Fascist Anders Breivik defends mass killings as trial opens in Norway
By Jordan Shilton
18 April 2012
World Socialist Web Site
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/apr2012/brei-a18.shtml
Excerpts:
In January, it emerged that Breivik had warned Norwegian police in March 2011 that he was preparing a massacre of Labour Party youth members. This information was supposedly not communicated to the relevant authorities until after July 22.
This came on top of revelations about the failure of the intelligence services to detect Breivik’s purchase of large quantities of fertiliser from Poland, as well as their failure to investigate a farm which he rented on the outskirts of Oslo, where he prepared his attacks. The head of Norway’s intelligence service was compelled to resign as a result.
Evidence continues to mount of Breivik’s links with right-wing groups throughout Europe, contradicting the official presentation of him as a “lone wolf”. The latest psychiatric report noted that Breivik has received a significant number of letters supporting his views whilst he has been in prison.
This is in addition to Breivik’s 1,500-page “manifesto”, which he published online and sent to over 1,000 contacts just hours before carrying out the massacre. In it, he stressed that the aim of his attack was to bring about a “cultural-conservative revolution” across Europe against “cultural Marxism”. He stated that he intended to use the trial resulting from the killings to propagandise for his fascist cause.
The unwillingness to confront the ideological and political roots of Breivik’s crimes is bound up with the complicity of the ruling elite, both in Norway and throughout Europe, in fostering far-right forces like the 33-year-old terrorist.
Breivik’s claims notwithstanding, Norway’s Labour Party consistently promoted anti-immigrant sentiment over the past decade, adopting much of the rhetoric of the right-wing Progress Party of which Breivik was a member for a decade until 2007.
Labour’s latest proposal, under the guise of tackling “human trafficking”, will grant police the power to deport immigrants who are deemed to be “beggars”, even though begging is not an offence under Norwegian law.
Recent months have also seen the exposure of the role of the German intelligence services in facilitating and collaborating with a fascist organisation that carried out a succession of terror attacks over a decade.
The re-emergence of fascist terrorism is taking place under conditions of a deepening crisis of the capitalist system across the globe and a massive assault on the living standards and basic rights of the working class. The growth of far-right and fascist tendencies is being facilitated by the bourgeois state and all of the official political parties, including those nominally on the “left”. These forces are being cultivated to be thrown against the emerging mass struggles of the working class.