The recent massacre in Norway should be a wake up call to the rest of the world. As Nikto and I have been saying for quite some time, the people that commit these despicable acts these days are generally conservative. Christian...Islamic...Atheist...doesn't matter...conservative.
Anders Behring Brevik, one of the suspects they have in custody, belongs to a right wing extremist group and is a fierce nationalist. He has written posts on the web that are critical of Islam, lists his religion as Christian and his politics as conservative. He also enjoys playing "World of Warcraft" and the book "1984" by George Orwell. Combine all of these things together and you pretty much have your garden variety right wing blogger.
An important difference to take note of, however, between right wing extremists around the world and in this country is perhaps the naivete of a country like Norway. Gun ownership is allowed in Norway and Mr. Brevik apparently registered his Glock under one of the extremist group names. Something like that would raise red flags in our country. Why it wasn't there demonstrates a lack of understanding of what these people are capable of which is odd considering the problems they have had in the past with such groups. I'm also at a loss as to why, if gun ownership is allowed, people didn't have any on the island. The shooting spree could have been halted a lot sooner.
I have to say, though, that I think it is doubtful that this sort of ideologically obvious attack would happen here in the current political climate. It has become very apparent that our right wing groups are kept pretty much in line by their masters and our government, specifically the DHS. The leaders of the conservative movement in this country (Kochs, Norquist etc) know that they would very quickly lose power and leverage if any sort of violent act was tied to their ideology. Essentially, they'd be done. And the Department of Homeland Security keeps fairly good tabs on what these groups are up to and it all seems very low level these days largely due to the aforementioned reasons.
I guess I'm hoping that countries in Europe get the message after this horrific nightmare and being to take steps to keep people like this in check. Their rose colored glasses need to be tossed in the garbage.