Of course. Everyone should be free to do so.
I was asking whether you'd approve of his political platform, not of the process of peaceful political activism in the abstract.
Is he a part of an organized movement like al Qada or even the
SLA?
He claims to be.
Is there some sort of pattern developing?
There has very much been a visible pattern of increasingly strident and violent Islamophobia and Christian/White Nationalism taking hold in Europe in recent years:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/19/he_s_not_alone?page=0,0
The biggest mistake that Europeans could make while watching the ongoing trial of Anders Behring Breivik in Norway is to discount his rambling tirades against Islam and multiculturism as the ravings of a crackpot. Whether clinically sane or not [...] Breivik's thousand-page manifesto and his convictions in general are not the bizarre product of a "delusional thought universe," as the first psychiatric report concluded. On the contrary, Breivik's "thought universe" bears all the staples of a political ideology that accurately reflects a potent Islamophobic discourse that has taken hold across the continent and beyond since the 9/11 attacks. Breivik's monstrous crimes must serve as a shrill wake-up call for Europeans -- and not just Europeans -- to acknowledge the very real potential for violence inherent in this movement and take action to stem it, at its source.
Breivik is not a Norwegian novelty but, rather, symptomatic of a growing culture of politically motivated violence across the continent (just check out the London-based Islamophobia Watch, which chronicles anti-Muslim violence). Muslims have been assaulted and killed, their mosques and institutions smeared with graffiti and bombed. Rampages that copycat Breivik's, say experts, aren't out of the question. Indeed, security services have been far too lax about the threat of the far right, especially its most radical, Islam-obsessed currents.
Yet the source of the discrimination, hate speech, and violence increasingly directed at Europe's Muslim communities lies much closer to home: Islamophobia has won an accepted presence in mainstream discourses and politics from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean. Political parties that espouse a somewhat milder version of Breivik's thoughts sit in parliaments across Northern Europe, including in the European Parliament, and even participate in ruling coalitions. In some countries, like once proudly multikulti Denmark, these politicos have had a pronounced impact on migration, asylum, and cultural, social, and anti-terrorism policies, as well as on the entrenchment of a growing popular animus against Muslims.
Because I don't see why the actions of a lone nutjob warrent any serious consideration beyond how to best ensure that he never poses a threat to innocent people again
I've already observed the way in which you do not
want to see such.
But the whole trend is getting to be a bit too much to ignore, now that we're to the stage of mass murders. It's not the kind of thing that the right can continue to wink-and-nudge on the one hand, and then shrug off on the other, any more.
But never have I suggested that it was his left wing ideology rather than his insanity that drove him to commit his crimes.
That's great, but it doesn't imply that others haven't been so driven by their ideology.
And it's anyway a false dichotomy that you're pursuing to distract: it's not really the case that people are either avatars of ideology, or simply crazy. The ideology, the state of mind, the larger social environment, etc. all matter in every case. If you indulge extreme political ideations, soon enough some extremist will act them out and those who indulged his ideations will bear some responsibility for that - even if they don't approve of the actual actions.
Yes, McVeigh was a right winger, but he was also a nut job trying to set off a race war that would result in the extermination of all non-whites like that depicted in The Turner Diaries.
That was not his goal, nor his view of the Turner Diaries. It seems that you don't know much about him. He pointedly complained about the racist agenda in the Turner Diaries, although the militant and anti-government aspects of it appealled to him. You'll note that he didn't attack any racially charged targets, but instead blew up a bunch of mostly white people in a Federal building.
Again, the absence of more than a superficial understanding of the guy and his implications is telling.
There was a lot of anger back then over events such as Ruby Ridge and Waco.
This article claims it was Waco which pushed the unstable McVeigh into action.
And there's a lot of anger over Islam and 9/11 and multiculturalism today.
Just as McVeigh completely discredited the militia movement.
And just as Breivik ought to completely discredit the modern incarnation of that movement, no? In which case, why are you expending energy to resist such a process?
Since you apparently haven't been paying attention: the militia movement has been on a big come-back swing for the last decade, and particularly since Obama's election. And the right has been indulging it and then attempting to downplay both the seriousness of it and their own complicity in it.
History is replete with violence committed by the left.
The term I used was "liberalism," not "the left." And I don't think you'll find many example of "liberal violence." It's a contradiction in terms. Indeed, I fully expect that any attempt to do so will quickly degenerate into another one of the usual farsical exercises in stretching definitions into pretzels and relying on distant times and places. Like we'll be told that Stalin or Mao were "liberals," or you'll bring up Jim Jones again...
To claim one political ideology is inherently less violent than another is the height of naïveté or simple dishonesty.
That's just another of the false equivocations you employ to distract from the ugly features of your reactionary politics. It should be a simple statement of uncontroversial fact to note that, for example, pacificism is inherently less violent than various other political ideologies. As it happens, liberalism isn't far behind.
It is left to the reader as a (simple) exercise to locate on the spectrum of violence the ideologies associated with "from my cold, dead hands," "waterboarding isn't torture," "We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November," etc.
Humans are violent by nature.
You seem unaware that the above is a statement of violent political ideology.
Given that you have taken it to be axiomatic, it's unsurprising that you are unable to recognize differences in the level of violence between political ideologies. But you should understand that the less violent ideologies start with exactly the opposite axiom.
Violence is just one of the tools humans keep in their tool box and we will resort to it even when it clearly conflicts with the ideals we expouse.
And those who do such a thing thereby forfeit any claim to serious adherence to said ideals.
You are talking right past the fact that there can be - and indeed have been - polities whose commitment to peaceful ideals has been adhered to, successfully.
As to what other issues we might agree on, who knows.
It's telling how you keep making a point of avoiding learning the contents of Breivik's politics.
Perhaps we both enjoy cream with our coffee.
Stop distracting: you've been asked specifically, and repeatedly, what you think of his political platform. If you don't plan to answer, or even learn what said platform consists of, then just be quiet and spare us the distractions.
Of course, if your agenda is to actively derail any such examination of Breivik's politics - and their troubling confluence with modern currents on the right - then you're whole ongoing game of dramatic diversion and stonewalling makes a lot of sense.
Mr Breivik's opinions are irrelevent to me,
How could you know that, if you refuse to learn what they are in the first place?
but since he is a right-wing nutjob, I'm sure there are other areas in which we agree.
Maybe you could point to something in Breivik's politics that you
disagree with, if you're so concerned with distancing yourself from him?
Ah, but then you'd be legitimating a line of criticism that says his views themselves are unacceptably extreme, and not just his "psychosis" or "violence." Can't have that kind of narrative being applied to anyone on the right - no matter how nefarious and supposedly disowned by yourself - now can we?
That is laughable. You're claiming his left wing views were a charade because.........what? You believe no one of the left could possibly be a mass murdering monster?
There's nothing laughable about saying that someone who claims to believe in equality and human dignity couldn't have been serious about that claim if he turns out to be a murderous monster. Because murderous monsters are demonstrably not serious about such ideals.
No such problems arise when the political ideals in question have to do with hierarchy, obedience and power, note. Which is why the correlation between violence and said ideologies persists.
Because I don't know. Don't you get it? My knowledge of his views does not extend beyond what was presented in the article linked to in the OP.
The fact that you don't want to know any more has been noted, as has the fact that it is a tactic for you to avoid uncomfortable discussions that might make you and your politics look bad.
The point is that it is a logical fallacy to use some area of agreement your opponent has with a notorious villain to imply that your opponent somehow shares in that villainy.
That all depends on whether said opponent's areas of agreement are among the ideological factors that contributed to the villainy. And we note how pointedly you've refused to answer even specific, yes-or-no questions about such - so obviously you recognize the moral hazard involved, regardless of your accusations of fallacy above.
Moreover, this isn't all about
you. It's about the way that the right, in general, has indulged this kind of fringe and then sought to minimize/distract from that. And now things have taken an ugly turn, and you guys are desparate to evade any responsibility for it. If you want intellectual respect from your peers here, you can summon the honor and courage to delineate where you guys went wrong, what the dangers on the fringe are, and how they can be resisted. If not, you'd be better off just sitting it out. Because if your plan is to be an agent of distraction and diversion here then you are not only going to fail at that, but also get taken to task for your nasty, underhanded agenda. If I were you, I'd go with the disappearing act you typically pull after a few posts in a given thread.
