Still Criminal After All These Years

It has been nearly eight years since Fjordman was driven into hiding by the uproar over the massacre by Anders Behring Breivik in Oslo and on the island of Utøya. The killer’s 1,500-page “manifesto” was packed with references to and quotes from the Counterjihad movement, with Fjordman and Robert Spencer heading the list.

The apparatchiks of the Legacy Culture — not just in the media, but academics, politicians, and public intellectuals — were unwilling to let a crisis go to waste. They let loose with both barrels against those of us who resist the Islamization of our societies. Since Gates of Vienna was Fjordman’s most frequent venue, we were drawn into the media frenzy along with the major players. Our fifteen minutes of fame went on for months, and I can’t tell you how glad we were when the furor finally died down.

When the uproar was at its height in early August of 2011, someone suggested to me that I might want to shut Gates of Vienna down to protect myself. I said, “[Epithet redacted] that! I’m not shutting anything down!” My Scottish blood comes to the fore whenever hostile forces poke at me, and my default response is always defiance.

I’m glad we decided to keep on with it, and follow the Breivik saga as it unfolded. The Butcher of Utøya was tried the following spring, convicted, and sentenced to the maximum prison term that Norwegian law allows — twenty-one years. He was eventually ensconced in a well-appointed prison suite, from which he issued occasional proclamations and demands via his lawyers.

A coda of sorts was provided in the fall of 2013, when Mr. Breivik sent a letter to various outlets of the mainstream media. In it he confessed that his devotion to the Counterjihad had been a hoax concocted to draw the blame away from his true allies, the “nordicist” movement — i.e. the neo-Nazis.

Strangely enough, Breivik’s confession received virtually no attention in the media. If it weren’t for the hard-left Swedish site Expo, we never would have been aware of it. We were fortunate to be able to obtain a copy of the letter (PDF), and posted it so that anyone who was interested could take a look.

But there weren’t many people interested in the fact that Breivik was actually a Nazi who held the milquetoasts of the Counterjihad in disdain. The media weren’t about to acknowledge that their Narrative had been utterly false. They had no intention of taking responsibility for ruining the reputations, careers, and lives of the people they had slandered. None of that was of any importance — the Narrative must go on.

Bruce Bawer has published a retrospective on the whole sorry affair at FrontPage Mag. Below are some excerpts:

Enemy of the People

Norway is still treating Peder “Fjordman” Jensen as a criminal.

by Bruce Bawer
April 16, 2019

Since 9/11, thousands of deadly jihadist atrocities, big and small, have taken place around the world. Almost uniformly, the Western media totally ignore the small ones, and also ignore the big ones that take place in Israel, the Muslim world, and non-Western locations generally. As for the large-scale terrorist acts that occur from time to time in major Western cities — that is to say, the attacks that are too massive and too close to home for the media to get away with ignoring — the mainstream journalists who cover them devote a good deal of their time to tiptoeing around, or openly and vociferously denying, the connection between these actions and the religion of Islam. Indeed, it is by now an indelible part of the media narrative in these instances that the real victims — or the first victims, or the ultimate victims — of jihadist terror are the members of Western Muslim communities who, we are repeatedly told, have been unfairly stigmatized ever since September 11, 2001, and who, in the wake of every new act of Islamic terror in the West, experience, or at least tremble in fear of, a fresh, powerful, and unjustified anti-Muslim backlash. Virtually never does any mainstream Western journalist ever acknowledge that jihadists, when they massacre infidel men, women, and children, are following explicit instructions set down in the Koran — the book that every believing Muslim on earth considers holy. Even now, going on eighteen years after 9/11, some journalists honestly don’t know that jihad comes right out the Koran; others do know, but would never publicly connect these dots. Neither would most politicians or media commentators or supposed “experts” in Islam. For to do so would be to violate the most important unwritten commandment of the post-9/11 Western world: namely, thou shalt not admit that those who commit murder in the name of Allah, far from being traitors to their faith, are, on the contrary, the most obedient of its adherents.

The media have done a remarkable job of keeping the lid on this truth. One of the few times in recent years when someone let it out of the box in a big way was on June 20, 2017, when Tommy Robinson, appearing as a guest on Good Morning, Britain, suddenly held up a copy of the Koran, sending the show’s host, Piers Morgan, into an instant, and palpable, panic: “Show some respect!” Piers insisted. “There are,” Tommy replied, “a hundred verses in this book inciting violence and murder against us.” Piers repeated, with a rare urgency, plainly rooted in trepidation: “Show some damn respect for people’s religious beliefs!” Tommy asked why he should be expected to “respect a book that incites murder against me.” “Put it down!” Piers again demanded, unwilling to answer a question that, in fact, answered itself. Tommy, refusing to put the book down, proceeded to quote critical remarks about Islam by prime ministers William Gladstone and Winston Churchill. Meanwhile Piers tried desperately to talk over him, calling him “a bigoted lunatic” and an “Islamophobe” and accusing him of “doing something deliberately inflammatory and poisonous” and “stirring up hatred.” Forcefully, Tommy countered: “This book is the reason we’re in such a mess!” Piers rejected this plain fact, feebly asserting that “terrorists abuse the nature of Islam” — a statement that made no sense whatsoever — and as Tommy began to read aloud a Koranic verse calling on believers to murder infidels, the segment was brought to an abrupt end. One can only imagine the sheer panic in the control room.

[…]

Before March 15, 2019, there was July 22, 2011, when Anders Behring Breivik exploded a truck bomb outside a government office building in Oslo and then shot up dozens of teenagers at a Labor Party youth camp on the nearby island of Utøya — his professed motive being to punish the politicians whom he considered responsible for the Islamization of Norway as well as the future politicians who would inherit the philosophies, policies, privileges, and powers of today’s Labor leaders. Before Breivik headed out that day to commit mass murder, he posted online a lengthy “manifesto” that was part history, part political commentary, and part instruction manual for those whom he imagined would join him in his crusade. Much of this document, it turned out, consisted of texts by other people that Breivik had lifted without permission. The person whose writings Breivik made the most extensive use of was a young Norwegian named Peder Jensen, who had written many sober and learned essays about Islam under the name “Fjordman.” Peder had attended the universities of Bergen and Oslo and the American University in Cairo, learned Arabic, earned a master’s degree with a thesis on Internet censorship in Iran, and was part of a civilian observer mission on the West Bank in 2002-3. He planned a diplomatic career, only to discover that his frankness about Islam was not welcome at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He then became a prolific writer on the subject. Unlike the Koran, however, Peder’s oeuvre contained not a single word calling for action of the sort of which Breivik was guilty. But that didn’t matter to the apologists for Islam in the Norwegian establishment. Immediately Peder was lumped in with Breivik and, to a very large extent, held responsible for his crimes. Other critics of Islam, myself included, were tarred with the same brush, but Peder got the worst of it by far.

It was outrageously unfair. In the weeks and months after July 22, 2001, news reports mentioned Peder’s name so often, and in the same breath as that of the murderer, that it was as if he had, indeed, been Breivik’s accomplice. The motives of those left-wingers who smeared him so heartlessly were transparent: they were, quite simply, apologists for Islam and for Norway’s failed immigration and integration policies, all of which Peder had subjected to criticisms that were, quite simply, irrefutable. But after July 22, there was no need to try to formulate cogent arguments in reply to Peder’s points; in the course of a few horrible hours, Breivik provided Norwegian leftists with a wonderful opportunity to demonize Peder and other critics of Islam and thus render those critics’ views — however reasonable and fact-based — utterly anathema. Some Norwegian intellectuals even wrote op-eds maintaining that, in the wake of Breivik’s crimes, freedom of expression for critics of Islam should be severely restricted, and any violation punished harshly. Transformed in this unscrupulous way into an enemy of the people, Peder left the country, spending six years in Denmark before returning to Norway in 2017 to look for work.

Now, let me pause here to explain something about Norway. In this country, it is possible for extreme leftists to get hired for the most respectable kinds of jobs. In fact, the record suggests that, if you’re in the market for high-level employment in the Norwegian cultural, political, academic, or media sector, being a card-carrying Communist actually helps. In recent years, active and outspoken Communists, some of whom have held top positions in Maoist or Stalinist political parties, have served as the director of the Norwegian National Library, as head of NRK (Norway’s state broadcaster), as president of Cappelen (one of Norway’s two or three largest publishers), as editor-in-chief of Aftenposten (Norway’s supposedly conservative newspaper of record), as Norway’s first professor of journalism, as editor of. Journalisten (the periodical of record for Norwegian journalists), and as coach of Norway’s national soccer team. At least two veteran Norwegian politicians who are now in charge of important international organizations have been credibly accused of having been KGB agents. At least one Communist Party politician — who, as it happens, also cheered the terrorist attacks of 9/11 — has been decorated by King Harald V.

But Peder Jensen? Since returning to Norway, he’s applied for hundreds of jobs. He got exactly two bites, both for factory jobs — one of them an assembly-line job in a furniture factory, the other a job watching a machine turn out pizzas and sprinkling cheese on them. The jobs were simple — so simple, he says, that an illiterate could do them. In both cases, however, Peder’s would-be employers figured out who he was and then changed their minds — even though the work for which he had been hired had absolutely no political content whatsoever. When he was kicked out of the second job, for which he had signed a contract agreeing to a six-month trial period, he brought in a lawyer, went before a judge, and received a small settlement. But what he needs is work. “I am turning forty-four this summer,” he told me the other day. “If I am going to marry and have kids I shouldn’t be too old when I do it.” He suggests that he may have to leave the country again and try to build a new life abroad, in some place where his name is not universally equated with hatred and slaughter. This is, note well, an eminently polite and peaceable man who has never in his life been charged with or found guilty of a crime. He’s never even gotten a speeding ticket. His sole transgression is that he’s been remarkably forthright and brave about a subject on which his country’s leaders have, almost without exception, been pathetically mendacious and cowardly. The strength with which he’s endured half a nation’s unearned opprobrium in the years since July 22, 2011, is beyond impressive. Under any other circumstances he would be an ideal candidate for any number of positions in lucrative fields: he’s deeply knowledgeable about history, politics, and much else; he writes excellent English; and his work ethic, to judge by his output, is exemplary. But in Norway in 2019, he is effectively barred from even the lowliest of jobs.

Read the rest at FrontPage Mag.

12 thoughts on “Still Criminal After All These Years

  1. Thanks for reposting the link to Breivik’s “manifesto”. I saved it when you posted it in May ’17, and the link still works, but I hope others here will do the same.

    • I still wish they’d done a forensic analysis of that mess. It was full of insider baseball links to American conservative websites. They could only have come from those who were conversant with American intertubes. Of course, all those 3-letter government “embassy officials” fled Oslo after the Wikileaks brouhaha. Left Breivik playing WoW and told Norwegian intel to keep an eye on him. I’ll bet the only thing PET did was to roll their eyes…American arrogance has that effect.

      Breivik went off the reservation with his plans…

  2. Thank you for posting, Ned. I have been quiet for some time now. I may start writing more essays again later this year.

    • We hope you do. How about a book of reflections on your life since 7/22/11? You’d probably have to find a publisher willing to touch your work, but that can be done. Amazon would likely not carry it, so other outlets – a webpage, or free ads on websites – would be good.

      Check out The New English Review website. Tell Rebecca the B sent you. We post their books on our sidebar all the time.

  3. Too well orchestrated provocation for a loner.
    Do we once know what it was?
    ===========
    In the Russian press there is almost no mention of the Fjordman.

    Only after the terrorist attack of Breivik, an embittered article in which his name was mentioned (translated from English) appeared in the Muslim media.

    • Fjordman was just a writer, a good one who maintained a blog in English for a while. That’s how we discovered him: among other things, he wrote the truths about cultural enrichment in Scandinavia. When Breivik set off that truck bomb in Oslo and then took a ferry to the island to kill all those kids, Fj was actually living in Oslo and heard the truck explode. He thought it was thunder.

      In short order, the press found Fj’s name and began hounding him, searching the length and breadth of the country. They would have killed him had they found him in those first weeks.

      Over the years, we received emails from a fair number of Norwegian expat men who had fled their homeland because it was so smothering. One told me he’d tried to go back on occasion but couldn’t handle the charged political atmosphere of nice, nice Norway. A group of expats have formed a small community in South America. They mostly work in the oil industry.

      Ironically, when Swedes want to blow off steam, they go to Norway. Which gives you some idea of the cultural repression in Sweden, eh?

      I believe his old blog is still floating in the ether. Search on his name and blogspot.

  4. Soviet-style un-personing tactics seem to worse in Europe than the USA.
    But we ignore all the dying canaries in the parallel mine tunnels at our peril
    Thank God and our founding fathers for the 1st and 2nd Amendments.

  5. The establishment response to fellow westerners is always in marked contrast to the lower response they give to “foreigners”.
    Breton Tarrant’s name is all but barred from New Zealand media, it’s actually more extreme than the British ban on Gerry Adam’s voice being heard publicly – for years press releases and interviews had the absurd imposition of a voiceover to achieve this.
    Nothing similar was ever done for Bin Laden or anyone else involved with Moslem terrorism. There still has been no attempt to hold to account the various Moslem communities as a whole for any of the vile acts their people have committed but there are always demands to attack nationalists whenever a person obviously working alone does something – the Confederate flag hysteria over the Charleston church shooting being a case in point.

  6. I give thanks to Fjordman, the many essays and his writings.

    Thanks also to Baron & Dymphna, their dedication.

    The quality, the thinking, the knowledge, the big picture, and also the focus, plus their hearts, with wisdom, in passing on this baton, to be a light for a remnant and truth to re-awaken.

    These times will pass, how long? Well WW2 was done and dusted in 5 years.
    “A man of the hour”, with understanding, fortuitously (as Britain looked to capitulate) came to fruition, and uplifted a people with principles and motivation.

    I think many more understand things, maybe not perfectly, but are looking for the principles, the truths that do not change.

    We do what we can, be disciplined, look after yourselves as well, as that allows us time, to think, reflect, and be refreshed and other parts of life to be lived.
    “Life is to be lived in abundance” part of John 10:10

  7. Breivik’s recantation has its own problems.

    He declares himself a Nazi, who acted so as to discredit the anti-Jihadists. Now, whether Nazis are socialists or not is a debatable proposition. As I have pointed out, Hitler, after actually becoming chancellor, reversed policy from his earlier National Socialist days and was quite happy to allow German companies to keep their ownership as long as the the companies obeyed government orders. But, I don’t think there’s disputing that National Socialism, while perhaps light on socialism, is strong on national character and identity.

    This brings up the question on why a Nazi would go to such lengths to discredit the anti-Jiihadist movement. The Nazis could despise the anti-Jihadists for being weak, but at least the anti-Jihadists are opposing the importation of Muslims. What possible benefit would a secret, Nazi-sponsored attack on the scions of liberal politicians designed to discredit the one movement to oppose the mass adulteration of national character?

    Now, there are Nazis contributing vicious antisemitic comments on some conspiracy websites. Not simply comments like Mossad-knew-about-911, but comments like “let’s finish the job Hitler started”. These Nazis, needless to say, are totally in favor of the Palestinians and their claims of systematic Israeli persecution. But, my assumption is, these Nazis, while rabid and irrational about opposing a truly nationalistic government in Israel, would still not support the replacement of the European populations with low-IQ third world Muslims and other immigrants.

    So, my question is, is there any coherent direction to Breivik’s manifesto and subsequent letter? Does the letter discredit the manifesto, or do both of them combined emphasize that Breivik is a schizophrenic loser whose ideation was a caboose, rather than an engine, for his actions?

    • I stand by my analysis of 2011: Breivik was a useful tool, weaponized by some of the American 3-letter agents posing as embassy staff. They wrote a lot of that insider-baseball American neocon drivel in his “manifesto”. No way could an outsider have composed it. When Wikileaks hit, those boys left Oslo in a hurry, telling Norway’s PET about it on the way out the door. I’ll bet the PET rolled their eyes.

      All that ABB was supposed to do was set off a truck bomb in Oslo on a day most people would be out of the way. His fantasy of being a Nazi who would rise up when his minions showed up was fed by the Americans, along with lots of steroids. They also gave him many of those email addresses so he could send a thousand or so out when he left for Oslo.

      No one knew about the police uniform, the ferry ride to Utoya or his large arsenal used to take out those kids and young adults – people he hated because he was told he’d never measure up to them…

      Breivik had no beef with the Muslim immigrants he met in the course of his hanging out. His seething hatred was for the offspring of the Leftists. He was a roiling, rejected outsider.

  8. Let me make an additional comment from the one I already submitted. I empathize with Peder’s wish to continue his normal life in circumstances somewhat appropriate to his intellect and knowledge. I especially remember his takedown of Irshad Manji’s concept of ijtahad. Manji was promulgating the fiction that self-criticism was a traditional part of Islam, and Fjordman rather conclusively put the torch to that claim.

    It seems to me that Fjordman’s recent experience in attempting to find employment in Norway shows unambiguously that this is not going to happen. My observation is that Fjordman would have a far better chance of achieving his personal life goals in another country. Dymphna mentioned the Norwegian ex-pat community in South America.

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