In this, the third in his series of six essays, Peter Carl peers into the troubling mind and beliefs of the Oslo terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, both from the point of view of religion and politics. Breivik’s disturbing ideas are held up for comparison against the likes of those of Friedrich Nietzsche, Alexander Tille, Adolf Hitler, and Hanns Kerrl. The author asserts that if the Counter-Jihad Movement can pro-actively begin to take steps to modify and control its message and perception internationally and to genuinely seek insight from these and other past events in history, further long-term damage posed to the Counter-Jihad Movement by Anders Breivik’s ideas and horrendous murders may be preventable.

 

In the essay that follows, we will wander through the intersection of religion and ideological politics, as it had come to be in the dark thoughts and mind of Anders Breivik and long before him Friedrich Nietzsche, Alexander Tille, Adolf Hitler, and a member of Hitler’s Nazi government, Hanns Kerrl. It was precisely there, both literally and figuratively speaking, within this very old, treacherous intersection that Anders Behring Breivik pulled his rental car up before the prime minister’s office in Oslo this past summer, closed the door, and walked away minutes before his bomb ripped through numerous office buildings housing what he saw as a “Leftist” government in central Oslo. At that point, to anyone who values and takes the democratic, non-violent Counter-Jihad Movement seriously and would like to see it succeed, it should have been sufficiently apparent already that Breivik’s actions and the fallout that would come of such a terrorist act was indicative of a number of severe problems that exist and have existed for and within both the Counter-Jihad Movement as well as the various well-meaning political parties of which it is made up all across the West. Anders Behring Breivik, as his bombs and bullets then declared, is and desired to be in all ways, shapes, and forms a problem for the peaceful, democratic, human rights committed Counter-Jihad Movement and our own parties with which he, by his own very deliberate choice, wanted nothing to do.

 

The problem, however, for the Counter-Jihad political parties, before we come to Breivik, Nietzsche, Tille, Hitler, and Kerrl below, can be summed up in the following manner. In order to affect the changes Counter-Jihad political parties desire to see, which include a prevention of a loss of Western freedoms by recognizing and avoiding the dangers of Islamization and Sharia and, relatedly, the implementation of responsible immigration policies, these fledgling parties must gain very broad support among the voting public. This they must do by presenting a genuine and human rights promoting platform that is equally attractive to voters from the “Center”, “Left”, and “Right”. The Counter-Jihad Movement, however, up through the present, by not seeking out and not arguing commonalities with their intellectual and political challengers has largely served as its own worst enemy. Because, generally speaking, criticism or questioning of another person or group’s religion is seen as fully off limits and a “violation of human rights” in today’s Western society, the Counter-Jihad parties and their proponents are immediately and unjustly seen and labeled both by the general public and often by the media as being xenophobic, neo-Nazi, or at minimum, “right-wing”. To make matters worse, as the writings of both Breivik and unfortunately many Counter-Jihad bloggers and authors provide evidence, the message most often transmitted by the Counter-Jihad Movement is one that largely and broadly underscores and overemphasizes ideological differences with and is highly critical of something as vague and indefinable as the “Left”.

As one very prominent Counter-Jihad opinion-leader wrote to me in the weeks just before the Breivik attacks, “The left is a huge problem. They are Islamic apologists and fiercely defend and advance Islamic supremacism under the guise of multi-culti and diversity. I wish it were not so, but it is.” In another setting, during approximately the same time frame, the same individual wrote resignedly, “I don't think we will ever win over the left. They are in bed with the Islamic jihad.” These views, of course, realistically or not, place one hundred percent of the blame for Islamization on the “Left” and frame the argument, contrary to the damaging myths laid out in Part I, as a need to ideologically “beat down” or “win over” the “Left” to conversion to the “Right”. As was discussed in Part II of these essays, significant research suggests that such an outcome is, socially and politically speaking, highly unlikely. Views that suggest a need to defeat the “Left” in time to defeat Islamism and Islamization also ignore our valuable Common Freedoms (as defined in Part I and briefly restated below) found among all Westerners – “Center”, “Left”, and “Right” – that can and must be used as the common rallying point in the struggle against the advance of Islamism. In the absolute worst cases, as above, attacks on an indefinable “Left” delusionally impute collective evil motives to the actions and behavior of even average apolitical citizens and mainstream politicians on the “Left” equally as being part of some deliberate “Marxist”, “Socialist”, or “Elitist” conspiracy between the “Left” and Islamists.

As if “PC”, “multi-culti”, and “diversity” were themselves an evil conspiratorial global goal and not, instead, simple by-products of a very valuable and well-meaning set of beliefs in the West based in a respect for others that arises in the Christian-Western “Golden Rule”, the picture and scope of blame is expanded far past what can responsibly or reasonably be asserted. Breivik’s words, as we will see below, provide ample evidence of this. Personally, in my own experience, I have yet to meet one “Liberal” let alone a “Leftist” or “Socialist” who wants to see “Jihadists” or the limitations of freedoms and human rights espoused by Islamists succeed; I have, however, met many who genuinely but very mistakenly believe that “all religions are equally peaceful and to be respected” (or, alternatively, that “all religions are equally violent and to be equated”) and who genuinely see no danger in Islamism because they do not know where it exists or that it exists. These same people, moreover, generally feel very sorry for people around the world who they well-meaningly see as less fortunate or oppressed and in need of, at minimum, the West’s verbal support. Nothing necessarily evil or conspiratorial about it – merely some less than developed ideas and a severe lack of facts all wrapped up in a very well-meaning love of the same Common Freedoms and rights we all – “Center”, “Left”, and “Right” – value and share across the West.

When confronted by these opposing individuals who themselves are also very genuinely concerned with the protection of human rights and Western Common Freedoms, those affiliated with the Counter-Jihad Movement and its parties often take the opportunity to point out or argue that “Political Correctness” and appeasement of Islamism is a phenomena of the “Left” or a bi-product of “Marxism”. The flirtations with promoting Islamism and Islamists among top conservatives in the United States, as I have pointed out previously, including current Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Ron Paul, Republican Governors Chris Christie (R-NJ) and Rick Scott (R-FL), and others like Grover Norquist and the Conservative Political Action Conference​ (CPAC), again, offer a quite different picture. Using partisan rhetoric in defense of the Counter-Jihad positions as held by Counter-Jihad activist and politicians, each of whom themselves are also very genuinely concerned with protecting human rights and Western freedoms, however, does very little to help persuade the general public that Counter-Jihad parties are at all anything but “right-wing” or “neo-Nazi”. The fact then that many of these parties and their supporters themselves irresponsibly and with little hindsight (or foresight) go on to place the blame and responsibility for the expansion of Islam, Islamism, and Sharia across the West solely and squarely with the “Left” is of no assistance whatsoever. As opposed to understanding the effects of World War II and the Holocaust on the Western psyche while placing and accepting blame equally, as Churchill did in World War II, across all parties today that have had input in immigration, social, and employment policies over the past fifty years, focusing on the “Left” merely reinforces the idea with the general public and the media that the Counter-Jihad parties are, in fact, only and nothing more than groups made up of “hatemongers”, the “right-wing”, or neo-Nazis. That this is the case, of course, should inform and redirect the approach and the message presented by leaders within the Counter-Jihad Movement.

The way around this, as originally laid out in Part I, is what I argue is the winning argument. I will repeat it here briefly one more time for ease of reference. The winning argument is the Counter-Jihad Movement’s pitch for credibility among the politically correct, the fanatically opposed, the disbelieving, the skeptical, or quite simply the unconvinced individuals from the political “Center”, “Left”, and “Right”. I argue that the Counter-Jihad Movement together, in unity, including Counter-Jihad bloggers, authors, political parties, and politicians – in order to successfully stem the tide of the growth of Islamism and Sharia in the West – must immediately, consciously, and fully put aside “Left”/”Right” rhetoric and, finding actual unity in focusing only on the Common Freedoms outlined and defined below, speedily convince the broadest spectrum of these voters as soon possible that Islamism: 1) poses an ideological, social, political, cultural, judicial, financial, and demographic threat; 2) that Islamism is based in promoting discrimination and violence against and subjugation of non-believers, lapsed believers, and even believers; 3) that human rights, women’s rights, the rule of law, equality under the law, freedom of expression, freedom of inquiry, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, etc. (collectively our “Common Freedoms”) are all threatened as a result; and 4) that Counter-Jihad proponents – whether from the “Center”, “Left”, or “Right” – are, contrary to general perception, the most broadly protective of these rights for all people, including even for the oppressed among Muslims and former Muslims themselves (hereinafter all referred to as the “Counter-Jihad Argument” or “Argument”).

Regardless of one’s own political views, putting them aside for a moment (and they must in neutrally considering these topics be put aside), one must accept as true and gain the insight that trying to escape this destructive cycle of other-inflicted labeling and self-inflicted obsessions with differences in an adversary’s political ideology, therefore, is and will be key to the future success or failure of the Counter-Jihad political parties and the Movement itself. In the case these parties can make the Counter-Jihad Argument in the way that best appeals to and unites those from the broader “Center”, “Left”, and “Right” under what we all view and value in the West as our Common Freedoms, the Movement may succeed. In the case it does not and its leadership and opinion-makers believe that the political “Left” must somehow be converted to the politics of the “Right”, it will fail. At the same time, to the extent Counter-Jihad parties and opinion-makers work to actively and thoroughly rephrase and reframe the Counter-Jihad Argument in a way that sees blame for the present situation as being equally spread across party lines and, therefore, simply a problem of inadequately examined ideas of human rights instead, Counter-Jihad parties and their supporters will – then and only then – begin to be seen as far more credible, honest, realistic, and humane and, therefore, become far better able to attract the consistent support of the broader ideological spectrum of the general voting public.

The problematic situation that exists right now with respect to Counter-Jihad parties and supporters themselves who continually create and recreate the above described cycle of other-inflicted labeling and self-inflicted “Left”-obsession, with apparently no understanding that they are doing so, is reflected very well in the situation surrounding Anders Behring Breivik. The Western mind has been trained to believe – meaning the entire ideological spectrum from “Right” to “Left” and everyone in between – that economic explanations are central to understanding everything and everyone all around us. This has caused most of us to forget – if not to outright disbelieve – that other deeper underlying ideas are actually responsible for informing and driving a person’s motives and behavior (including very much so their economic motives and behavior), chief among these being, whether latent or active, religion and religious culture (or, as we shall see below, in Nietzsche, Tille, and Hitler’s cases the demand for the annihilation thereof or in Breivik and Kerrl’s cases the religious gutting thereof). Max Weber (1864-1920) made this point rather convincingly in his writings on the sociology and economics of religion as did John Milton Yinger (1916-2011) and so many others. Even so, for years, economic explanations have dominated and ironically, very much due to our own Western religio-cultural heritage of Christianity which places the examination of the connection between peoples’ behavior and their religion or religio-cultural heritage (or lack thereof) far off-limits in public discourse, the general public as well as even Counter-Jihad bloggers and writers, parties and politicians (“Right”, “Left”, and “Center”) continue to tend to see the world as acting only in accordance with economic motives. That leaves the world, in the highly simplified view of Breivik, for example, consisting of nothing more than those who push (as the argument goes, knowingly or unknowingly) Marx’s agenda and those who stand firmly against that agenda. Nothing in between. This view of the world, however, is far too simplistic. And aside from being so, it gets in the way enormously for those who, in order to succeed in changing our present situation with respect to the West and expansionist Islamism, are required to work with, understand, and recruit others who do not share our same ideological points of view.

Anders Behring Breivik, like a few (but certainly not all) who identify with aspects of the Counter-Jihad Movement, specifically picked out and targeted the “Left” in his rambling manifesto – “2083 - A European Declaration of Independence” – for very precise reasons. Of course, Breivik’s violent actions against his perceived “Leftist” enemy can not and should not ever be said to be on the same level as argumentative targeting of the “Left” by Counter-Jihad bloggers and writers, regardless of the latter’s terribly damaging effect on the public perception of Counter-Jihad political parties and the Movement itself. However, Breivik’s violence aside, his choice to focus arguments on the “Left” does connect a debate that has, in fact, very much the same roots. For Breivik, a church lady or a college student who voted Labour was nothing more than a naïve Marxist. And the “Left” for Breivik, as for many within certain aspects of the Counter-Jihad Movement, is insidious and everywhere to be found – and solely responsible for the present situation of Islam within the West. As Breivik put it, pulling media, government, and Islam together into the same conspiratorial critique of the “Left”, “The almighty Norwegian/Swedish cultural Marxist media corps significantly manipulated the Norwegian election and the cultural Marxist/multiculturalist government (consisting of the Labour Party, Socialist Left Party and Center Party) were allowed to continue their old path of mass-Muslim immigration (colonisation) and Islamisation of Norway.” (Page 797).

As opposed to understanding that a Christian-Western view of universalist human relationships and universalist human responsibility toward one’s fellow man – especially in light of World War II and the Holocaust – is innocently responsible for the West’s Political Correctness, mass immigration, and multiculturalism today, whether in the Norwegian elections, press, or otherwise, Breivik and those who share his conspiratorial view of the “Left” find the cause and impute evil roots instead to some deliberate conspiracy arising out of “Marxism” and the political “Left”. “Political Correctness,” proclaims Breivik, forgetting the West’s (otherwise highly valuable) internalization of the Golden Rule, “is in fact cultural Marxism (Cultural Communism) – Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms.” (Page 13). “The ideology that has taken over Western Europe…,” writes Breivik of “Political Correctness,” using terms that he fails to understand equally as well describe how Christianity itself reforms the mental, spiritual, and social software of individuals and societies to be ordered, innovative, caring, and productive, “…seeks to alter virtually all the rules, formal and informal, that govern relations among people and institutions. It wants to change behaviour, thought, even the words we use.” (Page 12). In the case of Christianity, those changes in behaviors, thoughts, and words happen to require at all times a reflection of love and respect for others and oneself, including one’s enemy; it’s what provides the West both stability and rule of law, for example.

One only needs to look back to the late 1800s to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and his publisher and greatest promoter, Alexander Tille (1866-1912), to see how Christian values have long been perceived throughout history and why Nazism actually sought to put an end to both Christianity and Socialism. As Nietzsche put it, “The ‘first Christian’ — …also the last Christian, whom I shall perhaps yet live to see — is, by fundamental instinct, a rebel against everything privileged — he lives for, he struggles always for ‘equal rights!’ . . . Examined more exactly, he has no choice. If one wants personally to be one of the, ‘chosen of God’ or a ‘temple of God,’ or a ‘judge of angels’ — every other principle of [natural] selection, for example according to uprightness, according to intellect, according to manliness and pride, according to beauty and freedom of heart, is simply ‘world,’ — the evil in itself . . . Moral: every expression in the mouth of a ‘first Christian’ is a lie. . . .” ⁱ (Emphasis supplied.) For Nietzsche, Christianity and its “love for one’s neighbor” and its offspring, Western democracy and human rights, were the anti-thesis to all he saw as being “good” in this world. “Christianity springing out of a Jewish root, and only comprehensible as a growth of this soil,” Nietzsche argues, “represents the movement counter to every morality of breeding, of race, and of privilege: it is anti-Aryan religion par excellence: Christianity, the transvaluation of all Aryan values, the triumph of Chandala [e.g. mongrel] values, the gospel preached to the poor and lowly, the collective insurrection against ‘race’ of all the down-trodden, the wretched, the ill-constituted, the misfortunate, — undying Chandala [mongrel] revenge as a religion of love….” ⁱⁱ (Emphasis supplied). In words that again point to the two-thousand year-old Christian roots of Karl Marx’s (1818-1883) theories and Socialism, Nietzsche exclaims: “In Christianity the instincts of the subjugated and suppressed come into the foreground: it is the lowest classes who here seek their goal. Here the casuistry of sin, self-criticism and inquisition of conscience are practised as occupations….” ⁱⁱⁱ (Emphasis supplied.) Self-criticism and an active conscience are, of course, key aspects of Political Correctness; they are key aspects, in fact, of being self-aware, respectful, and intellectually open as well, something mass-murderers generally are not.

The point here, of course, is not to condemn Christianity for our present situation; the values given to the West directly from Christianity, contrary to the desires of Nietzsche, Tille, Hitler, and Breivik, have made the West the most stable, peaceful, prosperous, equal, transparent, open, tolerant, and productive place the world has yet ever known. To maintain such a society, however, takes something else that is far more important: wisdom to avoid creating a situation within that society wherein these extremely important values could, by its citizens’ own unconsidered kindness, be done away with. In fact, since violence, deceit, and lies are forbidden, Christianity also teaches in Matthew 10:16 how to maintain a love-based society when love is threatened. “Behold,” it reads, “I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” It requires us to be peaceful, but it requires us to guard our freedoms, institutions, and beliefs by thinking far ahead to anticipate and prevent their loss. Few today, however, know of this teaching and even fewer have acted wisely in any way that would have prevented the dangers we now face. Put in that light, we should understand that Political Correctness – absent wisdom and the standards of the “Golden Rule” being properly and equally applied – is little more than being blindly and unthinkingly considerate. It means being “harmless” but not “wise”. Political Correctness – where no wisdom or one standard is applied equally to all – is fully unsustainable and no more and no less than the full demise of Western equality and freedoms.

For Alexander Tille, this key but yet very much unknown German philosopher and promoter of Nietzsche and Social Darwinism of the 1890s, he understood that Christianity and its “Christian-human-democratic ethic”, as he called it in his book From Darwin to Nietzsche (1895), had to be destroyed. “Most meaningful for Tille,” writes author Steven E. Aschheim, “was the fact that, unlike Darwin, Nietzsche held that the new teaching [of Natural Selection and Social Darwinism were] incompatible with the ‘Christian-human-democratic ethic,’”^iv of which Tille writes much. Key to this new way of thinking, for Nietzsche and for those who would follow him, including Alexander Tille, was that Christianity, for the good of the species and race, had to be eradicated: Tille’s “…new morality had to distance itself from the traditional ethics of neighborly love.” ^v (Emphasis supplied). “Nietzsche’s fundamental lesson for the species,” Tille understood and agreed wholeheartedly, “…was that people did not possess equal worth; while the strong represented upward development, the weak represented decay.” ^vi Tille’s Nietzschean beliefs, planting the words and thoughts soon to come from the mouth and mind of Adolf Hitler, were unambiguous. As he wrote in his book, “For one thousand eight hundred years…Christianity has preached that all people are equal…that all humans love one another and should potentially offer themselves for one another. This became the teaching and has remained the teaching. […] This teaching is in no way a summary of the facts of life, but is instead an assertion and a rebuke that flies in the face of these facts.” ^vii

Recognizing how these Christian values had, across the West, come to be taken as the only valid set of values worth embracing, Tille opined with disgust: “Few educated persons today, when asked how they percieve the moral development of the present would provide an answer that does not rest on [the] fantasy [of Christian morals]. In addition to Happiness and ’Humanity’, the growth of which will be praised, Peace also always acompanies [these] as the third in the bouquet of the ideal state of being.“^viii Tille, tracing the steps that have brought us to the stable democratic societies we now possess across the West – and which we retained by defeating Hitler, addressed how various thinkers throughout the ages accepted as valid and furthered these Christian principles in their own writings and thought. “And still via Hegel,“ wrote Tille, “this picture of the happy, peaceful, loving humanity was given yet another column – All conflicting interests were equalized, everyone works for the others. Mutual love and sacrifice of oneself rules.“^ix

Tille’s words evoke instant thoughts of the explicitly Christian principles referred to by Henri Dunant (1828-1910) in the founding of the International Red Cross, nearly thirty years before Tille, and Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) in the founding of the League of Nations (later the United Nations), nearly twenty years later. From Dunant’s efforts came the Geneva Conventions and Western laws governing armed conflict; from Wilson’s efforts came the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Tille, however, as Nietzsche, Hilter and Breivik did, derides the high levels of peace, equality, compassion, mutual love, tolerance, and self-sacrifice that resulted across the West from Christianity and asks his reader whether, if these values are in fact logically true, they will be able to survive in harmony with that which he sees must be the direct results of the new truths of science, Social Darwinism, and Darwin’s theory of Evolution. “The general sense of fairness,“ as Tille summarizes the Christian-based principle, “tolerates no inequality; distress, misery, hunger, war have ceased to exist. Peace and harmony became the lasting principles for universal happiness. This ideal stands unshakebly firm. It is the one true human ideal – and if the theory of Evolution is [also] the truth – it must then offer it the strongest possible support. Will it do this? Will this be possible?“ ^x Sadly and ironically, sixty-six years after the end of World War II and its approximately 20,000,000 lives lost, we can now see where the brave new world that Nietzsche, Tille, Hitler, and Stalin as well foresaw – absent the peace, harmony, and democracy of Christianity – could actually take us.

Yet, according to Breivik, forget a Westerner’s – whether of the “Center”, “Left”, or “Right” – sincere and wholly apolitical desires to help and care for or about others – especially those not like or those less fortunate than us; no, Marxism somehow is the source of "Political Correctness" in Breivik’s very incomplete world of historical and religious knowledge. Not only for Breivik, but also for some in our democratic and non-violent Counter-Jihad Movement, there appear to be only two polar and competing factions in the world: “cultural conservatives” and “cultural Marxists”. “We cannot defeat multiculturalism,” writes Breivik, insisting that those on the “Left” must convert to an ideologically “Conservative” political position before anything can be done about Islamization, “until we defeat Marxism….” (Page 1227). This appears to be the same view held by some opinion-makers among today’s democratic and non-violent Counter-Jihad Movement who, instead of focusing on convincing those on the “Left” of where all of our commonalities lie and helping those on the “Left” to understand that we are all genuinely concerned about preserving human rights and the same Common Freedoms, they insist on “putting pressure” on the indefinable “Left” by hopelessly attempting to accomplish one of the most difficult things ever – to change the political ideology of others en masse by, in this case, convincing the “Left” of its errors. “If this mass murder destroys our work,” wrote one of the Counter-Jihad Movement’s leading bloggers to me on the actual day of Breivik’s attack, quite contrary to the conclusions of researchers presented in Part II of these essays, “…it would call for more, not less, pressure on the Left for its collusion with the jihad.”

Unfortunately for the above-mentioned Counter-Jihad blogger and for all of us, there is absolutely no organized deliberate “Leftist” “collusion with jihad” that can be specifically targeted. If there were one specific group or a number of specific international groups of “Leftists” under which all “Leftist” people across all countries fell who were deliberately promoting Islam for the sake of their own actual belief in Islam, the approach could focus on them and their teachings and be effective. The very few such groups, however, that do exist (self-declared Marxists) are so extremely rare and small across the West and, to a certain extent, already monitored by the authorities. The vast majority of the so-called “Left”, on the contrary, is as average and politically unaffiliated or mainstream as the vast numbers of average and generally apolitical or mainstream “Conservatives” living next to them in the suburbs. Thus, the truth is that we are not fighting against some international “Leftist” global conspiracy to favor the “Jihadists”. The vast majority of individuals on the “Left” – including the vast majority of all elected politicians of all stripes – do not and, if they understood it, would not support Islamism and Sharia; they simply apply the Western hesitation against challenging the religion of others and they see questioning Islamism and Sharia, therefore, as “bigotry”. Protecting someone from perceived harassment, it should be clear, does not mean the protector shares the views of the person or group perceived to have been harassed. That should be rather obvious; yet apparently it is not. If the Counter-Jihad Movement does not internalize these truths in its arguments and within its view of this struggle, the Movement will not in any way succeed and, as a result, the door will be opened for continued Islamization as well as to more anti-democratic violent fascists like Anders Behring Breivik.

Instead of a “global conspiracy” of the “Left” then, we are being asked to deal with a very well-meaning hyper-application of Christianity’s ancient “Golden Rule” – absent the equal standards of Christianity – by the “Center”, “Left”, and “Right”. That “Golden Rule”, most do not realize, is and has been the key to the success, stability, equality, transparency, innovation, and prosperity of our Western societies and, therefore, can and should never simply be gotten rid of or rejected out of hand. It bears repeating: the “Golden Rule” and Christian universalism (and therefore “Political Correctness”) applies not merely to “Leftists”, it applies to all of Western society – “Center”, “Left”, and “Right”. Ergo, we are left with the very extreme difficulty right now in getting the entirety of Western society to see efforts to warn about the dangers of Islamism as being anything but “racist”, “hateful”, and “fascist”. For exactly these reasons, the proper Argument must focus not merely on addressing symptoms by supposedly “putting pressure” on a “Left” that spans the globe in many different forms and generally remains rather indefinable. Instead, it must get at and answer the concerns and resistance programmed into the otherwise highly valuable religio-cultural source code of all Westerners found in the “Political Correctness” that sees challenges of religion and challenges to the religious ideas of people not like us as being “racist” or “bigoted”.

Breivik’s reasoning underlying his perceived need to defeat multiculturalism and Political Correctness by defeating the “Marxist” “Left” is not really different than believing that the Counter-Jihad Argument must be advanced by defeating the “Left” on politically ideological arguments. Both insist on changing “Leftist” views, whatever those in their breadth may be. Both also contradict research presented in Part II as well as Winston Churchill’s own approach taken during World War II, as will be discussed in Part V of this series of essays. In his myopic view, which ignores the roots of multiculturalism and Political Correctness in Christian universalism and the “Golden Rule”, both of which, in turn, affect all Westerners whether “Center”, “Left”, or “Right”, Breivik sees multiculturalism and Marxism simplistically as “…two sides of the same coin.” (Page 1227). “Multiculturalism,” according to Breivik and, it appears, others who hold this position, “is Marxism, Marxism is multiculturalism.” (Page 1227). “Do not have any doubt about this,” he reminds us. “A liberal right winger [e.g. in the European sense, that is, a free-market conservative] might claim that he is not a cultural Marxist but a globalist. He should however know that a globalist is the exact same thing as a cultural Marxist. Because there are only two cultural poles; if you are not cultural conservative then you are a cultural Marxist.” (Page 1227). Thus, in Breivik’s view, as with some individuals in the Counter-Jihad Movement, everybody in the West today who identifies with a “Labour” or “Democratic” party affiliation, from the plumber who fixed your toilet, to the lady serving coffee at the church, to the guy in the office next to the water cooler – whether avowedly political or apolitical – is either a “cultural conservative” or an unwitting tool of a pro-Islamist Marxist global conspiracy.

Breivik’s discussion and treatment of religion is also dictated by his inability to put both Christianity and the politics of the “Left” – and their effects on each other – into a true and realistic context. As will be explained in more detail below, contrary to some reports in the press, Breivik is not by any definition of the word a Christian. His understanding of Christian theology seems as flawed as a good deal of his understanding of history. Breivik’s view of history appears to be so short-sighted that he seems to believe that one-hundred and fifty years of Marxism and “Leftist” politics somehow were determinative of today’s Christianity as opposed to two-thousand years worth of Christian thought, instead, being the actual source for and fully determinative of both today’s Christianity and the roots of Marxism itself (and, for that matter, directly or indirectly, every other political or philosophical view in the Western world, including “Conservatism”). In fact, as I have asserted in Part I and Part II of these essays, though PC is not “cultural Marxism” as Breivik argues (such would assume that even average apolitical people of all ideologies across the entire West have been more influenced by 150 years of Marxism than by 2,000 years of Christianity, which is not at all the case), the truth is that both PC and Marxism do arise from vastly differing attempts to enforce Christian principles absent Christian standards.

PC is simply the standard-less or imperfect application of Christianity’s “Golden Rule” in day-to-day public or private relationships. It would exist fully independently of whether Marxism had ever come into being, thus it can not in any way be said to have its source in Marxism. Marxism, on the other hand, is a complicated economic and social explanation of human interaction and behavior that does not naturally come into existence by the unthinking or imperfect application of Christianity. In fact, Christianity provides its own economic and social explanation of human interaction and behavior. Marxism, on the other hand, requires both a lot of thought and an extensive deconstruction of Christianity in order to arrive at Marx’s recommendations – which, ironically, are based in Ludwig Feuerbach’s de-Christianization of Christianity. PC arises naturally within an imperfect practice of Christianity; Marxism does not – it arises from its negation.

So, whereas PC is the attempt to apply the “Golden Rule” absent the equal application of simple necessary standards, Marx’s ideas arose, in fact, from Hegelian “dialectical” materialists’ obsession with “…the task of disentangling the essential content of Christianity from its religious form.”^xi As John Milton Yinger quoted the Scottish philosopher, John MacMurray (1891-1976), “In particular, [this obsession] led [Ludwig] Feuerbach to call his chief philosophical work The Essence of Christianity. Its aim was to restate the content of Christianity in purely humanistic terms. This work was a turning point in the development of Karl Marx, who went so far as to say that no one could reach the true Communist position without being baptized in the Fire-brook [e.g. the ideas and writings of Feuerbach].”^xii That is to say, Marxism was created out of a very conscious and laborious effort to attempt to separate away and retain the entirety of so-called “Christian” core values of Christianity while fully disposing of the religion. PC, of course, requires no such thing. As Kerr and Breivik desired to gut Christianity from the right, while Nietzsche, Tille, Hitler, and Stalin wished to eliminate it altogether, on the left, Feuerbach and Marx desired to gut Christianity there as well. As a result of all of this, committed secularists and humanists from all directions today strive to achieve these three outcomes without ever understanding why or from which direction their desire to do so has ever arisen or, most dangerously of all, what horrific results have come in world history as a result of those who have made the same efforts previously.

That said, when Breivik’s ideas are compared with those of Adolf Hitler, Hitler seemed to have a longer perspective of history. As such, Hitler also hated Christianity due to its Marxist-Bolshevist progeny, that is, compassion expressed in the form of concern for the average poor, unsuccessful, uneducated, disadvantaged worker as it had developed both outside of and inside of “Leftist” politics in Western societies. Such compassion, Hitler saw, had effects fully contrary to Social Darwinism’s natural selection. “Christianity…leads to the annihilation of manhood, it is naked Bolshevism under the guise of metaphysics,”^xiii said Hitler. For Hitler, this connection between the compassion and equality of Christianity and Socialism’s originally intended purpose of bringing compassion and equality to those outside of the corridors of means and power was obvious. “The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was Christianity. Bolshevism is the illegitimate son of Christianity,” Hitler accused, extending blame also to the Jews. “Both are the offspring of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity; in the same way Bolshevism lies when it claims to bring liberty, whereas it seeks only to see slaves.” ^xiv

Despite a lack of depth in Breivik’s view of history, Christianity itself – especially Protestant Christianity – he ties very much to the “Left”. This explains his reasons for rejecting Christianity generally and Protestantism specifically. “Christian leftism,” writes Breivik, “is ultimately based on a mistaken theological premise: that God has a ‘preferential love for the poor.’ Scripture, however, informs us that God is no respecter of persons.” (Page 1134). Though his knowledge of scripture clearly shows much to be remedied, echoing Nietzsche, Tille, and Hitler, Breivik does show some contradictory signs of seeing the Christian roots of Marxism here. “A cultural Marxist society defies and rejects supernaturalism and tradition,” Breivik says, complaining of Norway’s open and tolerant Lutheran tradition, “and thus does what they can to gradually deconstruct the Church and the role of the Church. For modernist Protestants (or also referred to as the Labour Party Church) religion is a matter of fighting for equal rights, making the world a better place, being kind to everyone and ‘spirituality’.” (Page 1131).

The “spirituality” of religion, Breivik appears not to be aware, is very central to the Lutheran tradition, advanced by Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781), the German Enlightenment writer and a committed Lutheran, who, relying on Luther, argued for a “Christianity of Reason”, which oriented itself by the “spirit of religion”. Lessing pre-dated Marx by one hundred years. Long before Marx, Lessing’s Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise) (1779), most certainly objectionable to both Hitler and Breivik, could be described as a “PC” ode to humanity’s brotherly love and a petition against religious bigotry towards Jews and Muslims in the spirit of Christian universalism. Moreover, Breivik’s assumption that the traditions of “fighting for equal rights, making the world a better place, being kind to everyone and ‘spirituality’” in the Protestant church is a result of Marxism or that a Marxist society “defies and rejects supernaturalism and tradition” are quite ill-placed as well; for anyone who reads the New Testament, it becomes immediately apparent that those who defied “supernaturalism” or these “traditions” taught by Jesus in his days, were simply those who rejected Christian ideas or, in the alternative, a belief in a God altogether. As Christianity as a religion assumes, such people have existed and will exist forever; Christians are simply to challenge those who hold such ideas with the idea of love. In other words, “defiers” long pre-date the existence of Marxism and, therefore, those who “defy” and “reject” the supernatural or the Church today do not necessarily do so because they have been drowned in Marxism. Defying God has a very long history. To Breivik Catholicism is also lost in “Leftism”. To Breivik, it too, though less so, is a part of the problem of the “Left”. “Catholics themselves,” he writes, “often buy into the non-Christian aspects of political leftism. Their leftism, to be quite blunt, is often born of an unparalleled theological naivete.” (Page 1134).

Breivik’s views of Christianity have other points in common with as well as points that are fully opposed to the views on Christianity of Adolf Hitler. In common with Hitler, Breivik sees Christianity as a whole – with Breivik’s exception for medieval Roman Catholicism’s embrace of “Holy War” – as being wired for destruction and defeat due to its teachings on pacifism and care for the weak and less fortunate. Breivik cites an essay from the blogger “Reconquista” which explains very much his own and Hitler’s view, “The Judeo-Christian religions played an important and influential role in building the once mighty West but we also discovered that these religions contained a serious flaw that has sewed the seeds of the suicidal demise of the indigenous peoples of Western Europe and our cultures. This flaw was identified by the brilliant German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who described it as ‘an inversion of morality’ whereby the weak, the poor, the meek, the oppressed and the wretched are virtuous and blessed by God whereas the strong, the wealthy, the noble and the powerful are the immoral and damned….” (Emphasis original) (Page 391). Hitler put it in Socially Darwinist but yet very similar terms that pointed toward the perversion of nature he saw arising in Christianity. “This corresponds with the law of nature, always bringing forth never ending selection through struggle: the law of existence requires uninterrupted killing, so that the superior [being] lives on. Christianity is a rebellion against this fundamental law, a protest against Creation. Taken to its logical conclusion, [Christianity] would mean the systematic cultivation of the inferior.”^xv

Unlike Hitler, who desired ultimately to see a full eradication of and end to Christianity, Breivik hearkens back to Hanns Kerrl (1887-1941), the Nazi Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs (Reichsminister für die kirchlichen Angelegenheiten). Kerrl attempted to gut Christianity by creating a so-called “Positive Christianity” in Nazi Germany, “…an ersatz faith and liturgy, substituting for belief in Christ a pagan cosmology and secular values centered on the nation and race.” ^xvi Breivik dreams of something quite similar. For Breivik, Christianity is not a religion, but a way of maintaining “culture”. Under a heading entitled, “Distinguishing between cultural Christendom and religious Christendom – reforming our suicidal Church,” Breivik concedes that he is not a believing or religious Christian. “If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God,” he acknowledges, “then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God.” (Page 1307). Though he does not believe in Christ – or Christianity as a religion for that matter – making him, de facto and by his own admission, not a Christian, he does see Christianity, stripped of its core Christian teachings of love and compassion for all, as a platform for protecting his vision of Europe. “We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform.” (Page 1307). Though clearly not “Christianity” in the eyes of any version of Christianity now or previously existing, according to Breivik himself, “This makes us [e.g. he and any of his non-believing followers, if any] Christian.” (Page 1307).

Though much else of what Breivik writes may be far beyond comprehension, the idea that religion has a formative and determinative effect on cultures and societies is not at all a radical or crazy idea. In fact it is commonly understood as being quite true. The idea is the basis for, among many other works, as stated above, Max Weber’s ground-breaking theories in “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1930). That book of Weber now forms what is considered to be the founding text in economic sociology – and sociology in general. In Weber’s footsteps, Clifford Geertz, “…for three decades...the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States…” and famed Princeton University anthropologist recognized “…the cultural dimension of the influence of religion…. [….] religion’s ability to transmit ‘patterns of meanings embodied in symbols… (by which humans) communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.’”^xvii The idea is also reflected in the French author and commentator on religion, Frédéric Lenoir, and his attempt to explain Christianity for an often secular audience. In his book, “Le Christ philosophe” (2007), he explains how even when viewed for its philosophical value, as opposed to its purely religious meaning, Christianity has spurred and continues to spur on so much of all that is good and beautiful that surrounds us within Western culture and throughout the world. In more everyday genres, the same idea is posited in a recent National Geographic issue which wonders whether, at the 11,600 year old temple being excavated in what is now Southern Turkey, “…the human sense of the sacred – and the human love of a good spectacle – may have given rise to civilization itself.” As the archeologist, Klaus Schmitt, summarizes: “Twenty years ago everyone believed civilization was driven by ecological forces. I think what we are learning is that civilization is a product of the human mind.” Both Breivik’s (and Hitler’s) complete lack of civilization due to their animosity towards actual Christianity and their many unambiguous complaints against Christianity’s teachings including especially pacifism and equality, it appears on all counts, judging from the otherwise highly peaceful and egalitarian society found in Norway, prove Weber, Geertz, Lenoire, and Schmitt all quite right.

The key to Europe’s survival according to Breivik, much like Kerrl, in thoughts quite contrary to the pacifist roots of Christianity, is to strip Christianity of unconditional love and insert into Christianity a desire and the permission to fight and kill. “As this is a cultural war,” he explains, “our definition of being a Christian does not necessarily constitute that you are required to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus. Being a Christian can mean many things; That you believe in and want to protect Europe’s Christian cultural heritage.” (Page 1361). Reiterating that no relationship with the Christian Trinity is required in his mind, those also included in Breivik’s definition of “Christians” include those, like himself, who according to his own explicit words do not believe. “So no, you don’t need to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus to fight for our Christian cultural heritage,” he repeats. “It is enough that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christian-atheist (an atheist who wants to preserve at least the basics of the European Christian cultural legacy (Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter)). The PCCTS, Knights Templar is therefore not a religious organisation but rather a Christian “culturalist” military order.” (pp. 1361-1362). A “Christian-agnostic”, a “Christian-atheist”, and a “Christian ‘culturalist’ military order,” all of which, one hopefully need not point out to the reader, by their very definition defy all definitions of every form of actual Christianity that has ever existed.

In yet other places, Breivik repeats again that, contrary to any standard of Christianity, a “Christian” need not have any relationship with God or Jesus. Breivik also, in the same place, distinguishes between true Christianity as understood today, which teaches pacifism and equality and is called in his terms “fundamentalist”, and his view of his culturally “Christian” and “secular” society. “It is not required,” he writes, “that you have a personal relationship with God or Jesus in order to fight for our Christian cultural heritage and the European way. [….] It is therefore essential to understand the difference between a ‘Christian fundamentalist theocracy’ (everything we do not want) and a secular European society based on our Christian cultural heritage (what we do want).” (Emphasis original) (Page 1361). As part of that “secular European society” he does want is a so-called “church” in which all “Christians” reject pacifism and equality and within Christianity all Protestants are to convert “back” to Catholicism. “Efforts should be made,” Breivik makes clear, “to facilitate the de-construction of the Protestant Church whose members should convert back to Catholicism. The Protestant Church had an important role once but its original goals have been accomplished and have contributed to reform the Catholic Church as well.” (Page 1403).

Here Breivik’s thoughts are again slightly, yet not, completely similar to those of Hitler. According to Breivik, “[six] decades of the Marxist doctrines of cultural relativism/pluralism and egalitarian thinking has severely infected especially the Protestant church in Europe.” (Page 1130). The Protestant church, therefore, is now according to Breivik committed to “extreme equality.” (Page 1135). For Hitler, like Breivik, Christianity as practiced in modern times and as taught in the New Testament, was too much the antithesis of Hitler’s Social Darwinist beliefs based in “survival of the fittest.” For that reason, Hitler also, though not changing his mind as to Christianity as a religion, did on some occasions offer an admiring word for some popes of the Middle Ages – due to those popes own un-Christian displays of power, wealth, and extravagance. “I think I could have come to an understanding with the Popes of the Renaissance,” said Hitler. “Obviously, their Christianity was a danger on the practical level – and, on the propaganda level, it continued to be a lie. But a Pope, even a criminal one, who protects great artists and spreads beauty around him, is nevertheless more sympathetic to me than the Protestant minister who drinks from the poisoned spring [of Christianity].” ^xviii For Breivik too these medieval popes who lived by their own self-determined doctrines – not necessarily any Christian doctrines of theology – are admirable to Breivik as well.

Roman Catholicism then, according to Breivik, in order to shatter Christianity’s historical and present-day pacifism needs to again imitate Islam’s “Jihad” as Roman Catholicism and its popes once did in the Middle Ages and reinstitute what, in fact, was an Islam-inspired doctrine of “Holy War” for pursuing new Crusades. “We must have a Church leadership who supports a future Crusade with the intention of liberating the Balkans, Anatolia and creating three Christian states in the Middle East,” writes Breivik. (Page 1403). To accomplish this, a united “church” would be required, he argues. “Europe should have a united Church lead by a just and non suicidal [e.g. war-like] Pope who is willing to fight for the security of his subjects, especially in regards to Islamic atrocities.” (Page 1403). To form a united and so-called “church” for all of Europe, Breivik proposes that: “A Christian Congress will be held with military leaders, political leaders and Church leaders. The intention of the congress will be to create the foundation for a future cultural and spiritual platform for Christendom in Europe. The Church will have to give many concessions but will gain many privileges in return.” (Page 1137).

Where Breivik sees a revised version of “Christianity” as being recommendable, for the above-named specific purposes, Hitler believed that there was no fixing something irreparably flawed. Hitler did not care to see any “synthesis” of Darwinian Aryan racial theory and “Christianity” as a system of belief complementary to the religion-free Social Darwinist National Socialism he saw as best. In a meeting with Alfred Rosenberg, Philipp Bouhler, and Heinrich Himmler, referring to Hanns Kerrl, Hitler said, “Kerrl, with the noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don’t believe the thing’s possible; I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.” ^xix As Hitler saw it: “We can not avoid coming to a fundamental solution. If anyone thinks it’s necessary to build the life of human society on a foundation one recognizes to be [Christian] untruths, such a society is not worthy of being preserved. If, on the other hand, one believes that [National Socialist] truth can be a sufficient foundation, then conscience requires of one that the truth [be compelled to] go in and root out the lie. Every century that continues to burden itself with this cultural degradation [from the churches] will, with respect to the future [generations], not be understood in the least. Just as the witch[craft]-craze had to be eradicated, so too must all of this [Christian] residue be eradicated. One needs, however, a certain amount of foundation first.”^xx

Again, as is clear from his writings, Breivik’s so-called “church” would not be a church by any definition of Christianity now or ever existing. Precisely as with Kerrl’s failed attempt to create a so-called “Positive Christianity” in Nazi Germany, for Breivik he believes it necessary that “[t]he contemporary definition of the Christian world view will be reformed to correlate with nationalistic doctrines” (Page 1134). Leaving behind Jesus’ core teaching to love one’s neighbor (meaning all people) as oneself, Breivik states that “…our future European Church will reflect our political doctrines. They should be compassionate but first and foremost towards other Christians.” (Page 1134). To prevent future contamination of his new so-called “church”, “[n]o multiculturalist/suicidal humanist church leaders,” Breivik proclaims, “will be allowed to spread their ideological poison in the future as they will be replaced by conservatives.” (Page 1134).

To be sure, these thoughts and ideas do not comport with any conception of Christian religion or Christian behavior. This should not surprise us at all. Aside from the above explanations, Breivik later – as on numerous other occasions – directly addresses his own lack of belief in other more specific terms. For him his use of religious terms and his plans for a future European so-called “church” have solely and simply to do with maintaining “culture” and with reformulating the “church” in the West to make it as war-like as Islamism and to prevent any future spread of Christianity’s pacifistic equality-driven “ideological poison.” “Regarding my personal relationship with God,” says Breivik, giving us an insight into why the mass killing of seventy-seven (77) people in cold blood would not seem to him to be fully inconceivable, “I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe.” (Page 1404).

For Breivik, we now know, he foresaw himself as initiating the battle to come. “We sincerely hope,” he writes, “that the multiculturalist regimes of Western Europe will capitulate to conservative forces, in a relatively peaceful manner, before the capitals of Europe once again lie[] in complete ruin. Unfortunately, our hope is overshadowed by an instinct telling us that they will be unwilling to surrender, as we are unwilling to surrender. Europe will burn once more and rivers from the blood of patriots, tyrants and traitors will flow through the streets. However, a new European cultural renaissance will be born from the ashes. Islam and Marxism will not prevail.” (Page 1138).

Though no blame can or should be placed on the Counter-Jihad Movement for Breivik or his heinous actions, had the Counter-Jihad parties long ago taken upon themselves a policy of challenging those who incorrectly tie support or opposition to Islamization to any one political party or political ideology, thereby snubbing so many present and potential supporters from the “Center”, “Left”, and “Right”, the view of Counter-Jihad political parties across Europe both in the press and in the minds of voting public today would have been incapable of being smeared by Breivik’s actions let alone by his citation of the numerous Counter-Jihad bloggers’ own attacks on the “Left”. Pursuing a different approach, as will be discussed in the final sections of these essays to follow, can ensure that the Counter-Jihad Movement begins to find broad-based support among voters “Center”, “Left”, and “Right” and can start to make steps towards putting to an end the present tendency to dismiss the Movement as a meaningless “Right-wing” or “populist” phenomena.

In the next installment of these essays, Part IV, Peter Carl will examine the urgency of the situation of the West and the reasons why Churchill’s Principle laid out in Churchill’s quotes that preface Part I says indisputably that there is no longer time for “Left”/”Right” polemics. The future is now, says Peter Carl, and it’s not pretty. He will peer into both this past fall’s post-Breivik electoral politics and the realities of the “Left”/”Right” situation in Northern and Central Europe while he offers a glimpse into some of the changes that have occurred there politically due to Breivik’s massacres. He will also consider how a poorly crafted message on the part of the Counter-Jihad Movement has, for many outside of it, made the use of the “Nazi” label now seem quite justified. Looking back to World War II and the collaboration between Nazi Germany and the Muslim world, the author will consider the polemics and realities of that “Nazi” label, which both history and present politics show, has left the general public, the media, and governmental authorities terribly misguided – and the Movement itself sorely damaged

 

 

The author, writing under the pseudonym Peter Carl, is an independent non-partisan advisor to a sitting American congressperson and a strategic political researcher and consultant on international and comparative political and public policy issues. He is also a member of the American Committees on Foreign Relations. The author maintains contacts with numerous present and former ambassadors from both the U.S. and European countries, a number of whom are serving or have served in the Middle East. Similarly, he also maintains contacts with present and formerly elected representatives from parties across the political spectrum who have been elected to the U.S. Congress, the EU Parliament, and various national parliaments within Europe. Fluent in five languages and possessing elementary abilities in others, the author was trained and works as an international attorney and possesses a Masters Degree in Public Policy from the top-ranked public affairs program in the United States.

 

The terms “Islamist” and “Islamism” are used in this piece in recognition of relevant and applicable European Union directives or national laws, while duly noting valid and correct concerns over these terms and any uses of such terms.

 

Other parts of this series:

 

Part I: The Conversation

Part II: Right v. Left

Part IV: On Politics and Nazis

Part V: Winston's Wars

Part VI: Back From The Brink

 

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NOTES