THREE INTERVIEWS ON THE NORWAY TERRORISM

I know I used this image the other night, but it is rather relevant to the material in this series of interviews. 

I used to think that the radio news programme run by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, was a pretty good source of alternative news, however when I learned more about it through digging in the dirt, I found that it is a mouthpiece for George Soros and funded by him. Democracy Now! receives indirect funding from George Soros, and direct funding from Soros' Open Society Institute, the Glaser Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Tides Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, and other left-leaning foundations. So yes I listen to Amy Goodman with a much more careful ear for what she doesn’t say more than what she does say.

To be remembered are a few other facts when considering this event and its overall context. Who ultimately benefits from this action? This whole event stinks to high heavens of Mossad but that is another story for the moment. However, what cannot be ignored is that this is a racially and culturally motivated crime and mentioned are several hate groups, the perpetrator not belonging to any. It is well known that these hate groups are clandestinely funded and infiltrated by Zionists for the purpose of creating strife and racial unrest in a targeted culture.

Who gains in this event? The Elite who have been fomenting political and racial unrest around the globe by creating and stretching racial tensions, a wonderful divide and conquer technique, between all humans. This is a particularly twisted situation however, the above points should be kept in mind at all times.

Also, in America, the current wave of dehumanization and terrorizing of the population included a great deal of emphasis on the white terrorist. This would be to increase invasive actions and removal of more human rights. While this movement is probably not part of the action in Norway, this concept of the white terrorist will affect policies in the United States.

That being said, I still listen to Amy Goodman when I am driving and often plan my excursions, if possible, so that I can hear her interviews. Sometimes I even post them if the information is worth it and yesterday’s interviews were definitely worth posting for your reading “pleasure”.  

Amy conducted three interviews. The first is with an eyewitness to the camp massacres. The second concerns Islamophobia in Europe. The third, which I found extremely interesting, contains very relevant material regarding the international media and its portrayal of the alleged perpetrator of these actions. I say alleged because I believe there is far more to this than meets the eye and I do not believe he acted alone.  SO here we go.


PART ONE:
EYEWITNESS TO NORWEGIAN MASSACRE: SURVIVOR RECALLS ATTACK AT ISLAND YOUTH CAMP

Guest: Ali Esbati, was on Norway’s Utoya Island Saturday where he was an eyewitness to the alleged attack by Anders Breivik and escaped by diving into the water. Esbati was there to give a workshop. He is an economist with the Manifest Center for Social Analysis, a Norwegian think tank.

Norwegian police have widened their investigation into Friday’s mass killing after the alleged shooter, Anders Behring Breivik, told a court in Oslo on Monday that he had "two further cells" in his organization. During the hearing, Breivik accepted responsibility for the attacks but denied charges of terrorism.

Norwegian media reports that if he is convicted of crimes against humanity, he could receive a 30-year sentence. At least 76 people were killed and 96 others wounded when Breivik allegedly set off a bomb outside government buildings in Oslo and then opened fire on a Labour Party summer camp for youth activists.

We are joined from Oslo by Ali Esbati, one of the survivors of the shooting. He is an economist who was at the camp on Norway’s Utoya Island to give a workshop and escaped the shooting by diving into the water.

AMY GOODMAN: Norwegian police have widened their investigation into Friday’s mass killing after the lone suspect claimed he acted with collaborators. The suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, told a court in Oslo, Norway, on Monday that he had "two further cells" in his organization. During the hearing, he accepted responsibility for the killings but denied charges of terrorism. Breivik is facing terror-related charges that carry a maximum 21-year sentence. Norwegian media reports that if Breivik is convicted of crimes against humanity, he could receive a 30-year sentence.

At least 76 people and were killed, and another 96 wounded, when Breivik allegedly set off a bomb outside government buildings in Oslo and then opened fire on a Labour Party summer camp for youth activists on a nearby island. Breivik has been described as an anti-Islamic, right-wing extremist who claimed to be acting in order to save Norway and Europe from, quote, "Marxist and Muslim colonization," unquote.

More than 100,000 Norwegians rallied in Oslo Monday night, many carrying white and red roses, to mourn the dead and show unity after the tragedy.

KRISTINE KONSMO: I think it’s important to show that Norway is really united as a country, not just as the city of Oslo, but a whole nation, and that you see that there’s people from all over, people who are native to Oslo and people who are from other parts of Norway who just got in their car and drove down here, and people who immigrated here. And it’s just so nice to see everybody so calm and together, and just this big warm feeling.

AMY GOODMAN: Tens of thousands of others also rallied in Norway’s major cities, from Tromsoe to Bergen. Norway’s justice minister is scheduled to meet today with police chiefs who are facing criticism for taking more than an hour to stop the shooting spree in which 68 people, mostly teenagers, were shot after a bomb in Oslo killed eight.

We go right now to Oslo, Norway, to be joined by one of the survivors of the shooting. Ali Esbati was on Norway’s Utoya Island on Saturday, where he was an eyewitness to the alleged attack by Anders Breivik. It happened Friday. Esbati was there to give a workshop. He’s an economist with the Manifest Center for Social Analysis, a Norwegian think tank.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! Can you describe what happened on Friday?

ALI ESBATI: Thank you. Well, when the shooting started, we had already received news about the bombing in Oslo, so the atmosphere was quite tense and sad at the moment. So when there were some noises starting, I thought, like many others, that people were overreacting, perhaps, to them, and it took a while before we understood that there was real shooting going on. So people came running from other parts of that building, where Anders Breivik apparently had entered, and screamed that we should leave the building. So, I ran out of the building. And just after that, when I was heading down a slope, I looked back and saw two bodies lying down on a field just outside the building. So, at that point, I understood that this was a real shooting going on.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, can you describe what this Labour Party youth camp was? And also talk about why you were there.

ALI ESBATI: Well, this is an annual event with a very long, long tradition with the Social Democratic Party. Lots of other youth organizations also have summer camps, but this is like an iconic summer camp being held at the same island for many, many decades. And basically, young people gather. They have a lot of fun, but they also listen to political workshops. They hang around. They discuss if there’s an upcoming election campaign and so on.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, the shooter, Anders Breivik, you, Ali Esbati, actually saw him, is that right? Can you continue to describe what happened when you ran out of the building, realizing in fact that the shooting was happening there, it wasn’t just people responding to hearing about the bomb attack in Oslo that had occurred earlier?

ALI ESBATI: Yes. Just after leaving ~ I mean, shortly after that, I saw, for instance, people with gunshot wounds, so that was very, I mean, emotionally very hard. I saw a young girl, for instance, 18 or 19, who had been shot, and she kept repeating that "If I die here, please remember that you’re all fantastic, and keep up your struggle," and so on. I don’t know what happened with her afterwards. She was given some help from some first help.

But after that, I mean, most of the time I kept laying low just in the terrain, just in the woods with the other people, trying to listen to see if the shooting was approaching and move accordingly. But after a long time ~ I mean, it was more than one-and-a-half hours ~ when I thought the whole ordeal might be over, because we heard the police helicopters and so on, this man suddenly showed up like 15 meters from the location where I was. I was standing close to the water, together with some other people. And he showed up, like above us, wearing a police uniform and carrying a large rifle.

And he shouted something like ~ like calming, saying that either it’s the police or it’s OK. But immediately, he started ~ he started firing his rifle. So at that point, I just turned around and jumped into the water, and I ran or crawled by the waterside on some rocks and just tried to hide by the waterside a few meters away from there. Of course, if he had wanted to turn in our direction, I think we would have very small chances of surviving. But now he didn’t. He shot in another direction, I think killing at least one person. I saw that later on, because I thought it was a life vest in the water, but I realized that it was probably a dead body.

But he was apprehended shortly after that. So that’s ~ but I did see him. He looked very, very calm, very, you know, not emotional, very conscious of what he was doing. So it was a chilling moment. I thought really that, well, this might be the end. But I had ~ I was lucky to survive; many others weren’t.

AMY GOODMAN: And in your understanding of who Breivik is now, and Ali Esbati, your work, talk about why you ~ what you were lecturing about on the island to the camp. Do you see any connections?

ALI ESBATI: Well, no, not really. I was talking about the economic policies of the right-wing government in Sweden and how to learn from them in Norway, not to repeat the failure of the left in Sweden. But what really is striking is that ~ I mean, even though this is a particularly mad person, of course, his acts need to be understood in a social and political context, and that context is rising Islamophobia in the Western world and in the Nordic countries, as well, and ~ because these are ideas that he carries.

They are not, absolutely not, unique to him. They’re rather widespread in certainly milieux, where they’re seeing Islam and regular Muslims as sort of occupation force and those enabling that occupation as traitors.

And, of course, traitors in a war situation, you might legitimize doing very drastic things to them.

And this is the kind of worldview that has pushed him over new limits. But if we want to not have these kinds of things happen in the future, I think that’s the point to start, I mean, understanding the political context in which he has been and he has acted, even before the shootings.

PART TWO:

NORWAY ATTACKS REVEAL GROWING VIOLENT, ANTI-MUSLIM SENTIMENT IN EUROPE

Guest: Kari Helene Partapuoli, director of the Norwegian Center Against Racism

Anders Behring Breivik, who has admitted to the mass shooting and bombing in Norway, has been described as an anti-Islamic, right-wing extremist who claimed to be acting in order to save Norway and Europe from "Marxist and Muslim colonization." To discuss the prevalence and legitimacy of these views, we speak with Kari Helene Partapuoli, the director of the Norwegian Center Against Racism.

She says Breivik’s ideology was shaped in part by the Norwegian Defence League and the group Stop the Islamisation of Norway. “He didn’t just go on a shooting spree. He was also shaped by this political environment on the right wing,” says Partapuoli.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined on the phone by Kari Partapuoli, the director of the Norwegian Center Against Racism. She is usually based in Oslo, Norway, but happens to have been in a fishing village in Bulgaria when the attack took place, and that’s where we’re speaking to her today. Kari, can you talk about your understanding of who the shooter is, how it fits ~ how he fits into what you have been studying?

KARI HELENE PARTAPUOLI: Well, the traditional right-wing groups in Norway have ~ are still very small and very fragmented and not very well organized. However, Breivik was not really part of that picture. He was more inspired by what Ali Esbati also talks about, the theories about ~ the paranoid theories about how there is an Islam-Muslim takeover in Norway and in Europe.

And even though the sort of traditional right-wing extremist groups are small, there are other things that have been happening, specifically online, where these debates and theories are very free to develop and quite, quite widespread also, especially internationally.

You have Norwegian websites that will write about these theories, but Breivik also went abroad and had a focus in Europe and in the U.K. and also, as he says himself, in the United States. But so, he’s part of that ideology, if you want, where there is this Muslim takeover, where multiculturalism is a threat to our societies.

And he also ~ he also mixes in some things of race theory, so you have some of the more sort of traditional right-wing elements, as well. And he also calls himself a nationalist. So, it’s kind of a mixed picture.

When I say that the right-wing extremist groups are small and fragmented, we have, however, seen, the last year or so, that there’s been a development. There have been attempts to organize groups in Norway, modeled on, for example, the English Defence League in Britain, which is quite successful and widespread, and also something called Stop the Islamisation of Europe.

And in Norway, there has been established something called Stop the Islamisation of Norway and also a branch of the English Defence League called the Norwegian Defence League. Now, these groups are not very successful, and a lot of sort of anti-racists ~ anti-racist networks have worked quite hard to stop these groups from being established and from getting out on the streets.

ED: It has been proven several times in North America that most racist groups as the above are either infiltrated by or organized by Zionist forces, eager to use the misguided and angry strength of these primarily young men, to create strive and racial division within a targeted society.

But Breivik, again, wanted these organizations to be established in Norway, but I don’t think he was very pleased with the fact that they didn’t really get a good standing. So he’s kind of ~ he’s been connected to a lot of these movements, both the sort of theoretical movements online and to some of these sort of ~ or at least he wanted these two groups specifically to be organized in Norway, but he has also looked outside the border.

So this is part ~ this is not just a Norwegian ~ he’s not just a result of the Norwegian arena; he’s also a result of the ~ specifically the European debate, where there is just certainly a growing Islamophobia, specifically.

AMY GOODMAN: I was wondering, Ali, about your own experience in Norway. You were born in Iran?

Ali Esbati, I was wondering about your own experience in Norway. You were born in Iran, is that right?

Sorry, he’s not able to hear us. But Kari Partapuoli, could you talk more about the issue of neo-Nazism and how this fits in?

KARI HELENE PARTAPUOLI: Yeah. I mean, this is not an neo-Nazi ~ he’s not part of a neo-Nazi group. But we ~ in the ’90s, Norway had a slight peak of the neo-Nazi groups. But in 2001, there was a racist murder where a young boy, age 15, called Benjamin Hermansen was killed by two neo-Nazi young men, and there was a national outrage against this murder and also a lot of activities from the police and the whole society, basically, to get people out of the neo-Nazi groups.

So, after 2001, the sort of traditional neo-Nazi groups have been really, really small and not a force to be reckoned with.

But time has passed, and things are changing, and you see now that they have a different enemy picture. It’s the Muslims. It’s the sort of threat to our culture, a threat to ~ they see immigration as a threat to the establishment, to our societies. And we have also some groups being established, as I said, the Stop the Islamisation of Norway and the Norwegian Defence league. But these things are ~ they’re very ~ they’re not forces to be reckoned with, so I think now it’s more the online environments and milieux that we have to pay close attention to.

And, of course, there isn’t a one-to-one relationship between words and actions, but certainly, I agree with Ali Esbati that we have to also see Breivik as part of a social and political context. It didn’t ~ he didn’t just go on a shooting spree. It was ~ he was also shaped by this political environment on the right wing.

AMY GOODMAN: Kari Partapuoli, what about the influence of Americans on him, like Robert Spencer, who operates the anti-Muslim website Jihad Watch, which was quoted 64 times in his manifesto?

KARI HELENE PARTAPUOLI: He definitely ~ that’s definitely ~ he definitely needs these theoreticians, or if that’s the correct word, to support his ideas, because I don’t think he’s found what he was looking for, ideologically wise, in the Norwegian context. Although these things are developing in some right-wing groups, it just is not as developed as, for example, in what you mentioned, as Spencer here.

So he would have to lean on a lot of other international thinkers, if we can call them that, to sort of develop his own theories. But it’s the whole mix, it seems. I mean some of the researchers who now are studying his manifesto say that, you know, he mixes things together. So he puts things together from different thinkers, from his own mind, and also some of the sort of racial thinking.

And then also religion gets into it, maybe because of ~ you know, this is part of the Crusades still fighting the Muslims, like Europe has done, in his view, for so many years, and now he’s sort of continuing that, that struggle. So, religion comes into it, as well, and then some sort of version of Christianity.

He, himself, criticizes the Norwegian Church for being too Social Democratic. It’s a Protestant state church in Norway, and he criticizes that for being too Democratic ~ priests marching in the streets alongside pro-Palestine demonstrations, for example. And he says that he doesn’t really prefer that any longer. He would rather have more of a Catholic Church.

So, you know, there’s a whole mixture of ideas and thinkers and ideologies in this. Bloggers that he relies on heavily, there’s a Norwegian, still anonymous, blogger called Fjordman that he quotes extensively. And this Fjordman is now being very silent about that, but he ~ I mean, taking ~ not supporting at all Breivik’s actions.

But so, you know, there’s a whole mixture of things that come together in his manifesto and in his thinking. He’s been developing this for years. This is a person who’s been developing his worldview. It doesn’t happen overnight. And it actually ~ as it looks now, it seems as if it started, you know, before these sort of major anti-Muslim sentiments actually became part of mainstream European politics.

AMY GOODMAN: Kari Partapuoli, we’re going to break, and then we’re going to bring in Glenn Greenwald, who has also been writing about what’s happening, Salon.com blogger. We’ll go down to Brazil to speak with him, as well. Stay with us. Kari Partapuoli is the director of the Norwegian Center Against Racism, based in Oslo, Norway, though today she’s joining us from Bulgaria. Stay with us.

PART THREE:
GLENN GREENWALD: NORWAY ATTACKS EXPOSE U.S. MEDIA’S DOUBLE STANDARD ON "TERRORISM"

Guest: Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney and political and legal blogger at Salon.com

Numerous news outlets and commentators initially blamed the attacks in Norway on Islamic militants. Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper, The Sun, ran a front-page headline that read, "'Al-Qaeda' Massacre: Norway’s 9/11."

In the United States, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal also initially blamed "jihadists," reporting that "Norway is targeted for being true to Western norms."

Meanwhile, on the Washington Post’s website, Jennifer Rubin wrote, "This is a sobering reminder for those who think it’s too expensive to wage a war against jihadists."

To discuss the media coverage of the attacks, we’re joined by Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney and political and legal blogger who has written about the media coverage of the attacks in Norway for Salon.com.

“When it became apparent that Muslims were not involved and that, in reality, it was a right-wing nationalist with extremely anti-Muslim, strident anti-Muslim bigotry as part of his worldview, the word 'terrorism' almost completely disappeared from establishment media discourse. Instead, he began to be referred to as a 'madman' or an 'extremist,'" says Greenwald.

“It really underscores, for me, the fact that this word 'terrorism,' that plays such a central role in our political discourse and our law, really has no objective meaning. It’s come to mean nothing more than Muslims who engage in violence."

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to the media coverage of the Oslo attacks. Numerous news outlets and commentators initially blamed the attack on Islamic militants. Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper, The Sun, ran a front-page headline titled "'Al-Qaeda' Massacre: Norway’s 9/11." Here in the U.S., Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal also initially blamed jihadists, reporting that, quote,

"Norway is targeted for being true to Western norms."

But it was not just the Murdoch empire. On the Washington Post website, Jennifer Rubin wrote, quote,

"This is a sobering reminder for those who think it’s too expensive to wage a war against jihadists," unquote.

Once it was revealed that the alleged perpetrator was not a Muslim militant, but a right-wing, anti-Muslim Norwegian nationalist, the New York Times still cited experts as saying, quote, "Even if the authorities ultimately ruled out Islamic terrorism as the cause of Friday’s assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking Al Qaeda’s brutality and multiple attacks," unquote.

To discuss the media coverage of the attacks, we’re joined from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, by Glenn Greenwald, constitutional lawyer and political and legal blogger, who has written extensively about the media coverage of the attacks in Norway for Salon.com.

Glenn, welcome. Your thoughts as you saw this story unfold through the media?

GLENN GREENWALD: My first reaction was to be pretty surprised about how ~ or not really surprised, but just struck by how intense the media coverage was and the media interest was in this attack.

Obviously, it was a heinous attack. When a government building blows up, when someone goes on an indiscriminate shooting rampage aimed at teenagers, it’s horrific. And yet, at the same time, the United States and its allies have brought killing like this, violence like this, to numerous countries around the world that receives a tiny fraction of the attention that this attack received, a tiny ~ it prompts a tiny fraction of the interest in denouncing it and in declaring it to be evil.

And it just struck me that when we think that Muslims are responsible for violence aimed at Western nations, it receives a huge amount of attention in the American media, and yet when the United States brings violence on that level to Muslim countries, kills an equal number of civilians, dozens of people killed by drone attacks and the like, and tons of people killed that way over Afghanistan over the past decade, it barely registers.

I mean, an attack like this, this level of death in Iraq, for example, or Afghanistan, would barely register on the media scale.

The other aspect of it, though, is what you referenced in your question, which is, when it was widely assumed, based on basically nothing, that Muslims had been responsible for this attack and that a radical Muslim group likely perpetrated it, it was widely declared to be a "terrorist" attack.

That was the word that was continuously used. And yet, when it became apparent that Muslims were not involved and that, in reality, it was a right-wing nationalist with extremely anti-Muslim, strident anti-Muslim bigotry as part of his worldview, the word "terrorism" almost completely disappeared from establishment media discourse.

Instead, he began to be referred to as a "madman" or an "extremist." And it really underscores, for me, the fact that this word "terrorism," that plays such a central role in our political discourse and our law, really has no objective meaning. It’s come to mean nothing more than Muslims who engage in violence, especially when they’re Muslims whom the West dislikes.

AMY GOODMAN: Or the term "lone wolf." Glenn, I wanted to play for you a former Bush administration State Department official, Christian Whiton, who acknowledged the case in Norway wasn’t Islamic terrorism, but he quickly downplayed violent acts committed by those such as Breivik, saying it’s the first of its kind since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Whiton then attacked Norway for its approach to terrorism, claimed European countries are susceptible to terrorism because they’re, quote, "neutral in the war on terror." He was interviewed on Fox.

CHRISTIAN WHITON: This wasn’t Islamic terrorism. It was ~ it’s one of the first instances since Oklahoma City when terrorism on this scale was not Islamic. But steps you could take to defend your people and your government and your society against Islamic terrorism would also come in handy against lone wolves, as this is turning out to be. It just looks like the Norwegians didn’t happen to take them, nor do they approach terrorism in what, frankly, is a serious manner, I’d say.

GREGG JARRETT: Yet, Islamic terrorism is a problem in the Scandinavian countries. Were they just sort of turning a blind eye to it?

CHRISTIAN WHITON: Yeah. You know, at the end of the Bush administration, George W. Bush went up to the U.N. His final speech there was on the critical threat from Islamic terrorism. And the current prime minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg, actually took the occasion to criticize Bush for going up and said, "Gee, you mentioned Islamic terrorism all these times, but you didn’t talk about climate change," as if there was some sort of equivalence. You know, a problem in a lot of European countries is they think by being neutral in the war on terror, as if any civilized society can be, that they won’t face the threats that we face. But, you know, that’s just not true. We do know al-Qaeda and the Islamic ~

GREGG JARRETT: Yeah.

CHRISTIAN WHITON: ~ terrorist movements are targeting Scandinavian countries just like the rest of us.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Christian Whiton, questioned by Fox’s Gregg Jarrett. Glenn Greenwald, your response?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, unsurprisingly, if you combine a Bush terrorism official with Fox News, you’re going to get what you got there, which is too many factually false statements to even count.

But I’ll just highlight a couple of them.

One is the idea that Norway is neutral in the war on terror. This was part of the reaction, as well, when people thought that Muslims had been responsible for the attack, which is, why would Norway, such a peaceful, neutral country, possibly be targeted?

And the reality is that Norway is part of the war in Afghanistan, and has been for many years. They have a contingent of 500 troops, have been involved in a variety of instances where civilians have been killed. They’re also heavily involved in the war in Libya, having dropped more sorties and ~ or participated in more sorties, dropped more bombs than even, according to the Norway Post, what they dropped during all of World War II. And so, the idea that they’re neutral is simply a myth.

They’re actually engaged in active warfare in at least two different Muslim countries where civilians are being killed and bombs are being dropped.

But more to the point, I think, is this idea that Islamic terrorism is some kind of a unique problem in Europe.

There are reports issued each year by the E.U. that count the number of terrorist attacks, both successfully executed and attempted but failed. And each year, for the past five years, the number of attacks perpetrated, in general, exceeds several hundred, 200 or 300, sometimes 400.

The number that are perpetrated or attempted by, quote-unquote, "Islamists," as the report calls it, people driven by Islamic ideology, religion or political grievances, is minute, something like one out of 294 in 2009, zero out of several hundred in 2007.

This is the statistic that the E.U. documents every year.

There are terrorist attacks in Europe.

Sometimes left-wing groups perpetrate them.

Sometimes right-wing groups perpetrate them.

Sometimes people with domestic grievances, that don’t really fit into the left-right spectrum, attempt them or perpetrate them.

But the idea that Islamic terrorism is some sort of unique threat is completely belied by the E.U.'s own statistic.

This idea of equating Muslims with terrorism is an incredibly propagandistic and deceitful term.

The idea is to suggest that, as several of your guests were saying, that Islam is some sort of existential threat to Western civilization, to Europe and the like, and it's propagated with this myth that terrorism is an Islamic problem.

And that’s why the idea that the establishment media in the United States and in political circles equates terrorism, as a matter of definition, with violence by Muslims is so problematic, because it promotes this lie that terrorism is a function of Islamic ideology.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, on Wednesday, House Homeland Security Committee chair Peter King, the New York Republican Congress member, will hold his third hearing on Muslim radicalization, focusing on radicalization within the Muslim-American community and the threat to the homeland. Your comment? Glenn, are you still there?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, that’s one of the interesting things, is you would think that in response to ~ yes, can you hear me?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, I hear you fine.

GLENN GREENWALD: That you would think that ~ you would think that in response to this attack, we would end up doing things like, for example, profiling Nordic males or tall, blond Americans, tall, blond, Nordic-looking people at airports, or would start to, for example, engage in surveillance on the communications of people who belong to right-wing groups in Europe, or you look at the people who inspire these attacks, people like Robert Spencer or Pamela Geller, people who engage in this sort of strident anti-Muslim commentary who inspired this individual.

You know, we look at Islamic radicals who we allege inspire violence, such as Anwar al-Awlaki, and we target them for assassination ~ due-process-free killing ~ even though they’re American citizens.

Of course, none of these measures are going to be invoked against right-wing ideologues who are anti-Muslim in nature.

And you would expect that Peter King’s hearings, if he were really interested in the threat of violence or terrorism, would be expanded to include what we now know is a very real threat, and yet it isn’t, which simply underscores that those hearings, like so many of these measures done in the name of terrorism, is really just a vehicle for demonizing Muslims, restricting their rights, subjecting them to increased scrutiny.

It’s about Islamophobia and not about terrorism.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the lack of coverage over the weekend in the United States was stunning, from Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, this story where so many young people were killed, massive terror attack, and hugest terror attack in Norway in its history. Yet in this country, when you go to the networks, cable networks, known for covering a story for many hours at a time, this one almost fell from all the networks except the occasional headline.

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, that was completely predictable. I mean, on Friday, when the attack actually took place, there was quite substantial and intense interest in what had taken place. Everybody was talking about it. There were complaints that ~ on Friday, that CNN wasn’t running continuous coverage.

But in general, there was a lot of media interest, because at the time people thought, based on what the New York Times and other media outlets had said, based on nothing, that this was the work of an Islamic ~ a radical Islamic group.

And at the time, I wrote, when I wrote about the unfolding story, that if it turns out to be something other than an Islamic group that was responsible, especially if it turns out to be a right-wing nationalist who’s anti-Muslim in his views, that interest in this story was going to evaporate to virtual non-existence.

And what’s really amazing is, you know, every time there’s an act of violence undertaken by someone who’s Muslim, the commentary across the spectrum links his Muslim religion or political beliefs to the violence and tries to draw meaning from it, broader meaning.

And yet, the minute that it turned out that the perpetrator wasn’t Muslim, but instead was this right-wing figure, the exact opposite view arose, which is, "Oh, his views and associations aren’t relevant. It’s not fair to attribute or to blame people who share his views or who inspired him with these acts."

And it got depicted as being this sort of individual crazy person with no broader political meaning, and media interest disappeared. It’s exactly the opposite of how it’s treated when violence is undertaken by someone who’s Muslim.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, I want to thank you for being with us, constitutional law attorney, political and legal blogger for Salon.com.