Can the Left Resist the Temptation to Exploit the Norway Attacks?
After yesterday I’m a little wary of making predictions, but I’d be surprised if in the coming weeks the likes of Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann don’t try to draw parallels between the Oslo shooter and the Tea Party; the
fun has already started at
HuffPo and
elsewhere in the lefty blogosphere.
You only have to look to the left’s reaction to the Tucson shootings to know what to expect. While yesterday’s tragedy unfolded in a small, faraway country, the profile of the shooter is such a perfect fit for the left that it’s going to hard to resist the temptation to make merry. And it’s not unthinkable that an increasingly desperate Obama might decide to emulate Bill Clinton’s
‘Oklahoma City’ strategy.
Meanwhile, in Europe, Anders Behring Breivik’s ‘anti-immigrant’ and ‘anti-Muslim’ beliefs are being trumpeted, the better to demonize anyone who expresses alarm over uncontrolled mass immigration.
Yesterday’s attack will also be seized on by the
Christiane Amanpours of the liberal-left who have long been telling us that ‘all religions are the same’ in terms of violent extremism. But while the evil on display yesterday was the equal of anything displayed by al-Qaeda or the Taliban, there’s no comparison in terms of the scale of threat.
The circumstances of yesterday’s shooting rampage – the victims were trapped on an island for more than an hour – meant the death toll was unprecedented for such an attack, but so-called right-wing terrorism remains rare, and ‘fundamentalist Christian’ terrorism even rarer, the preserve of lone fanatics or small groups with minimal support. Meanwhile tens of thousands of Islamists remain committed to violence, and hundreds of thousands more, perhaps millions, sympathize with them.
