Anders Behring Breivick is undoubtedly a monster to many and a hero to some. In my book, there is no cause that can remotely justify the murder of 77 innocent people. There is no cause that can justify the murder of even one.
The ancient struggle between Cross and Crescent is not something that will go away by sweeping it under the carpet...- Kenneth Zammit Tabona
Mr Breivick is presently being tried. He started off by giving the so-called “black” salute and proceeded to state that he would do it all over again while pouring scorn on the maximum sentence allowed under Norwegian law – 21 years – further demanding that he either be set free or executed.
I suppose that anyone had rather be executed than face the utter boredom of a life sentence in prison. That is why the death penalty in this case may be more humane than Mr Breivick deserves.
What is worrying is that Mr Breivick is playing to the gallery where he does in fact have plenty of sympathisers, not only in Norway but all over Europe, where it is feared that the infiltration of non-Europeans has reached epic proportions and threatens to throw our Judeo-Roman heritage out of the window. Multiculturalism is only something that works in the advertisements of a well-known soft beverage company while John Lennon’s Imagine remains pie in the sky.
We Europeans are the result of thousands of years of ethnic cleansing. I will mention just the most infamous: the Holocaust and the Inquisition.
In the case of the former it was not only the Jews who perished in the death camps but gypsies, homosexuals and the handicapped. The term “blue blood” in Spain determined whether you were a true blue European and were not either a Morisco or a Jew.
Both Jews and the Moors were forcibly converted to Christianity after the unification of the Spains in the 1490s. Many of them practised the religion of their fathers in secret. Those who were denounced faced excruciating death by fire after tremendous tortures, the echoes of which still send shivers down one’s spine every time the Inquisition is mentioned.
In sunny Malta, we have a semi-clandestine movement, which is fomented by understandable fear of a takeover by North Africans and sub-Saharans. This is happening all over the world and this is what Mr Breivick wishes to die a hero’s death for.
Just like the self-immolating monks in Tibet and Burma, Mr Breivick wishes to be a martyr for a cause he is not alone in believing is worth dying for, hence, his disdain for a 21-year jail sentence!
Is there a solution to all this?
The very foundations of the religion we Europeans profess are diametrically opposed to extreme right wing beliefs like Mr Breivick’s. However, I have not yet heard of any vehement condemnations of it, apart from those made by Socialist- and Labour-leaning governments and parties. This explains why Mr Breivick chose to murder 77 young people on a Labour party summer camp in a cold-blooded shooting spree. He claims that there are others ready to emulate him at the drop of a hat and I believe him.
We are all collectively guilty. The comparison with William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is unavoidable. The ultimate irony is that when, at the end, the shipwrecked choirboys, who had degenerated into unbelievable and spine-chilling savagery, are rescued by a naval vessel, the immaculately accoutred officers are oblivious of the fact that they are themselves merely smartly dressed instruments of death. So oblivious are they that they regard the practically naked and filthy boys with extreme disgust.
I think it was Charles Baudelaire who wrote: “Ah Seigneur, donnez-moi la courage de contempler mon ame et mon corps sans degout” (Oh Lord, give me the courage to contemplate my soul and my body without loathing), thus underlining Golding’s depressingly negative belief that man is intrinsically evil. Listening to the news every day merely confirms it.
Will we ever fulfil John Lennon’s dream? We are force-fed that dirge-like song ad nauseam every Christmas as for some weird reason it entered someone’s head that “living life in peace; whoohooo!” was somehow appropriate.
In reality, the significance of this song is far deeper than Away in a Manger or Silent Night, or even We Three Kings who, in western iconography, are depicted as representing three continents.
Playing John Lennon’s lyrics at Christmas, out of all times, is utterly inappropriate as it imagines a world diametrically opposed to everything that Christmas stands for. The song starts off asking us to imagine that there’s no religion! John Lennon was killed for his ideology.
However I digress. The Norwegian tragedy can be compared to the lancing of a boil. These boils are multiplying all over the western world, festering and simmering, exacerbated by fear, till, one day, someone like Mr Breivick can take it no more and the result is like a volcanic eruption.
The ancient struggle between Cross and Crescent is not something that will go away by sweeping it under the carpet and pretending it doesn’t exist. It is something that must be addressed by all those whose mission it is to maintain the religions in question. It is only in this ecumenical non-confrontational way that there may be a sporting chance that the religions of the book, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, may bury the hatchet once and for ever. Till then, the battle for Jerusalem will continue until all three religions, and us with them, will self-destruct at Armageddon.