The law enforcement entities dealing with the appalling massacre in and around Oslo last Friday have been understandably preoccupied with the question, did the perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik, act alone. That is an important question for them, but it does nothing to help the rest of us understand and respond to this tragedy.<\/p>\n
Let us assume that he acted alone, in the legal sense that unlike Timothy Mc Veigh of the Oklahoma City bombing he did not have accomplices. Acting alone does not mean that he acted in a vacuum. <\/em>Thus we have to understand the climate in which he thought and acted. Just imagine if the media were asking instead, or in addition:<\/p>\n Right now, the answer to all of these questions would be, basically nothing. And that does not bode well for our security.<\/p>\n Once Breivik was in custody it very soon came to light that he is a right-wing extremist \u201cChristian\u201d obsessed with the \u201cdanger\u201d of Islam, and as such part of a growing trans-European movement. The most interesting feature of this movement\u2013and here the press must be credited for pointing it out\u2013are the uncanny similarities (uncanny if you don\u2019t know how violence works) between the rhetoric of a manifesto he authored and\/or signed and that of his opposite number, Osama bin Laden, even down to referencing the Crusades, though of course from opposite viewpoints. Apparently fundamentalisms have more in common with each other than they have with the discourse of rational people on their respective \u201csides.\u201d There is no question that since 9\/11 the \u201cwar on terror\u201d meme has become the dominating mythology\u2013I use the word advisedly\u2013that has kept us in a posture of indefinite warfare\u2013and that this posture perpetuates the very dangers we are seeking to avoid.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, Secretary Clinton stepped into this trap when she lost no time declaring, before the identity of the perpetrator was even known, that \u201cWe must\u2026bring [them] to justice\u201d \u2014 the rhetoric of the war on terror.\u00a0 We know, unfortunately, what \u201cjustice\u201d means in this setting, because we saw what it means just recently in the murder of Osama bin Laden. \u00a0It means unvarnished vengeance, and thus a guarantee that the cycle of violence will continue. \u00a0As a U.S. commander said in Iraq a year ago, \u201cWe are making terrorists faster than we can kill them.\u201d\u00a0 Does this sound like security to you?<\/p>\n But when we speak of a climate in which Breivik and others like him are operating, we must recognize that it has an even deeper cause than the reciprocal terrorisms invoked by the \u201cwar.\u201d<\/p>\n Violence has, to bring in an analogy from science, a \u2018background count.\u2019\u00a0 From the early days of nuclear science Geiger counters were used to record the level of radioactivity in a given area.\u00a0 To know how much ionizing radiation an object is giving off one has to subtract the amount that the device is picking up from the surrounding environment.\u00a0 Similarly, hate has a background count.\u00a0 And it\u2019s getting worse.\u00a0 Notice the changing affiliations in the trans-European xenophobia \u2014 at first they supported Islamists against Jews, further back that they supported Communist Russia against China, and then switched.\u00a0 This shows that the underlying motive is unspecific hate.<\/p>\n Why aren\u2019t we asking, \u201cWho or what is creating an atmosphere of egotism and hate in our culture?\u201d \u00a0Unfortunately, because we already know the answer, and do not want to hear it.\u00a0 Social scientists from every relevant discipline have been telling us for decades that the worsening parade of violent imagery in our mass media definitely and inevitably produces more violent mind-sets and thus more violent behaviors. To try to piece together the motivations of a deranged person \u2014 which, along with trivial details like the number of shots fired, etc., is often the preoccupation of the media \u2014 is an exercise in futility.\u00a0 Deranged minds are by definition beyond the reach of reason.\u00a0 But that does not mean we cannot understand what\u2019s driving them \u2014 or do anything about it.\u00a0 Terrorism across the board would go down to the extent that the pervasive dehumanizing imagery of the commercial mass media would go down.\u00a0 Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has shown that the very same video games used to prime Army recruits to shed their inhibitions against killing are the ones being pulled off the shelves of game stores by young people everywhere.\u00a0 Any one of us who persuades a child not to buy such games and him or herself abstains from patronizing violent television, games and movies \u2014 I realize this means almost all of it \u2014 will be showing the way to reduce terrorism.<\/p>\n So while we recoil in horror from what Breivik did and how he thinks, we have to realize that our culture provided him with the mind-set (including a low image of human life), the weapons, and a convenient ideology.\u00a0 It would be sheer hypocrisy to neglect these causes of the problem \u2014 and dangerous folly.<\/p>\n Terrorism of this particular kind \u2014 xenophobic fundamentalism under cover of religion \u2014 would go down if we stop electing leaders who rely on it for their popularity.\u00a0 Terrorism itself, in any stripe (and yes, I am among those who include war) would go down if we would turn our backs resolutely on the \u2018entertainment\u2019 and other forms that rely on violence for their popularity.\u00a0 This gets us down at last to the real issue.<\/p>\n Germany\u2019s Angela Merkel did rather better than our Secretary of State in calling on us to \u201cunite against hatred.\u201d \u00a0We can do this.\u00a0 Our institute, the Metta Center for Nonviolence, has launched Love Your Enemy: a Campaign to Reclaim Human Dignity Through Nonviolence.<\/a> It is our contribution toward counteracting both the discourse of Islamophobia and<\/em> the underlying acceptance of violence.\u00a0 We invite you to join us.<\/p>\n In any case, we can all raise the issues outlined above and act on them even if \u2014 or especially because \u2014 our political figures and the official discourse of the media apparently never will.\u00a0 Our children expect nothing less.\u00a0 If we want to give them a secure world, we really have no other way.<\/p>\n\n