There are bits and pieces of ideas in Breiviks huge rambling manifesto that are shared by people all across the spectrum of the political right including the Northern League. Distasteful and badly timed as the Italian politicians comments may be, the fact that they agreed with some of this killers expressed views is not the same as endorsing his mass murder. The truth is that there are quite a sizeable minority of people all over Europe who have some elements of opinions and beliefs similar to Breivik. If we go down the road of denying them any freedom of expression to then we are setting up a society every bit as closed as Breivik and others desire. The truth is that Liberty is indivisible. It means living with ideas and cultural attitudes you dont necessarily share or like. Banning the nasty people from talking on the subjects we dont like wont make their attitudes disappear even though the last Labour government was under the delusion that this was the solution to the problem. Indeed a quick glance at the comments columns on a lot of UK papers following the Norwegian massacre would suggest that the policy has had no impact in removing underlying religious and racial hatreds within the wider population.
I am keen as anyone to determine whether there was a right wing plot behind Breiviks actions. Unfortunately, all we are seeing at the moment are suppositions and post event rationalisations.
http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/07/what-do-we-know-about-anders-behring-breivik/The people of Norway appear to have onfronted this national tragedy with enormous restraint, courage and dignity. Sadly they have put English speaking world to shame. Here far too many of us on the left have been too eager to exploit the victims of this tragedy as an excuse to put the boot in on right wing individuals and organisations that we despise. I can understand why the Norwegian poster Lars777 was so often moved to anger and frustration by some of the comments on LBN (including regrettably one of my own pieces of speculation).