Anders Breivik

@quiet_man wrote:

With a bit of luck Breivik will never be released, but only time will tell on that, the court did consider him sane after all and that does mean he could be out in 21 years at the latest. Yet before people start on Breivik and nationalist movements perhaps they’d best consider the old maxim about people in glass houses not throwing bricks.
Che Guevara who adorns many a socialists walls and tee shirts murdered at least 180 people and yet is seen as a cultural icon by the left.
Seems it’s only the cause that matters, had Breivik attacked say a gathering of nationalists many of the left would be hailing him as some sort of hero.
Those on the left are hypocrites of the highest order when they criticise Breivik, they have done far worse in their time and laud their own mass murderers as some sort of icon to be emulated. They should perhaps be thankful that nationalist movements who mostly regard Breivik as a nutter are far more civilised…

I understand the desire of a nationalist to distance himself from this killer. If all nationlaists seet out on such a killing spree, we’d be n a very nasty situation indeed and, as quiet man says, most act in a more civilised manner. I wouldnm’t want to lsander or misrepresent people I disagree with.

The same goes for the Left, though. I have little time for Che Guevara, and didn’t when I was at university (and, believe me, the Che Guevara t-shirts were chic of chic among students in my day). There were terrorist groups of the Left at that time, for sure – Baader-Meinhof being one.

But I would sstrongly deny that the violence of Cuban revolutionaries was the same as the violence of this lone murderer. That is distortion and misrepresentation, quiet man.

Cuba in the 50s was an island brothel and gambling casino for Mafia men (The Godfather2 was right about that) and rich US playboys – its sugar harvested for the profit of US multinationals. Its ruler, Batista, was a ruthless tyrant whose army and seret police ensured his people were uneducatred and sunk in poverty. I can’t see how that situation could have been ended without violence. Castro and Guevara launched an attempt to educate and dignify the Cuban people.

That is not to say it became the workers paradise which some claim, though its economic problems stemmed fromn the US boycott of trade and the collapse of the USSR, which had provided some vital support. The silencing of oppositon means it’s a dictatorship – a particular type of dictatorship* but a dictatorship.

You may not like the Cuban regime, quiet man, but don’t make it equal to Breivik.

* teh Castro regime enjoyed widespread popular support, and this was mobilised by Castro to crush oppositon – a very peculair kind of tyranny best known as a totalitarian democracy.