A Requiem for Oslo
Posted: Monday, July 25, 2011
by Walter Rhett
Charleston Perlo
The Oslo executions are more nusanced than a simple contrast of labels and blame, in which a range of subtle nusances are stuffed into a one-size-fits-all summary. The appearance of religious ideas in the killer-madman avatars of modern life has less to do with religion than with a distorted, bizarre seeking of a grand vision that involves administering death as a righteous condition and cause.
In this recent case, Christ is superifical to the manifesto, but the history of religious struggle was scripted into this self-made toxic stew. In other cases, the words of Muhammad are selectly picked and amplified to deny the horror of death, its utter moral bankruptcy, and cloak it in virtue and horror.
The relative weight of these connocted beliefs and their fragments and pieces don’t weigh out so neatly on the scales of cause and blame as some suggest.
Rather than labels or causes, look at the common themes. Rather than blame, look at the common characteristics.
Among them: these are fanatics with a self-described code that demands and justifies the mass murder of ordinary people. It is always done publicly, for publicity, to claim a place in history, to leverage and bend the world to reflect the maddness of their self-described code. They are people who hide among us, but are emotionally and pyschologically dead; capable of acts inconceivable to our hearts. They are destroyers who mask their hate in pseudo-systems of faith.
The fear is not in the labels they wear, but in the process that allows them to arise. From normal homes, often; from coffee shops and cafes, too; from video games and concerts–from marginal faith–how do they become fanatics that arise one morning and set forth in deliberate measured steps to dream only of blood and death? How do they create a view of life in which life itself has no value except as an end and a sacrifice of pain to the gentle gifts of love of which they are so barren.
Somehow, we have serial killers with manifestos. Does our finger pointing really matter?
Or help bring it to an end?
The relative weight of these connocted beliefs and their fragments and pieces don’t weigh out so neatly on the scales of cause and blame as some suggest.
Rather than labels or causes, look at the common themes. Rather than blame, look at the common characteristics.
Among them: these are fanatics with a self-described code that demands and justifies the mass murder of ordinary people. It is always done publicly, for publicity, to claim a place in history, to leverage and bend the world to reflect the maddness of their self-described code. They are people who hide among us, but are emotionally and pyschologically dead; capable of acts inconceivable to our hearts. They are destroyers who mask their hate in pseudo-systems of faith.
The fear is not in the labels they wear, but in the process that allows them to arise. From normal homes, often; from coffee shops and cafes, too; from video games and concerts–from marginal faith–how do they become fanatics that arise one morning and set forth in deliberate measured steps to dream only of blood and death? How do they create a view of life in which life itself has no value except as an end and a sacrifice of pain to the gentle gifts of love of which they are so barren.
Somehow, we have serial killers with manifestos. Does our finger pointing really matter?
Or help bring it to an end?
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Well described, as to the place that our murderer here is seeking; and his MO is obvious. Imagine the utter terror in perishing on a summer time island. Good observations.
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