As with the Arizona shootings, in the wake of the terror in Norway prepare for countless pundits condemning extremist, heated or even uncivil rhetoric. Few, if any, will point out that legitimization of violence doen’t come mainly from words (however heated, uncivl or hateful) but from actions - the rountine lethal violence the West rains down on others and then justifies, glorifies and sanitizes. Words are not irrelevant, of course, but actions, as they say, speak louder. Norway is very much a contributor to the the West’s systemic violence as is Sweden, a significant arms exporter.

In fact, the world's main arms exporters are the self proclaimed "civilized" countries with the US far in the lead. Its sactimonious sidekick, the UK, usually running a distant second. Besides the mass violence the West inflicts directly in places like Iraq and Afghanistan there is ample violence it makes possible through indirect support - like Israel's "experiments in human despair" (to borrow from Jonathan Cook) in Palestine, to name only one of many  examples.

If our so called leaders remain addicted to mass violence, how will that not impact the behaviour of those “below” them?


Thomas Hylland Eriksen, writes in the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/25/anders-behring-breivik-norway-extremists

“Breivik must willingly have allowed himself to be brainwashed by Islamophobic and extreme rightwing websites. However, had he instead been forced to receive his information through a broadsheet newspaper, where not all the stories dealt with Europe's loss of confidence and the rise of militant Islam, it is conceivable that his world would have looked slightly different. Perhaps one lesson from this weekend of shock and disbelief may be that cultural pluralism is not necessarily a threat to national cohesion, but that the tunnel vision resulting from selective perusal of the internet is.”

Right. If only Breivik had read more mainstream newspapers and magazines he might not have been led to mass murder – never mind that the “mainstream” relentlessly endorses and glorifies mass violence and bigotry. Much more plausibly, it was “mainstream” inhumanity that put him in dangerously close proximity to an even more depraved world view
 Thomas Hylland Eriksen, writes in the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/25/anders-behring-breivik-norway-extremists

“Breivik must willingly have allowed himself to be brainwashed by Islamophobic and extreme rightwing websites. However, had he instead been forced to receive his information through a broadsheet newspaper, where not all the stories dealt with Europe's loss of confidence and the rise of militant Islam, it is conceivable that his world would have looked slightly different. Perhaps one lesson from this weekend of shock and disbelief may be that cultural pluralism is not necessarily a threat to national cohesion, but that the tunnel vision resulting from selective perusal of the internet is.”

Right. If only Breivik had read more mainstream newspapers and magazines he might not have been led to mass murder – never mind that the “mainstream” relentlessly endorses mass violence and bigotry. Much more plausibly, it was “mainstream” inhumanity that put him in dangerously close proximity to an even more depraved world view