The monster of hatred has strucked and it will strike again

Watching the horrors at the Oslo on the last Friday two factors can be analyzed about as behind this carnage. The first is the sinister role played by the propagandist websites and their influence over the minds over some of the young men in the Western countries. Ever since 9/11, there has been a steady rise in the hate-propagating websites in the West and the United States in particular. Websites such as JIhadwatch by Robert Spencer or Atlas Shrugs by Pamela Geller or even individual blogs like the one by Fjordman or “The gates of Viena” have been fairly popular and influential in promoting views of intolerance and bigotry among sections of Western youth. The main themes of these publications are that the West is involved in an existential struggle with Islam and the Muslim communities living in Europe are at worst fifth columnists in the Islam-West struggle and at best unwilling to assimilate into the norms of their host cultures. Another familiar pattern in these publications is in their belief that the “liberal left” which in many cases transpires to be the established elites in many of these Western societies are involved in a conspiracy with the Muslims to convert their societies into “Eurabias”. Indeed the self-admitted perpetrator of the carnage Anders Behring Breivik widely cited JIhadWatch founder Robert Spencer’s ideas in his manifesto “2083 – A European Declaration of Independence” as his inspiration. Now one of the main reasons that these publications have been able to win so many converts among the Western youth is because of the Internet. In the pre-Internet age, it would have been very difficult for these hate-propagating websites to get their ideas published by any descent publication let alone winning converts across the Atlantic in faraway Norway. Indeed this is one of the unfortunate aspects of the Internet that it allows people with irrational and biased ideas to bring those in the mainstream for affecting impressionable minds.
Talking about impressionable minds, it was in interesting to note that the self-admitted perpetrator decided to target the youth of his country’s ruling establishment. This brings us to the second main factor behind the carnage which is alienation between the ruling establishments in many of the Western countries like Norway and some sections of their youth population.