MICHAEL LEDEEN: The Myths Of Oslo. “This archaic mythology is not only Breivik’s; the Marxists and the radical Islamists embrace it just as avidly. The Marxists embrace the myth of class struggle in a Western world that is no longer capitalist and where there is no working class. The jihadis embrace the cause of holy war (no accident, the Marxists might say, that jihadis raced to take ‘credit’ for the mayhem in the first hours) against a Western world described as Christian and Islamophobic. That, too, is an archaic remnant from a past long dead and buried, especially in Europe. The Old World is secular, and, certainly among its elites, more anti-Semitic and anti-Christian than anti-Muslim. . . . It is thoroughly understandable, then, that some have responded to the Norwegian mass murder with myths of their own, beginning with the fable that Breivik is the tip of a very large iceberg, that includes not only deranged would-be killers but also writers and politicians. Thus they conjure up yet another phantasmagorical mass movement—a vast conspiracy with countless followers, some hidden, others public. There is no such movement. Yes, there are crazy people who think they are fighters in the great cataclysmic struggle of the days of the Last Judgment (and if you want a fine survey and analysis of the enormous variety of such beliefs, and their dreadful effects over the centuries, get yourself a copy of Richard Landes’ timely study ‘Heaven on Earth’). But I doubt there are enough of them to feed more than a handful of Knights Templar, let alone a full-fledged political movement.”

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