As of this writing, stories describing the horrifying bombing and shootings committed in Norway by Anders Beh­ring Breivik are still coming in, but there is enough information available for an attentive reader to draw some preliminary conclusions about the self-identified mass-murderer.  Breivik’s actions and certain sections of his lengthy manifesto belie the mainstream media’s portrayal of him as a “fundamentalist Christian” and conventional cultural conservative.  Nonetheless, patriotic Christians should be prepared for the coming wave of attacks on them that will inevitably follow in the wake of the killings.  And they should be equally aware of the dangers on the right from ideologies that are not patriotic or conservative, much less Christian.

Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto (2083: A Declaration of European Independence) claims to represent the views of latter-day Knights Templar, a pan-European movement dedicated to protecting the interests of “all, free, indigenous Europeans” and “Christendom in general” through “armed struggle” against Muslims and leftists.  Despite Breivik’s citation of knowledgeable and far from radical writers (including Chronicles’ own foreign-affairs editor, Srdja Trifkovic) who have warned of the dangers of an Islamic infiltration of the West, there are a number of clues in the manifesto pointing to an ideological terminus for Breivik far beyond a healthy, patriotic conservatism, and outside the Faith with which he has been identified.

Breivik is not a Christian.  His manifesto uses “Christian” as a mere indicator of a people’s cultural identity.  Breivik wrote that he would not “pretend” to be a “very religious person,” as that “would be a lie.”  He also wrote that one does not have to be a Christian to be a “knight,” that a “Christian fundamentalist theocracy” is “what we do not want,” and that “it was enough” for “Christian agnostics” and “Christian atheists” to join the struggle for a “secular European society” based on Europe’s “Christian cultural heritage.”  Breivik hid his actual views and his plan to spark a “revolution” (beginning with a “martyrdom operation”) that might kill a million people.  The would-be knight and martyr chose to murder his “indigenous” countrymen, those connected with Norway’s socialist Labor Party, rather than attack Muslims.  An attack on either is murderous terrorism, but the choice of targets may tell us where Breivik wound up ideologically.

One can be on the right and not be patriotic.  One can be on the right and not be a nationalist in the sense of seeing one’s people as an extended family.  Breivik’s hatred for his fellow countrymen tells us what kind of man of the right he is.  Breivik, for instance, wrote in his manifesto that he had given up a “shallow consumerist lifestyle” in his pursuit of “martyrdom” as a man dedicated to “resistance,” not mere criticism.  He called his planned terrorist attack “necessary.”  He seems to have ended his pursuit of “revolution” as a peculiar kind of rightist, one we have seen before in the fascist and Nazi movements of the 20th century, when the far right’s celebration of heroic vitalism developed into a cult of warmongering, a revolt against the softness of bourgeois societies.  “Cultural Christianity” often devolved into a hatred of the Faith itself, because it prevented the “revolution” they desired, and asserted, instead, a militant belief in a vital force that went beyond good and evil in seeking an “authentic” life.

This rightist strand showed up again in the ideological hothouse of postcommunist Eastern Europe.  In Russia, “Eurasianists” and “Orthodox pagans” mixed with neo-Nazis, ersatz pagan Slavic warriors, and skinheads who thought the conventional right weak and longed for “direct action,” employing the murders of minorities and foreigners as a favored method of “authentic” self-expression.  In the Russian case, the neopagan “cultural Christianity” farce predictably, and quickly, turned to nihilism and deadly violence.  While some hated Europe and eschewed “zoological racism” for an alliance with more “vital” peoples in Asia and the Muslim world, others recoiled at what they saw as the degraded state of their own Russian nation, with the latest trend on the ultraright being attacks on Russian officials.

The danger on the far right is that justifiable criticism and anger at the decline of the country may turn into murderous hatred, not only of the “other” but of one’s own country and people.  The enemies of Christendom are not all on the left, and a right without the Faith leaves the gates open for the savagery of Breivik-style “resistance” and “direct action.”  From the left, we can expect smears of “fundamentalist Christians” and attacks on immigration restrictionists, but we must not back down or waver.  Multiculturalist policies will breed more Breiviks, as well as more Islamic terrorism, which remains the most dangerous terrorist threat to the West.  Restricting immigration and reversing the destruction of traditional social norms are actions aimed at preventing more violence and ending the left’s war on society.  Otherwise, we may get the conflagration that Breivik and his Islamic counterparts want.