Everyone just assumes that Anders Behring Breivik is insane. I suppose you can make the argument that there is a very fine line between insanity and right wing extremism. So talking about eliminating your opponents seems to be fine but actually carrying out makes you nuts.
Mark Steyn has been writing anti-Muslim material as far back as 2006 with his infamous Macleans article The Future Belongs To Islam. Around the same time Melanie Phllips wrote a piece called No Surrender in the Daily Mail. There is Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-Muslim provocateur and leader of his country’s anti-immigration Freedom Party. So these writers are sane while Breivik is not? They all believe they are in a war against Islam. However, Anders sincerely believed that the killing needed to be done and carried through with it. According to his manifesto, it was to stop the liberals in Europe from letting the Muslims take over.
Was Timothy McVeigh insane for blowing up a government building in Oklahoma City? He killed 168 fellow Americans as revenge against the federal government for its handling of the Waco siege. Are Islamic fanatics also insane for slaughtering innocent people in the name of some convoluted cause?
It's far too easy to label violent extremists as insane. There acts of violence are disturbing and make no sense to us. They know exactly what they are doing and understand the consequences. Sounds pretty sane to me.
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