English-Language Media Ignores Breivik’s Coming-Out As A Nazi

Robert Spencer

Last Friday, I published a translation of a Swedish report about a letter mass murderer Anders Breivik had sent to the media, in which he revealed that he was a Nazi, and that he had published his “counter-jihad manifesto” intending to destroy the counter-jihad movement. The Swedish news source Expo Idag (Expo Today) reported:

Anders Behring Breivik has sent out a letter to the international media that Expo Today has reviewed. He describes the letter as a sort of first step in a “peace negotiation” with his political opponents. In the letter, Anders Behring Breivik to some extent changes the rhetoric from that which he used in his so-called manifesto. He says that he used “counter-jihadist” rhetoric in the manifesto to protect “ethno-nationalists” and instead provoke a media campaign against the anti-nationalist counter-jihad supporters. He calls this a strategy of “dual psychology.”

Now Daniel Greenfield has picked up the story, but he is the only one: the English-language media has completely ignored this story, not even bothering to publish stories designed to shore up their earlier demonization of the counter-jihad movement, and claiming that Breivik is cravenly trying to obscure his counter-jihadist tracks, or simply delusional and crazy, as Greenfield does. Instead, no one mentioned it at all. Nothing. The Wall Street Journal published a piece about his claims that he was tortured, but that was as close as any mainstream media outlet came to covering this story at all.

Contrast that to the huge media barrage when Breivik’s “manifesto” was first discovered: I was on NBC for the first time in ten years, I was on the front page of the New York Times, I was on the BBC, and in a hundred other places — everywhere being blamed for the murders. But now, when Breivik says he was a Nazi and was not only not influenced by the counter-jihad movement, but was trying to destroy it?

This isn’t the first time the media has distorted Breivik’s story, although this is the first time it has done it by omission. Although Leftists and Islamic supremacists, as well as hard-Left governing and media elites, will continue to insist that there is something wrong with opposing jihad terror and Islamic supremacism because of this mass murderer, and will continue to claim that I and others somehow “inspired” him, it has been clear for quite some time that Breivik was not a counter-jihadist at all, and could not have been and was not incited to violence by the counter-jihad movement.

In all his quotations of me, Breivik never quotes me calling for or justifying violence – because I never do. In fact, Breivik even criticized me for not doing so, saying of me, historian Bat Ye’or and other critics of jihad terror: “If these authors are to [sic] scared to propagate a conservative revolution and armed resistance then other authors will have to” (Breivik, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, p. 743). Breivik explains in his manifesto that he was “radicalized” by his experiences with Muslim immigrants in the early 1990s, before I had published anything about Islam (See Breivik, p. 1348).

Breivik also hesitantly but unmistakably recommended making common cause with jihadists, which neither I nor any other opponent of jihad would ever do: “An alliance with the Jihadists might prove beneficial to both parties but will simply be too dangerous (and might prove to be ideologically counter-productive). We both share one common goal” (Breivik, p. 948). He even called for making common cause with Hamas in plotting jihad terror: “Approach a representative from a Jihadi Salafi group. Get in contact with a Jihadi strawman. Present your terms and have him forward them to his superiors….Present your offer. They are asked to provide a biological compound manufactured by Muslim scientists in the Middle East. Hamas and several Jihadi groups have labs and they have the potential to provide such substances. Their problem is finding suitable martyrs who can pass ‘screenings’ in Western Europe. This is where we come in. We will smuggle it in to the EU and distribute it at a target of our choosing. We must give them assurances that we are not to harm any Muslims etc.” (Breivik, p. 949).

But from the media, there was absolute silence on all of this at the time of the murders and ever after, just as there is silence now about Breivik’s Nazi claims. And that, in a nutshell, manifests the sinister agenda of the mainstream media: the objective was never to uncover the facts surrounding Breivik’s heinous murders. It was just to discredit the counter-jihad movement. And for that, Anders Behring Breivik has already served his purpose. At this point, he is no longer useful.

 SOURCE

********************************

If the Republicans Take the Senate..

If the Republicans Take the Senate what can or should they do about Obamacare? The current unpopularity of the program is the reason it looks at least possible that they will not only hold the House but get a majority in the Senate. If so, what are their options?

The obvious one is to replace Obamacare with something that moves medical insurance in the opposite direction, towards something more like a free market. One  elements of such a bill would be legalizing interstate sales of medical insurance, another equalizing the tax status of individual plans and employer provided plans, which probably means making expenditure on individual plans deductible. Sponsors could plausibly argue that the savings from abolishing the ACA will more than make up for the lost revenue.

Obama can and presumably will veto any attempt to repeal his pet program. The Republicans will not have enough votes to override a veto, so their only hope would be to get enough Democratic senators and representatives to go along. That is going to be hard, but not necessarily impossible, depending on just how badly Obamacare is doing. One critical actor will be Hilary Clinton. On ideological grounds she should be even more adamantly in favor of preserving the program than Obama—but on political grounds she may be looking for a way of avoiding the political fallout from its failure. Organizing Democratic support for something she can plausibly represent as a compromise might be one way of doing so.

There is another alternative. Suppose the House and Senate pass a spending bill with nothing allocated to continued implementation of the ACA. Obama can veto it and force another government shut down. But it is going to be much harder for him to blame a shut down on the Republicans if both houses have passed a budget and his refusal to sign it is the only remaining obstacle.

 SOURCE

******************************

7 Lies Liberals Tell Young Americans

Saying that life is hard is kind of like saying the sun is hot, water is wet, or noting that politicians lie a lot. It's so obvious that anyone who's paying attention already knows that it's true. That being said, life's even harder when you're working under false assumptions that have been drilled into you by your teachers, college professors, Hollywood, and politicians in D.C. Much of what liberalism drums into the young skulls full of mush simply isn't true and millions of lives have been ruined by people finding it out the hard way. The good news is that the truth is out there if you're willing to look for it and not accept the easy answers that make you feel good.

1) You are a special little flower: We live in an "everybody's a winner," don't use red ink, don't offend anyone, participation trophies for everyone era where we build up self-esteem as much as possible. Then the college student who just went $100,000 a year in the hole to get a women's studies degree from a prestigious university finds that she's not even a stand-out at the $10 an hour job she only got because her father knew someone. This leaves her angry and baffled as to why she doesn't even merit a raise, much less a promotion. When you have that experience, it's easy to retreat into bitterness or video games where "greatness awaits" in a simulation where you get to restart over and over until you win. Contrary to what young Americans are taught in school, "experience trumps brilliance," hard work beats talent, and most people value you for what you bring to the table right now, not how wonderful your teacher said you were for "trying hard."

2) Social Security and Medicare will be there for you: Young Americans are expected to pay into Medicare and Social Security, but the programs aren't going to be there in their present forms when they get old enough to use them. In other words, we're defrauding young Americans. We're telling them to pay today so they'll be taken care of when they get old, but we have no intention of ever allowing them to collect. Unless there are massive changes made to our entitlement programs, most young Americans should expect to work until they die. Let me repeat that: if you're 25 years old, you will not get to retire at 65 like your parents because you will have to work until you drop dead. When there's a 100 trillion dollar difference between what we already owe and the money we're collecting to pay it, that's not even a legitimately arguable proposition. If young Americans would like to receive more than sack cloth and an occasional bowl of gruel from the government once they get long in the tooth, they should be demanding entitlement reform.

3) Faith isn't relevant anymore: Hollywood almost universally makes Christians look bad in TV shows and movies, liberalism has become reflexively hostile to Christianity, and militant atheists work overtime to attack people of faith. Yet and still, this nation has been a success in large part because of Christianity. If not for this nation's Protestant work ethic, fundamental Christian decency and biblically inspired dedication to human rights, we would have never been so successful. That doesn't mean all Christians are good and all atheists are bad because that's certainly not true, but Christianity offers up a moral order to the universe that atheism is incapable of doing, by its very nature. Although I have known some wonderful people in my life who didn't believe in God, on the whole I've found that Christians (and observant Jews for that matter) are happier, more stable and are generally just better human beings than the people who don't believe. Contrary to what Hollywood would tell you, Christianity doesn't keep people from "doing all the fun stuff" in life, it just steers them away from sins that are "fun for a season," but that will do a lot of damage over the long-term. Few things will turn out to be more integral to your happiness and success as a human being over the long haul than your faith.

4) The government is your friend: As a general rule the more contact you have with a government, the more miserable you will be long term. Some politicians, government workers and well-connected corporations that land big contracts are exceptions to that rule, but you're probably not in any of those groups. For you, the more the government gets involved in your life, the worse off you'll be. Those college loans? The government expects them to be paid. That welfare and food stamps? It's not much money, it comes with a lot of strings attached and you'll have to degrade yourself by leeching off of your fellow citizens to get it. Ronald Reagan once said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’" He wasn't wrong about that.

5) Morality doesn't matter: It's ironic that Christianity is regularly attacked, it's considered bad form to talk about morals, and we worry more about offending people than doing the right thing; yet we're shocked at how degenerate our society has become. You want a society with no moral code, where no one is ever made to feel bad about doing disgusting things? Well, then you should expect school shootings, welfare fraud, a deterioration of marriage, women having five children out of wedlock with four different men, perverted politicians, etc., etc., etc. When you say morality isn't welcome, you don't get to pick and choose which dearly held precepts are trampled into the dirt in the public square. If you want your kids growing up in a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, buy into the idea that morals don't matter and you'll be doing your part to make it a reality.

6) Politicians are investing in your future: There really was a time in American history when the people and the government were living with one foot in the present and one foot in the future. As a practical matter, that just doesn't happen anymore. Our political differences are so stark, our government is so big, our debt is so out of control and the quality of men the American people have sent to D.C. is so low that everything is about "the now." It's about what gets them through the next news cycle, the next scandal or the next election. There's not a single Democrat in D.C. who cares about what happens to you if you're not his relative or campaign contributor and sadly, most of the Republicans aren't any better. The only people in politics that are genuinely fighting tooth and nail to protect future generations of Americans are the decidedly unhip Tea Party and its allies in Congress. They've been relentlessly smeared for that because people who are frittering away the future loathe nothing more than people who expose how small and selfish they've become.

7) The world owes you a living: There was a time in America when, "The world doesn't owe you a living," was probably the mother's favorite phrase to repeat to her child after, "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too?" However, we've moved past that and now everyone seems to believe that if he gets a college degree, he’s owed a cushy, fulfilling job and all the cool stuff his parents had after a lifetime of work. Unfortunately, that's the wrong answer, kiddo. For most people, all a college degree entitles you to is THE CHANCE to find a job where you’ll be allowed to start proving yourself for low pay. If you're expecting more than that and daddy isn't going to give you a VP slot at his company, then don't be surprised if the world adjusts your expectations the hard way.

SOURCE

*****************************

Dolly Birds of the Hindu Kush



A few weeks back, I wrote:

"At this point, Americans sigh wearily and shrug, "Afghanistan, the graveyard of empire," or sneer, "If they want to live in a seventh-century s***hole, f*** 'em." But neither assertion is true. Do five minutes' googling, and you'll find images from the Sixties and early Seventies of women in skirts above the knee listening to the latest Beatles releases in Kabul record stores."

Dangerous Minds has now assembled a collection of these photographs - not just Kabul coeds and teenyboppers but scientific researchers, too - from the Seventies, Sixties and Fifties, and they're well worth taking a look at, if only to understand the totality of our failure there. There's also a portrait of King Amanullah's consort, Queen Soraya, in the Twenties wearing a sleeveless gown that would get her stoned in 21st century Afghanistan. Amanullah was the emir who regained control of his country's foreign policy from the British, but he and his wife were more westernized than any of the would-be heirs to his throne today. Queen Soraya, a practising Muslim, nevertheless went around riding on horseback - which no unaccompanied woman can do in her country after 12 years as an American protectorate. As I said:

If it's too much to undo the barbarism of centuries, why could the supposed superpower not even return the country to the fitful civilization of the disco era? The American imperium has lasted over twice as long as the Taliban's rule — and yet, unlike them, we left no trace.

America and its allies have the best tanks, planes, and guns ...but no will and no strategy. And so the tanks, planes and guns count for naught. Our enemies have nothing but will. The consequences of this distinction extend well beyond Afghanistan

 SOURCE

*********************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

****************************