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A man and woman look out across Tyrifjorden Lake towards Utoya Island following Friday's twin extremist attacks, on July 24, in Norway. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)
The twin attacks in Norway by what appeared to be a sole operator have raised alerts around the world about right wing extremists, particularly “lone wolf” attackers, says a specialist on politically motivated violence. However, at a pre-trial hearing on Monday, July 25, Mr Breivik said there were ‘two more cells in our organisation.”
Adjunct Professor Clive Williams, visiting fellow at Australia’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, says information surfacing about the Norwegian attacker, 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, indicates that the attacks were fuelled by right wing extremist views. These incidents highlight the shift in security focus to Islamic extremists and away from homegrown threats in the post-9/11 era, Mr Williams says.
“After 9/11, there was obviously a focus on Islamic extremism and perhaps a focus away from the lessons we had learned from the Unabomber and the Timothy McVeigh bombing in 1995,” Dr Williams told The Epoch Times. “I think we do clearly need to be concerned by people on the right wing who are capable of these sorts of acts.”
At least eight people were killed and over 100 injured in an initial car bomb blast outside government buildings in Oslo on Friday July 22. A further 68 people died after Mr Breivik, dressed as a police officer, shot attendees at a Labour youth camp on the island of Utoeya, 40km from Oslo. Many of the teenagers shot were children of senior Government figures, say reports.
According to AAP, the Norwegian massacre is the worst killing by a lone gunman in the Western world, exceeding that of Martin Bryant who single-handedly shot 35 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania in 1996.
Mr Breivik, a former member of the right wing Progress Party in Norway, was wounded by police on Utoeya Island and taken into custody. Norwegian police say he has admitted responsibility for the attacks, conceding that his actions were “cruel,” while maintaining that they were “necessary.”
Extremist Views
A 1500 word manifesto, released online on various chat sites, and a YouTube video have identified Mr Breivik as a man obsessed with hatred for the governing Norwegian Labour Party, fearful of an Islamic colonisation of Europe, and full of disdain for multiculturalism, political correctness and political process.
Writing in The Guardian, Matthew Goodwin says a number of those sentiments are shared by right wing extremist groups in Europe. In his research, Mr Gooding found that though many activists on the right did not openly condone violence, the threat of violence was pervasive.
“What became clear during this research was that there is, unquestionably, a culture of violence within the broader far right wing subculture,” he wrote.
Rising tensions are also evident within the US political landscape and broke out in Arizona early this year when a lone gunman shot congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at point blank range while she was conducting a public meeting. A further 19 people were shot by the gunman who had professed anti-Government sentiments.
Clarence W. Dupnik, the sheriff investigating the Giffords case, blamed the inflammatory nature of political debate in the US, saying: “The vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous … .”, he said on the ABC.
Death Threats in Australia
[caption id=”attachment_129764″ align=”alignright” width=”250″ caption=”Firefighters work at the site of the bomb blast attack on government buildings in Oslo, July 22, including the Prime Minister
