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Jewish World Review August 4, 2011 / 4 Menachem-Av, 5771 Who's to Blame for Terrorism? By Clifford D. May
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Who deserves the blame for the terrorist attacks in Norway? My answer would be the perpetrator and no one else — unless it turns out there really is a modern Knights Templar or some other group that sent him on his mission of mass murder. But there are those who disagree, who see this atrocity as part of a wider conspiracy — or, perhaps, as a convenient stick with which to beat their political and ideological opponents. One example: The New York Times last week ran an editorial arguing that Anders Behrig Breivik was “influenced by public debate and the extent to which that debate makes ideas acceptable.” The “broader” issue, says the Times, is that “inflammatory political rhetoric is increasingly tolerated.” Which raises the questions: Who decides what constitutes inflammatory rhetoric? And if such rhetoric is unacceptable and intolerable, who should censor it and by what means? The Times editorial adds: “Even mainstream politicians in Europe, including Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France have sown doubts about the ability or willingness of Europe to absorb newcomers. Multiculturalism ‘has failed, utterly failed,’ Mrs. Merkel said last October.” The implication is clear: If these European leaders have doubts about the worldview and policies the Times and other avatars of progressive opinion endorse, they should shut up about it. A few days later, the Times brought in reinforcements, publishing an op-ed by two Norwegian commentators, Jostein Gaarder and Thomas Hylland Eriksen, who asserted that “the hatred and contempt from which (Breivik) drew his deranged determination were shared with many others throughout the international right-wing blogosphere,” which they further characterized as “Islamophobic” and consisting of “loosely connected networks of people — including students, civil servants, capitalists, and neo-Nazis. Many do not even see themselves as ‘right-wing,’ but as defenders of enlightened values, including feminism.”
Their meaning is plain too: Those concerned about such issues as gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia, honor killings within Muslim communities in the West and the genital mutilation of Muslim girls are, objectively, on the side of neo-Nazis and therefore they also should put a sock in it. Exploiting atrocities to settle political scores through guilt by association is a nasty game but if we are going to play it, I’d start with Reuters or, more precisely, what we might call the Reuters Doctrine. After the 9/11 attacks, there were individuals and groups (emphatically including the policy institute I head) making the case that terrorism should be defined as the use of violence against civilians to further a political cause, and that expressing a grievance by intentionally killing other people’s children is never justified. Reuters disagreed. The global news agency took the position that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” This expression of moral relativism was embraced by many in the media, on the far left and far right, in academia, government and transnational organizations. And that may indeed have paved the way for Breivik — who unquestionably fancies himself a fighter for European freedom — to believe he could use terrorism to focus attention on his grievances without de-legitimizing those grievances. If it works for militant Islamists, why not for a militant Norwegian? But militant Islamists enjoy a weird sort of affirmative action. For example, Naser Asser Abdo was awarded “conscientious objector” status by the U.S. Army not because he was morally opposed to killing but because he was morally opposed to killing fellow Muslims. Imagine if a U.S. soldier had refused deployment to the Balkans saying he couldn’t defend Bosnian Muslims against Serbian Christians. You think he’d have been regarded as a conscientious objector and given an honorable discharge? If there were ever any doubts about the conscientiousness of Abdo’s objections to taking up arms, he cleared those up following his release from the Army when he immediately stocked up on guns and explosives, apparently intending to replicate the massacre carried out by Maj. Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood whose rise in the U.S. military was not hindered by his extremist and supremacist views. Toward the end of his manifesto, Breivik argues that “democratic change” is an illusion and that the only answer is “armed resistance.” By demonizing those concerned by Islamism and Jihadism, Times editorial writers and their allies are actually giving credence to Breivik’s worldview. In saner times, those editorial writers would at least perceive the irony in that.
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Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism. A veteran news reporter, foreign correspondent and editor (at The New York Times and other publications), he has covered stories in more than two dozen countries, including Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia, China, Uzbekistan, Northern Ireland and Russia. He is a frequent guest on national and international television and radio news programs, providing analysis and participating in debates on national security issues.
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