biggest. Figures like the Dutch politician Geert Wilders or the late Italian journalist Orianna Fallaci are among its greatest heroes, a pantheon, which I should note, tends to contain very few Americans.
What is crucially important to understand about this worldview, however, is that it's ultimately a rationalist critique of the western ruling class — who have ruined everything — as opposed to some knee-jerk, redneck hate-on for darkies, or whatever. Breivik's decision to target and slaughter not ignorant minorities, but fellow politically-conscious Norwegians, and his authorship of an extensively footnoted 1,500 page manifesto only really makes sense in the context of a man who was desperately trying to prove himself in possession of an important message for important people, not unlike Ted Kaczynski before him. "Distribute this book to everyone you know," he bossily demands in its opening pages.
I know all this because I read some of the same blogs as Breivik claims to, since, like him, I'm interested in the idea that a new form of right-wing politics may someday emerge from the remnants of a "mainstream" conservative tradition that is obviously going nowhere, due to a lack of serious intellectual minds and interest in tackling significant cultural problems —
including the perils of unrestrained and unassimilated immigration. Yet Breivik's own writings, to say nothing of his hideous "conclusion," do not lend a great deal of credence to the idea that the man himself was anything other than a fundamental narcissist; someone whose political consciousness was in a large part driven by his own desire to be the heroic "outsider" who held possession of certain fundamental truths his larger society was jealously suppressing.
I haven't read too much of Breivik's excessively long and vainglorious manifesto (which, as has been noted elsewhere, contains enormous block quotes and citations of other people's work at the expense of original content), nor do I ever plan to, but even a cursory glance nevertheless shows just how crucial the killer holds himself within his own agenda. Among other things, the Breivik novel contains an enormous personal biography, complete with in-depth profiles of all his friends and family members, a 64-page "self-interview" containing vital tidbits such as what living person he'd most like to meet and what kind of music he likes, detailed breakdowns of his workout routines (he refers in one point to his "perfect body"), and his favorite tips for beet farming.
Any conservative who shares some of Breivik's political views and hang-ups obviously has some self-reflecting to do in the wake of his massacre, since there's little about the killer that suggests his crimes can easily be hand-waved away in the same way an obvious lunatic like Jared Lee Loughner's could. Breivik is very obviously a man of the right and a serious thinker, and I think it's far to re-examine and critically investigate his worldview to see if there are any logical threads that connect his political beliefs with violent acts. I personally believe it's easy to conclude the negative, since there are swaths of peaceful followers of even the most distasteful styles of nouveau-right Euro politics, and the movement (which again, we must distinguish from clichéd skinhead fascism) has never been primarily, or even incidentally, about enemy-slaughtering.
A more accurate conclusion, bland as it is, is simply that there are some egomaniacal sociopaths in this world who care for little beyond their personal self-aggrandizement. While they can certainly hold political views — even legitimate or respectable political views — that are reached independently of the other, crueler, darker side of their personality, the former will always ultimately be corrupted and twisted in the service of the latter.
Breivik's politics could never hide or tame the evil person he was deep down, and it doesn't seem he ever put much effort into trying to let them.
CKA Elite 
CKA Super Elite 
