It’s been another busy week in the wackosphere. We’re also reminded that the racism and fear that lies behind our tendency to demonize people who are not like us can kill. A lot is coming in from Norway still, but it seems clear that the guy who went on a rampage is speaking the language of the conspiracist. This is why this is important. More about Oslo below, but trust me, I’d rather be making snarky remarks about people who think Amy Winehouse is still alive or was murdered or has been dead for months….
- Above Top Secret filed a story about genetic engineering under “cryptozoology.” No, this is science, nothing new… and read a book fercrissakes.
- UN peacekeepers may change their helmets from blue to green, apparently to enforce the new global envirofascism. GAH! How is global warming a conspiracy? I mean, really, who’s supposed to benefit? Jeesh!
- Personally, I think there was a second pie thrower.
- “10 Reasons Why America is a Failed Terrorist State.”
- Wow. This post, comparing the movie Deep Impact to the apparent incoming apocalypse by Comet Elgin, is a textbook study in confirmation bias.
- I saw it on twitter, so it must be true.
- “Egyptian Archaeologist Admits That Pyramids May Contain Alien Technology.” To be fair, they never said he was a good archaeologist.
- Is Facebook the Pied Piper of the “Technological Control Grid“? Alex Jones uses the word “grid” in a way that is not a way. Also, “matrix.”
- For all of Federal Jack’s fear of a false flag attack on the highly symbolic day of 11 Sept 2011, they never let us know how to distinguish a real attack from a false flag attack. As far as I can tell, they look exactly the same.
- So, Wachovia is planning to overthrow the Mexican government? OK, not exactly, but it would have been a snappy conspiracy theory.
- Cowboys and Aliens writer/producer Roberto Orci comes out of the cuckoo clock at ComicCon, claiming that there is a government conspiracy to hide evidence of aliens.
- Jesse Ventura claims we’re living in a fascist country now, proving once and for all that this privileged git has no idea what fascism is.
- How about something uplifting? Here’s “The Satanic Face of Walt Disney”:
- I just wanted to reprint the following Daily Kos headline: “Bonfire of the Manatees.” Thank you. My life is now complete.
- Our CIA is actually pretty awful sometimes. I find the fake vaccine campaign not worth the prize of taking out bin Laden.
- Pop stars harbor conspiracy theories. Wu-Tang Clan, how you have fallen!
- Ummm….
- At Age of Autism, they ask, “When Does Conspiracy Theory Become Conspiracy Fact?“
- Hot, exciting newpaper read-along action!
- Beware of fears of 9/11 10th anniversary scares, warns Federal Jack. You just can’t win with these people. Clearly a symbolic date, so if they didn’t at least “warn” people, they’d take it on the nose if something happened.
OSLO
My take on the Oslo massacre? The suspect’s rant, “2803: A European Declaration of Independence” (warning: huge pdf) is long. Like 1,500 pages long, and I’ve only been able to get a sense of the sweep of the conspiracy theory overall. Honestly, right now I’m working on another project and can’t quite dig too deeply into the conspiracy. But the tropes of national infiltration and media/government complicity are common in just about every perceived global conspiracy. The one thing that stuck out to me was his fear of “cultural Marxism,” is not foreign to American conspiracy theories. When you google that term, whatever it is supposed to mean (usually, “being more liberal than me”), you get Joseph Farah’s WorldNetDaily (home of the birth certificate conspiracy). You get Brannon Howse from Worldview Weekend. And these conspiracy theories get people killed. The most dismaying thing is the number of people who just don’t get it, even when they are horrified by such a massacre, people who say, “What a nightmare, but you do have to worry about the cultural Marxists.” And this is why we will certainly see this type of slaughter again.
Certain conspiracists think that the comparisons of Breivik to Timothy McVeigh are part of the government’s plan to sculpt a narrative. They are, based on my reading of sections of Breivik’s manifesto, extremely apt comparisons. Take, for instance, the sections detailing how someone should go about hiding weapons and carrying out guerilla warfare against the state. There was a section on preparing and burying weapons for later use that could have been lifted from The Turner Diaries, a book (really, violent porn for racists) that was apparently in McVeigh’s car when he was arrested, and which has a scene in which a government building (in the Turner Diaries, it is the FBI HQ) is destroyed by a truck bomb. Oh, and there is that whole truck bomb element in Oslo. This is not a random attack, but one which is (within limits) predictable and which you can anticipate by immersing yourself in…the type of stuff that I have had to read lately.
My copy of The Turner Diaries, by the way, has a blurb by Tim McVeigh on it. How’s that for a ripe little slice of publishing hell? And you wonder why I’m grumpy all the time.
So, let’s get dirty.
- Talk2Action is a great place to start, and Chip Berlet does an excellent job filling in the cultural and historical background of the type of conspiracism that Breivik was acting on. This link is a portal to a number of good articles about related topics.
- Jonathan Kay is monitoring the conspiracy theories that are popping up around the Oslo massacre.
- Though Cowards Flinch is also monitoring the conspiracy theories as they tumble out onto the web.
- “Lone Nut, T Party, Freemason, Cop, Terrorist” Kills Liberal Children. Of course, it’s all about you, Jack Blood.
- White people can be terrorists too, Alex. And your correspondent seems to mistake “white” for “middle class.”
- I have not seen the claim confirmed that the police knew the shooter’s name before they got to the island, but even if that is so, so what? Since the initial question seems to come from a new anchor, I think we have the “9/11 effect”, quoting people on the day of the event who have no freaking clue what is going on. But we’ll see.
- We’re not going to do this second shooter for this one too, are we? Apparently we are. Notice how there is not a reference to a single person who SAW two shooters. We merely have inconsistent descriptions of a single person, which are par for the course for eyewitness testimony. So, Tarpley, is it because of Wikileaks? Is it because of Norway’s position on NATO? Or does it really not matter? Looking away from the real motivation ensures that you will completely useless when it comes to combating the problem. Thanks for playing. (With thanks to Raymond Wiley.)
- Alex Jones’s people have been trying to link the shooting to Mossad. Because they are motivated, racist barfs. Take: “Wayne Madsen: Link Between Breivik and Israeli Mossad.” Mardsen also penned: “After Oslo: Time to Crack Down on Mossad Terrorism.”
- But enough of that. Time to bring on the class. Glenn Beck compares the dead children to the Hitlerjugend. From the Telegraph. You’ll notice at the end how Beck’s 9/12 camps teach children as young as 8.
- Now, you too, with google on your side, can pull timelines out of your ear and tart them up with lots of seeming references. You’re a real detective doing important things, and you don’t even have to get off your heinder!
- From The Guardian, I encounter the term “Eurabia” for the first time, a supposed deal to hand over European sovereignty to Muslims. It reminds me of the goofy Mexican “reconquista” or UN colonization of the US or the truly gratuitous attempts to ban sharia in Kansas.
That’s all I can stomach this week. No conspiracy theory of the week. It’s just not that type of week.
RJB
Skeptical Humanities 
My initial impressionism was a Traditionalist, Do you know if he mentions Evola in his manifesto?
I noticed that Traditionalist blogs and message boards more or less claimed him except for the actual murders.
This one:
http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/untimely-observations/the-political-ideas-of-anders-behring-breivik/
called the manifesto “rational and argued” [probably meant for well-argued]
While here:
http://internationalthirdpositionistfederation.s4.bizhat.com/internationalthirdpositionistfederation-ftopic659.html
the comments ranged from “This guy was admittedly too close to one of our own for comfort. The motive behind the attacks I sorta get behind, which makes me uncomfortable” to “Personally, I find the fact that, were he ever to register here, we would welcome him with open arms to be unsettling” At least they show some shame.
What do you think of calling him a fundamentalist? I suspect the term is being used so widely to equate him with the ubiquitous ‘Islamic fundamentalist,” but to me fundamentalism means The Fundamentals, Jack Chick, Hagee and mega-churches, not role-playing the Knights Templar. it seems sort of obscurantist
A comment seems to have disappeared, so I’ll answer. No, I see no mention of Evola or Traditionalism in his sense.
I did find, however, that he is totally in love with himself, bragging about his 6 A+ in high school, thinking that 7 years of unguided self-tutoring (read “the University of Google”) was the equivalent of a college education. Of also, he names his weapons, and is in that sense a complete donkey douche. Here’s his CV:
Personal facts:
Name: Andrew Berwick
Nationality: Norwegian
Born: February 1979
Height: 183 cm
Weight: 80 kg
Ethnicity: Nordic/Norwegian
Address: Oslo ,Norway
Personality: Optimistic, pragmatic, ambitious, creative, hard working
Political view: Cultural conservative, revolutionary conservative, Vienna school of thought,
economically liberal
Religion: Christian, Protestant but I support a reformation of Protestantism leading to it being
absorbed by Catholisism. The typical “Protestant Labour Church” has to be deconstructed as its
creation was an attempt to abolish the Church
Religious: I went from moderately to agnostic to moderately religious
Education: Non-formal equivalent to 7 years + at university level
Professions: Investor, Director, Manager – founder of several companies, Small business
management (including organisational development), political analyst, author, stock analyst/trader.
Im unsure whether resistance fighter (Justiciar Knight Commander) and martyr counts as a
profession:)
Nicotine: Yes
Alcohol: Occasionally
Drugs: No
Tattoos: No
Sports: Snowboarding, fitness (body building/spinning), running
Watch sport: Only women’s sand volley ball:P Perhaps I would if Norway didn’t suck so hard in
footbal
Name of your primary weapon: Mjöllnir
Name of your side arm: Gungnir
Hobbies: Political analysis, studying new topics, Free Mason, Heraldry, Genealogy, gaming (MMO
or Modern Warfare 2), travelling – learning about new cultures, music, friends.
You will see that he named his “primary weapon” after Thor’s Hammer, and that he named his sidearm after Odin’s spear. Add that to his delusions of knighthood, MMOs and propensity for dress-up, and you have a 20-sided dice-rolling reality drop-out.
Now, you’ve done it, you made me actually go and read (or at least search) the thing.
To me, this interest in a living tradition of initiation stretching back to the Ur-time (he elsewhere says that the decline of the west started right after the capture of the Temple Mount), smacks of Traditionalism:
“The rite is somewhat similar to the ancient and original ritual of the Knights Templar. This ritual has been partly adopted and kept alive by the Freemasons and similar “chivalric orders” the
last centuries” 3.72
Elsewhere, when he actually states his goals,his lists this item (to follow expelling Islam from Europe):
“Initiation of European cultural renaissance (With emphasis on Educational and cultural reforms)” 3.137
I admit its somewhat generic, but it is what traditionalism ultimately say they want.
On the other hand I see he criticizes Guenon and Schuon for being soft on Islam. Interestingly at the same place, he rejects American Fundamentalism as being fellow travelers with Fundamentalist Islam.
If anything, he seems almost to take his conception of Islamic fundamentalism as his ideal, since he says they regularly accomplish everything he wants to do, and indeed, what he did do, so that he seems almost envious of them; they’re just doing on the wrong side, but they’re doing it and that’s why they winning, he seems to often suggest:
“As a Muslim fundamentalist living in the Middle East, you have to be initiated. You have
to basically kill your first Jew or destroy your first Zionist infrastructure. You have to
prove without a shadow of a doubt that you are worthy. And there are ample amounts of
students, teenagers, men who are willing to die a martyr’s death, willing to put
explosives. The martyr applications are filled. There are many applicants. There are not
enough bombs to fulfil the applicants. And to get on one of those missions you have to
be a strong candidate, you have to be violent enough, you have to have joined every
demonstration in the streets of Jerusalem, in Bethlehem, you have to show that you are
worthy of a greater operation. If you are about to die or are taking a considerate amount
of risk you struggle between the requirements of your Islamic upbringing and between
the realities that you value your life”
I’m sorry, but I take no responsibility for making anyone read any of that piffle. 🙂
He does seem to admire jihadis, tho. It’s funny how you become the thing you hate.
RJB
I watched the video about “Satanic Disney”. What I found hysterical, aside from the usual Mason conspiracy crap was the following.
The author takes the subliminal message stuff when some of the “messages” in Disney films may be nothing but peoples over active imaginations and some the animators having a bit of fun.
Also funny is how briefly in the middle of this paranoid screed our author actually mentions something real. That is the removal of the racist Centaur scene from Fantasia and Disney’s denial that the scene was ever there. Further it is rather disturbing how parents and esspecially mothers are killed off in Disney cartoons. For example where are Huey, Dewey and Louie’s parents? How that is evidence of a Mason conspiracy is beyond me. And our author than reverts back to utter paranoia.
THe stuff about the god Pan is risible. Our author forgets that Pan is a good god not an evil one and further has he ever read Narnia? The character Tummus looks like that becauseLewis described him that way in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe! The pedophile stuff is esspecially risible talk about delusional.
As for the Oslo stuff. What I found fascinating is how so many upon heraring about the massacre assumed Al-Qada. In Canada the Sun Channel, our version of Fox, instantly talked about intelligence failures the need for vigilance regarding radical Islamic groups and ‘Liberal” weakness in the face of Muslim extermism. Well it turns out the Guy is not a Muslim or an immigrant but a Christian nationalist, extremist. I don’t think we’re going to hear from Sun TV or Fox about the need for increased vigilance of Fundamentalist / Christian extremist groups.
Breivik screed seems like a collection of the batshit insane.
I’ve read THe Turner Diaries, aside from being stunningly racist the book should be subtitled The Joy of Genocide. The author’s pleasure in fictionally contemplating the extermination of the vast majority of the human race is positively orgasmic.
Personally, I want to see the Disney version of the Great Gatsby. Think of all the great songs they could have with that chorus of storm troopers.
I’ve always hoped to see Walt Disney’s Bluebeard myself. I can already picture the choral number sung by his ex-wives, as their heads float in the jars…
it doesn’t matter, since it turns out Breivik wasn’t a Christian at all (and neither was Timothy McVeigh):
Bwahahaha! I like how everyone is trying to put this guy in the other fellow’s camp, if you will excuse the wording. 😦
There is a lot of the no true scotsman going on here. I don’t think that the guy could see past his own Nordic nose, but his influences are strongly suggestive of the right.
Along those lines:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/232480-Glenn-Beck-Indoctrinates-Kids-With-His-Upcoming-Tea-Party-Summer-Camp
Guess it’s just like the Hitlerjugend.
Oh I forgot to mention. In that silly video our author uses stills from <The Wizard of Oz, which is NOT a Disney film!
Not even The Wizard of Oz, but Dark Side of the Rainbow, which is the Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon mashup. You can see the Emerald City has been replaced with the DSotM album art.
Good call on the Wizard of Oz, btw. Missed that.
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