When Anders Breivik went on his shooting rampage in Norway in 2011, he left behind a curious and lengthy manifesto identifying himself as Christian with zionist sympathies. The media focused narrowly on his pro-Israel Christian views when discussing his motivation, even though the addled manifesto he left behind raised almost as many questions about Breivik’s ideology as it purported to answer. Breivik was a protestant who wished the Church of Norway would convert back to Rome, disliked politically liberal priests who supported Palestinians, and other evidence suggests he was a free mason. All of this points to some very unusual and complicated Christian beliefs. Making matters worse, after the killings, a deputy police chief in Norrway further muddied the waters by calling him a “fundamentalist Christian.” In fact, Breivik was not a “fundamentalist” in either the pejorative or actual meaning of the word.
Still, the media’s predictable response was to exploit the tradgedy to drive an ideological agenda. The headline in The Atlantic was “The Christian Extremist Suspect in Norway’s Massacre.” At the Daily Beast, Michelle Goldberg argued “Breivik’s embrace of Israel is the latest sign of a shift among reactionaries in Europe—with fascism and Zionism going hand in hand.” A respected Swedish academic suggested the government of Israel was behind the attack. Also at the Daily Beast, Peter Beinhart wrote a column using Breivik to argue that there’s been “a lot of right-wing, extremist Christian terrorism in the U.S. in recent years.” Beinhart’s column was so riddled with mischaraterization and errors that he really should have retracted nearly all of what he wrote. Salon was even more direct: “Note to conservatives: Anders Breivik is a Christian.” The Washington Post wrote about “When Christianity becomes lethal.”
Now Breivik has written a letter to the Norwegian media claiming that many of his professed beliefs were a calculated ruse to throw the media off the scent of his true white-nationalist, Nazi ideology. A translation of the letter comes, interestingly enough, from Gates of Vienna — one of the so-called “counter-jihad” blogs that Breivik originally cited in his manifesto:
And here’s what Breivik is now saying about his claims he was a zionist:
Breivik doesn’t say anything new about his supposed Christian views, but Nazi-ism has historically rejected Christianity in favor of pervsions of Nietsche. (The Holocaust museum shooter and Nazi James von Brunn was explicit in his belief that “CHRISTIANITY AND THE HOLOCAUST are HOAXES.”) False claims to being a believing Christian would certainly be in keeping with his desire to stir up a clash of civilizations. At this point it’s hard to tell what Breivik’s motivations were or if he is just insane. The story of Breivik should be a cautionary tale for the media about rushing to judgment on complicated ideological matters when it confirms their biases. But it was obvious the media was too quick to presume Breivik’s motivations in the immediate aftermath of his crimes. These latest revelations are really a reminder that readers should express additional skepticism whenever terrorists are labeled Christians or Zionists.
