We Can't Ignore Oslo Gunman as 'Lone Crackpot'

Glenn Beck wasn’t justifying murder when he likened the victims of the Oslo massacre to Nazis. “He was merely muddying the humanity” of Anders Breivik’s victims, writes Timothy Egan in the New York Times. But the comments on his website The Blaze were brimming with sympathy for Breivik. “You gotta like the guy,” one poster wrote. “He speaks the truth.” Nor are they alone. Pat Buchanan wrote that Breivik “may be right” about a coming “climactic conflict” between Christians and Muslims.

One European parliament member even said that “some of the ideas he expressed are good—barring the violence. Some of them are great.” Put all these quasi-endorsements together, and “Breivik cannot be dismissed as a lone crackpot,” Egan insists. That’s “too easy, for him and for the rest of us.” The West’s hateful rhetoric must be examined, “the same way sane people have to understand why a reading of the Koran could lead someone to strap on a suicide bomb.” (More Glenn Beck stories.)