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Nightmare in Norway

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Posted by Nunzia Rider on Jul 23, 2011

Nightmare in Norway

A bomb explodes in Oslo. A half hour later, there’s a massacre on an island camp. What’s the first thing my colleagues say?

Al aeda. Looking through my reader, I see things like “all the hallmarks of al Qaeda.” “Why does al Qaeda hate Norway?” And that’s just from the progressives.

Really? A terrorist attack in Norway, and the first thing we do is start talking about al Qaeda? Are we that conditioned?

And in Norway, Muslims on the streets are harassed.

Turns out, it wasn’t Islamic extremists. It was a Christian extremist. That would have been, and in fact was, my guess the moment I understood that Norway has a liberal government, and the attacks took place at government buildings and a camp run by the ruling Labor Party.

But not in America. And now that it’s known who perpetrated this vile attack, what are we saying? “Lone wolf.” “Isolated incident.” “Whacko.” The same things we say here when right wing extremists perpetrate terrorist attacks. Because, apparently, we’ve all bought into the myth that only Muslims are terrorists.

A post on Facebook talked about the “terror attack” in Norway. A response to that post suggested reconsidering use of the word “terror” because “it appears to be the work of one lone sicko.” Fortunately, a response to that said it was “one lone sicko terrorist.”

What the hell is our problem? Let’s look at this. Definition of the word “terrorism”:

  1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.
  2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
  3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.
Sounds pretty accurate to me. This guy bombed a building, killing seven people, and then went to the camp and started shooting, killing dozens. And creating fear. Terror. Ipso ergo facto, the dude’s a terrorist, and he perpetrated a terrorist attack. Period.
But we don’t want to say that. Easier to attribute the attack to a sicko, a whacko, a lone wolf than to accept that some Christians are just as extreme as any Islamic terrorist you can find. And just as deadly.
That’s just wrong. Anders Behring Breivik is a terrorist. So are Jim David Atkisson, Paul Hill, Scott Roeder, James von Brunn, Timothy McVeigh and a host of other right wing — and Christian — extremists.
And I’ll tell you something else. The same goes for a bunch of fear-mongering cretins in Congress and former members of administrations that used terror to get what they want from the American people. Falls under that third definition up there.
It’s damn time we started calling them what they are.
Fortunately, in Norway, the government doesn’t plan on spreading more terror in response to this act of terror. In fact, Jens Stoltenberg said just the opposite. The answer, he said, is more democracy.

One Response to “Nightmare in Norway”

  1. Design8ed Driver says:
    July 23, 2011 at 2:32 am

    The first thing I thought about was the fact that Norway is #1 on the most successful nation list. Their citizens are the happiest people on the planet, and they have a better economy than most, or all. Judging by the way the US is being demolished by some of the very people sworn to protect it, and that many of those same people are active members of a dangerous cult (Dominionism), it seemed more likely that this pseudo-Christian group would be somehow associated with this attack in Norway.