Geir Lippestad was the primary defense lawyer for the mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. After the trial ended, he apparently couldn’t resist the urge to act like a Social Democratic politician for the Labor Party — which is exactly what he is. Lippestad claimed that the Internet alone was responsible for creating Breivik, and wanted children to be warned against “Internet hate” in school, by which he seemingly meant all those who oppose Islamization.
He admitted that there are “great tensions” in Europe at the moment, but linked these exclusively to unemployment. Yes, economic troubles may well contribute to the current crisis, but what about Islamization, mass immigration, Multiculturalism, or the fact that the native peoples of an entire continent, especially the western half of it, are being systematically deprived of their security, their dignity, their culture and their homelands?
In November 2012, Lippestad participated alongside far-Left activists such as Tor Bach and Lars Gule at a conference about “Internet extremism” arranged by the Norwegian National Crime Prevention Council (KRÅD), a government agency working under the Ministry of Justice. Also present were members of the police such as Vegar Martinsen and Ole Hortemo, who wanted to be “a searchlight” into the dark corners of the Internet, where hateful people spread their propaganda. Geir Lippestad also announced that he would soon brief EU authorities in Brussels on how to contain the Internet radicalization that allegedly created Breivik.
Lippestad specifically highlighted me as one of the dark, dangerous and seductive totalitarian voices that need to be contained, and suggested that Gates of Vienna is a website that openly encourages violence. Similar claims have been echoed by Sten R. Helland — a communications advisor and former Labor Party politician who at his Twitter account has publicly called me a “Fascist” — as well as by the science historian Vidar Enebakk, who despite his scientific training has published totally unfounded and highly unscientific conspiracy theories that a group of people are behind the pseudonym Fjordman, not a single person.
This is, of course, utterly false. The only “violence” I have encouraged is the right for people to bear arms. None of those who survived Breivik’s mass murder — one of whom I know personally — should feel any guilt whatsoever. They survived an extreme situation that could hardly have been predicted. If anybody failed, it was we as a society who did so. If just one or two of the nearly 600 people who were at Utøya when Breivik alone started his massacre had access to firearms, perhaps dozens of lives could have been spared.
The irony is that at the exact same time as Geir Lippestad is warning against “right-wing extremist violence,” there is very real left-wing extremist political violence in the streets of Western Europe, from Oslo to Munich.
On November 24, a group of alleged right-wing extremists who were minding their own business and eating a meal were violently attacked in Oslo by a group of left-wing extremist thugs. Whether those attacked really were extremists I don’t know, but in a country based on the rule of law you cannot assault people just because you disagree with them. The people who carried out the attack came from a far-Left environment associated with the Blitz house in downtown Oslo, where left-wing thugs have been allowed to maintain their illegal base for decades.
It is possible to speculate whether this attack was encouraged by repeated claims in the mass media, fueled by people such as Geir Lippestad, that a wave of dangerous right-wing extremism is sweeping society. Of course, violent Internet hatred does exist, but most frequently among Muslims — who get a free pass from left-wingers.
Søren Espersen, a journalist and author, and currently a noted Member of Parliament for the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti), commented on how Muslims had left comments at the Facebook page of long-time DPP leader Pia Kjærsgaard on November 23 2012, after she announced her support for a pro-Israel rally in Copenhagen. She is also known for her opposition to Islamization and mass immigration and has lived with bodyguards for years because of this.
The comments quoted by Espersen, which were made by many Muslims in Denmark, not just one or two isolated individuals, are shocking even to those who have seen quite a few similar messages before. They included several explicit death threats, with calls for Pia Kjærsgaard to be brutally murdered in this life as well as to burn in hell in the afterlife. The dissident writer Kim Møller at his website Uriasposten cited more comments in Danish from persons with clearly Muslim names such as Mohammed Jamil and Hamza Awad in support of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and regretting that his Nazi regime didn’t manage to kill all Jews on the planet.
In Norway, a Muslim former member of the Labor Party’s youth organization (AUF) in reaction to Israel’s escalating conflict with militant Muslims from the terrorist organization Hamas, wrote on Facebook “Goddamn Jewish whores….I wish Hitler could come back and shower you some more.” He was, of course, referring to the way in which large numbers of Jews were gassed to death in alleged “showers” during the Holocaust by the genocidal Nazi regime, and regretted that this hadn’t finished off all Jews. Khalid Haji Ahmed, a local Labor Party politician in the town of Hamar, joined in on the debate and did not really reject the previous comments.
The Labor Party later announced that while they clearly did not condone these online comments, the debate would have no serious repercussions for the political career of 33-year-old Khalid Haji Ahmed. Ahmed himself suggested that maybe this entire case had become a problem because Jews wanted to hurt him.
As the dissident writer Nina Hjerpset-Østlie commented, the weak response from the Labor Party to these comments in support of genocide was probably because they didn’t want to alienate Muslim and immigrant voters, who are crucial to the electoral success of left-wing parties throughout the Western world, from the USA via France to Norway. The voting patterns of Muslims and of Third World immigrants in general have already tipped the scales in favor of Socialist or left-wing candidates and parties in elections in several Western countries.
As these comments suggest, some hateful and violent comments can be found on the Internet. If Geir Lippestad is so concerned about this problem, perhaps he should also take a look at certain members of his own party?