How privilege-blindness stops us understanding the roots of terrorism
An independent inquiry has established that Anders Behring Breivik, the clean-cut white supremacist who methodically murdered 77 people in Norway, moved around unchallenged for three hours after detonating a car bomb, despite police receiving eyewitness accounts of an armed man in protective gear.
Were the police looking for a different kind of killer? Or, despite the existence of a long-established white power underground in Norway, was it assumed that this was not a terrorist attack which would have triggered a protocol of nationwide alerts and roadblocks? The verdict on Breivik, whom prosecutors wanted declared insane and who believes multiculturalism has harmed "white Christian identity", is due in a few days.
While mass killing always has a madness to its method, white supremacists are all too often declared to be psychopathic loners, where others are seen as part of organised ideological networks.
Following the massacre of Sikh worshippers by another white supremacist in Wisconsin last week, little was made of the similarities between this apparently "senseless killing" and the recent firebombing of a Missouri mosque. Had Wade Page been Wadi Pervez and his victims predominantly white, talking heads would have debated the relationship between his religion and violent inclinations while "moderate Muslims" would distance "the community" from him.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/14/privilege-blindness-roots-of-terrorism