[S]ome pundits, mostly right-wing neoconservatives, proclaimed that this bore all the hallmarks of Islamic terrorism, even going so far as to draw policy prescriptions. At the Washington Post, normally a well-respected news outlet, Jennifer Rubin quoted the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Thomas Joscelyn and AEI scholar Gary Schmitt to say that the attacks were the result of Islamic terrorism. She then concluded the “jihadist” attack on Oslo means the U.S. shouldn’t cut military spending…. The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, rushed up an editorial Friday, blaming “jidhadists” for the attacks and exclaiming, “Norway is targeted for being true to Western norms”….
Like a lot of us, I’ve spent the past couple of days trying to process and understand how one individual could set off a bomb in downtown Oslo and then shortly thereafter murder at least 85 children in cold blood. I’m not certain I possess a vocabulary adequate to describe the sorrow I feel, if for no other reason than than the deaths were about as senseless as anything I could possibly imagine. Who kills children in the name of…whatever it was that Anders Behring Breivik claims to have been “fighting” for?
There really isn’t an appropriate or adequate response for something so heinous and so far outside the realm of human decency. At the very least, out of respect for Norway and the parents of the children murdered and the loved ones of those killed by Breivik’s bomb, we should be measured in our response and the manner in which we process our own grief. Unfortunately, it seems that more than a few Conservative pundits never got the memo. Instead of waiting until some actual, honest-to-God hard information was available, too many of the Right’s “finest” minds went off on the (wholly unsupportable) tangent that the Norwegian tragedy was the product of predictable jihadist fervor and a desire to destroy a bastion of Western peace and tranquility.
Even the Wall Street journal jumped the gun, placing the blame for Breivik’s murderous rampage on jihadists bent on destroying Norway for “being true to Western norms,”, however crass and overgeneralized that might seem.
…in jihadist eyes, [Norway] will always remain guilty of being what it is: a liberal nation committed to freedom of speech and conscience, equality between the sexes, representative democracy, and every other freedom that defines the West. For being true to those ideals, Norwegians have now been asked to pay a terrible price.
Of course, once some actual hard and reliable information began trickling in, WSJ offered a huge mea culpa and fell on their figurative sword in shame at having gotten it so completely wrong so quickly. Except they didn’t really do that at all. Not even close. They just re-wrote their editorial, eliminating any mention of the above paragraph. WSJ did at least mention that they had inaccurately (i.e.- falsely) attributed the attacks to jihadists, though they negated that by stating without any evidence whatsoever that Breivik was an al-Qaeda wannabe. Nice work, guys….
And it’s not as if WSJ was alone in their ignorant, uniformed, propagandistic efforts to blame Breivik’s savagery on al-Qaeda, jihadists, or some flavor of America-hating Islamist bogeymen.
Many other conservatives committed similar follies. AEI’s Ahmad Majidyar published a post about the links between Norway and al Qaeda. FDD president Cliff May openly speculated at Pajamas Media that the attack was probably a “retaliatory” strike for the recent indictment of a radical Islamic militant in Norway. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin made multiple references to jihadist attackers on Twitter in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Josh Trevino, a GOP activist and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, sarcastically quipped that he “suspected Lutherans” for the attack while also saying it was part of a “jihad.” Conservative activist Andrew Breitbart and RedState’s Erick Erickson were quick to join in as well.
Even after the identity of the suspected attacker was known, Erickson went up with a bizarre new post claiming some sort of difference between Christian and Muslim terrorists.
Now, though, we know that these speculative hypotheses, presented with near certitude and no evidence, couldn’t have been further from the truth: The man now charged by police for both attacks is a right-wing 32-year-old Norwegian “fundamentalist Christian” (per Norwegian police) with — far from ties to Muslim extremist motivations — a particular animus toward Islam, which he’s labeled a “hate ideolog(y).”
Rubin, who has a penchant for credulously repeating unverified and incorrect claims that fit with her worldview, drew the ire of James Fallows and Steve Clemons at the Atlantic website, where they said the Post should correct her “fear-mongering” piece and issue an apology.
Yeah, like that’s going to happen. An apology? Clearly, we’ve forgotten that the beautiful thing about being a Conservative is never having to say you’re sorry. About anything, no matter how offensive, egregious, inaccurate, or just plain wrong.
Then again, this is so typical of the Right’s usual and immediate rush to judgment at times like this. When your worldview requires you to see Islamofascists and jihadists around every corner and behind every unfortunate event, I suppose this is about the best one could reasonably expect. Still, would it be too much to at least engage in a modicum of fact-checking before proceeding to foam at the mouth? Never let facts and the truth get in the way of a good story, eh?
Time to get in on the action; I’m currently taking bets on how long it will be before the trolls begin blaming Obama’s “weakness” and “indecisiveness” for Breivik’s murderous rampage….
