A Blogosphere of Bigots
It is tempting to view Anders Behring Breivik, the self-described Christian crusader behind the July 22 massacre in Norway, as an isolated case of pure evil. Yet history has taught us that such acts of violence rarely occur independent of their social and cultural surroundings. The assassination of Sweden’s prime minister, Olof Palme, on a Stockholm street in 1986, like the January shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords outside a shopping mall in Arizona, took place at a time when caustic antigovernment rhetoric was widespread.
Mr. Breivik managed to commit two terrorist attacks in a single afternoon. But the hatred and contempt from which he drew his deranged determination were shared with many others throughout the international right-wing blogosphere.… Seguir leyendo »