The terrorist lives next door and posts on your Facebook wall

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I understand how a man like Anders Behring Breivik fed the flames of his hatred, even if that was not the only reason for his terrible act of terrorism, because I was, for a while, his friend on Facebook.

- Read more from Camilla Ragfors, translated by The Guardian

I can’t image the horror the author of this piece must have felt when she realized she tangentially knew the man that cooly and remorselessly gunned down eighty children. It did get me to thinking about last Saturday’s blog post and the dangerous ground we tread when we try to assign the label to simply one group. There was a time, shortly after 9/11, when people like Peter King could be shamed into denouncing their former allegiances to terrorists. Unfortunately – and this is a global and domestic problem – there has been far too much space and patience given to racist, hardline nationalist rhetoric not seen since the early days of the twentieth century. There has been an insistence on fake fairness, with the idea that somehow a viewpoint has validity simply by nature of its existence. This has led us to be far more accommodating to racist and xenophobic viewpoints out of misguided politeness and the fear we have in calling people out on it simply because it’s draped in a flag.

It was hard over the weekend to imagine there would be anything at all that could be culled from the unfathomable tragedy in Norway, but with some time to process and revelation of the climate that bred Anders Behring Breivik and fed his insane delusions, it is clear what the lesson is, and is this: if you are truly of a good heart and you are serious and earnest in your belief that we need to make the world safer for ourselves and our neighbors around the world, then the fight needs to be against the one common thread that ties all terrorists together. That thread is intolerance.

Xenophobic nationalism caused the tragedy in Norway every bit as the man who committed the deed himself. It is here, too, in the United States, and if you deny it you must not have your eyes and ears open. It seems insane, for example, that anyone would actually believe that the United States would ever be in danger of adopting Sharia Law, yet there are candidates running for political office with no shortage of supporters who spout such nonsense even though most rational people wouldn’t trust someone who believes such things with running the Sunday brunch rush at Denny’s. It flies in the face of all that’s rational and comes not from an area of legitimate concern, but rather a hatred and ignorance that is unbecoming of us as Americans in the 21st Century.

Breivik wasn’t the first to terrorize his own people and won’t be the last. We have a history of it ourselves. Almost assuredly, the next terrorist attack will be domestic. Some of us may have the man posting on our Facebook wall, and God help us if we can’t say we didn’t see it coming.