Breivik Manifesto: How it Explains the Norway Massacre [Excerpts]

A manifesto attributed to Anders Breivik, who is believed to be responsible for the massacre in Norway that claimed at least 93 lives, illuminates how Breivik was motivated by the conviction that Islam poses an urgent existential threat to European culture.

Breivik believes that the vast majority of European politicians and media figures are complicit in allowing Europe to be slowly conquered by Islam, and advocates an armed resistance that he continually compares to the Knights Templar, a Christian order that was formed to protect pilgrims during the Crusades. He notes that "if we're in this fight to win, we need to get serious about being prepared for to make sacrifices and attack them relentlessly where it hurts the most" -- a statement that foreshadows his twin attacks on a government building in Oslo and on a summer camp organized by a youth organization affiliated with the governing Norwegian Labor Party.

Entitled "2083: A European Declaration of Independence," the screed begins by decrying a pervasive culture of political correctness, which Breivik believes imposes an insidious moral relativism. He likens it to "cultural Marxism" and traces its roots to a 20th century Marxist-influenced intellectual movement, broadly referred to as Critical Theory, whose central figures included Antonio Gramsci and Theodor Adorno.

"Western Europe is today dominated by an alien system of beliefs, attitudes and values that we have come to know as "Political Correctness," Breivik writes. "Political Correctness seeks to impose a uniformity of thought and behaviour on all Europeans and is therefore totalitarian in nature...Political Correctness is Marxism, with all that implies: loss of freedom of expression, thought control, inversion of the traditional social order, and, ultimately, a totalitarian state."

Breivik contends that an emphasis in political discourse on multiculturalism begins with an erosion of "classical and Judeo-Christian traditions" in college curriculums, writing that "many a college campus is a small, ivy-covered North Korea." He warns that European culture and history are being undermined -- "multiculturalism involves the systematic restructuring of the curriculum so as to hinder students from learning about the Western tradition" -- and expresses a sense of victimization that recurs throughout the manifesto.

"Cultural Marxism defines all minorities, what they see as the victims; Muslims, Feminist women, homosexuals and some additional minority groups as virtuous and they view ethnic Christian European men as evil," Breivik writes.

From there, Breivik transitions into the central pillar of his beliefs: that multiculturalism has established a false moral Christianity between Christianity and Islam, which he calls "intrinsically violent" and "evil." He writes that Europe is engaged in a "1400 year Islamic Jihad," with "permanently hostile" Muslims seeking to establish a "world-transforming political ideology," a strategy that he likens to fascism. He supports this with an exhaustive accounting of Muslim theology and history.

"Islam's violent nature must be accepted as given; only then will we be able to come up with appropriate policy responses that can improve our chances of survival," Breivik writes.

Breivik's plans for the resistance include extensive descriptions of the weapons to be used, badges to be awarded for various acts of valor and a list of targets that breaks people down into Category A, B, C and D "traitors" -- by his accounting. Norway contains about 4,848 category A and B traitors. The title of the work derives from his estimation that the "European Civil War" will conclude in 2083, a period that will entail mass deporations of Muslims and executions of "cultural Marxist/multiculturalist category A and B traitors."

"The European armed indigenous rights movements/resistance movements are just starting to emerge and this will continue in the coming decades. The armed fight for our survival lies ahead of us," Breivik writes. "The time for dialogue is now over. The time for armed resistance has come."