The attacks that killed so many people in Norway last week are important primarily because they are a sign of coming events across the Western world. Whether Anders Breivik is a member of an active clandestine organization or a single shooter, some of the fears and motivations he described in his words and writings are not simply the unique ravings of a single madman, although that surely is the conclusion Western politicians, the mainstream media, and the academy will work diligently to make us believe. Breivik surely is a killer and he may or may not be mad — time and medical examination will tell — but his motivations are based on perceptions that are common in parts of all Western societies.
When Breivik wrote that he intended to “save Europe from Muslim immigration” that was destroying Europe’s indigenous culture he spoke for the uneasiness and even fears of many Norwegians, as well as for many other people who believe their cultures are under attack in Europe and North America. When he spoke of Western governments using policies of “multiculturalism” to eliminate traditional Western civilization, Breivik only said more bluntly what UK Prime Minister Cameron and German Chancellor Merkel said this year when they cited the “failure of multiculturalism” in Europe and the divisive societal tensions generated by the policy’s 30-year reign. And when Breivik spoke of being a Knight Templar who, with his colleagues would start “a revolution that would rid Europe of Muslims,” he said no more than what needed to be said as a reminder to all Westerners of what is historically true: Christianity and Islam have been at odds — and at times at war — for much of the past fifteen centuries. This is not, of course, to say that these animosities are eternal or cannot be mediated, but it is to say that when you hear someone in a Western government say that we — Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. — are all going to live together peaceably, and that new immigrants will be assimilated into mainstream culture, you know you are hearing a liar or a fool, or perhaps a lying fool.
The actions of the murderous Mr. Breivik, then, are only part of the lesson to be learned from events in Norway, and they are not even the most important part. Breivik and the shooters who will follow his path on both sides of the Atlantic will be the direct result of thirty-plus years of failed government social policy in the Western world. Liberals, monarchists, conservatives, Republicans, socialists, communists — it does not matter, they all have pushed government-mandated multiculturalism and they all have failed, leaving their societies ripe for rising levels of domestic violence.
Going forward, the results of government-enforced multiculturalism are particularly dangerous for peaceful civil societies in three areas:
Immigration: Western and U.S. governments have destabilized their own societies by basically having no effective immigration controls for more than thirty years. The negative impact of this failure is especially strong in countries that historically have been ethnically and linguistically homogenous, countries like Norway. Western governments have assumed and declared that all newcomers both want to and can be assimilated into the indigenous culture. This has been and is a false and an ahistorical assumption; the publicly announced position of some Muslim leaders in Europe and North America, for example, is that they have no intention of assimilating. Most countries in the West have any number of citizens who believe uncontrolled immigration is ruining their society and that the government takes the side of newcomers over people whose families have lived and helped build a particular country for many generations. The result in Oslo was violence, as it will be elsewhere, including in the United States.
Foreign Policy: Norway’s government and population — like those in North America and the rest of the West — will have to pay for the lies political leaders in all parties, much of the media, and the academy have been telling their populace about Muslims for the past 20 years. These entities have preached to their populations and taught in their schools that Muslims who fight the West do so because they hate our freedoms, lifestyles, democracy, liberties, and gender equality, and so they have inculcated in their citizens a fear of and hatred for Muslims, as well as a belief that they are a monolithic enemy that will destroy all that Western citizens hold dear. In this sense, the governments are no different than the professional, pro-Israel Islamophobes — Spencer, Wilders, Geller, Horowitz, etc. — who work to ensure their fellow citizens never understand what motivates most Muslim animosity toward the West. The truth is that almost all Muslims who attack the West do so because of what Western governments have done or are doing in the Islamic world; the West is hated for what Western governments do — support for Israel and the Saudi police state, for example — not because of how Westerners live, think, and behave at home. By demonizing Muslims rather than debating the substance and impact of their own foreign policies, Western governments, media, and academics have been as much the promoters of a clash of civilizations as have people like Osama bin Laden.
Education: There is at least one thing beyond death and taxes that is always certain, and that is the multiculturalists who dominate Western educational systems know next to nothing about their own cultures and far less about foreign cultures. Multiculturalism is an absurd and ahistorical assumption that is taught to our children as an irrefutable fact, one that it is immoral and perhaps evil to question. To survive as decent, mostly peaceful civil societies, Western states must resume teaching their young about history and religion as they are — the good and the bad, the changeable and the eternal — and not the way the multiculturalists want them to be, malleable, progressively banal, and ultimately perfectible by government-employed social scientists. History seldom changes and human nature never does; man, as America’s founders knew and warned, simply is not perfectible. Hating is as much and as durable a human characteristic as love; religions differ widely from each other, and on some issues are incompatible and even warlike; in some circumstances, human beings are hard-wired for war and violence, just as in others they are for compassion and compromise; and societal harmony generally evolves from different peoples learning to work with and eventually respect each other over time. In the last area, government can, at most, try to assure justice and an equal start for all in what Mr. Lincoln called “the race of life,” but it can only disturb a society’s balance, divide its multiple components, and eventually cause strife by championing the cause of one group over another, a method of operation favoring immigrants over the indigenous population which has been followed by most Western governments in recent decades.
Decent and durable civil societies evolve through the interaction of different peoples in a political system that does its best to guarantee justice and an equality of conditions. There may well be times when government must step in to level the playing field for all — as in the U.S. case of the Voting Rights Act — but such cases are rare. In today’s Western societies, however, government-mandated multicultural regulations are a corrosive and ubiquitous fact of daily life, wearing down and not reinforcing amity among society’s different ethnic groups and faiths. They are unraveling Western cultures and breeding deep resentment toward immigrants. These policies helped to produce and motivate Mr. Breivik, and we will see that they will do likewise for his murderous successors.
