Due to the fact that irony sometimes has a peculiar way of revealing itself, I could not help but draw parallels between the horrific shooting and bombing incident in Norway and what is considered to be one of the 20th century’s most thought-provoking plays. In An inspector calls, JB Priestley magnificently sketches how the hypocrisy of an upper-class British Victorian family has had severe consequences on a “low-class factory worker” who was driven to suicide in desperation.
By questioning each member of this particular family with regards to the death, inspector Goole (spectre, ghoul…see the allusion?) contextualizes how they all had a share in the undoing of Eva Smith, a “girl of that [lower] class”. The family members confided to the detective that they had fired her from her factory job, the wife had had her fired from her next job as a clothing store attendant, whilst other family members had made her pregnant and had turned her away from financial aid, leaving her poor, pregnant and destitute, all for the sake of greed and hiding their own wrongdoings. And all the while they had denied responsibility for her untimely death.
If we fast forward to the real world in the nineteen eighties, we can see the similar ramifications of the same disguised hypocrisy by a group of people whom were held in high regard by the Nordic countries. These following extracts taken from an interview held in 1986 may help put matters into perspective:
Q: I take it, that you regret when civilians are killed. Is that right?
A: Absolutely, regret. I think it is tragic that a situation should arise where civilians on any side are killed. But it is almost a cliché to say that it is virtually unavoidable and this isn't unique to us alone.
Q: You say it is impossible to avoid, but it is easy to avoid planting bombs on buses?
A: Yes, it is. We have expressed our thinking on that and I reckon you want me to repeat it, but our policy remains that we are not moving toward a new strategy in our military activities, we are not now embarking upon a campaign of terror amongst civilians. (Note the slippery double speak?)
At first glance, these words may well have been spoken by Anders Breivik, as his rhetoric is in a much similar vein. But here is a further extract from the same interview:
Q: But, can I ask what is a legitimate target? Is a legitimate target a police station? That is a legitimate target, is it?
A: I think a legitimate target is the enemy and enemy is basically in uniform, but not all in uniform. For example in the rural areas, our judgement is that virtually the whole farming community is part of the South African Defence Force.
Q: Is it the white farming community?
A: The white farming community. They are all organised into their commandos, each farm is a major communication post, they (harmed?) our people in the vicinity, they have manoeuvre. They live with their wives, they live with their children, but I believe in that case it is not acting (against) civilian targets when one acts against those people who are part of the enemy's military machine in the countryside.
Have you guessed it? This was the BBC World Service interviewing communist leader Joe Slovo in Focus on Africa. The entire interview may be read here.
What is the difference then between the late Joe Slovo and Anders Breivik? For one, Slovo wasn’t considered to be a lonely freak, psychopath, homicidal maniac or some nutcase conspiracy theorist. Where Breivik is responsible for the deaths of 77 innocent people, Slovo caused the deaths of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of innocent people. The stark level of genocide that he helped unleash on the white farming community has now tallied a death toll of almost 4 000 since this interview was held. Yet instead of condemning Slovo’s organisation as a ragtag bunch of rogue bandits and opportunists, the Scandinavians showered them with praise, unabashedly lining ANC/SACP members’ pockets with hundreds of millions of dollars during the "struggle" years. Not to mention Nobel Peace Prizes.
Whereas the Danes and Swedes were actively busy sterilising thousands of their own citizens in an attempt to "purify" their race, they relentlessly accused white Afrikaners of racial superiority and assisted various African revolutionaries, terrorists and third world dictators to help put an end to this abominable Afrikaner Weltanschauung, which was tragically enough not even remotely descriptive of the true nature of Afrikaner politics. A situation ensued where one Protestant nation was literally at war with their Protestant brethren on behalf of a people, the language and customs of which they could not even understand.
Meanwhile these terrorists were granted a lavish lifestyle on truckloads full of Scandinavian cash, with compliments from Joe (or rather Jens) Taxpayer. And the more misery these "freedom fighters" sowed, the more legitimate their cause was held to be, and therefore the larger the money supply. To add to this, erstwhile ANC brass Smuts Ngonyama gave us an insight into his personal motives for joining the ANC by stating that he “didn’t join the struggle to stay poor”.
So there we have it! As the old saying goes: “In the end, it was all about the dollars.” The confusion, cries of anguish and blood in the streets were ultimately only “good business” to these brave heroes of the struggle. Especially in the eighties, it must have transpired that the apartheid government was a paper tiger and jail time was a small price to pay for what was to come.
To fast forward to today, we see the main news headlines soberly reporting on the severe famine in Somalia, Northern and Southern Africa, followed by the Norwegians still reeling from the aftershocks of last week’s massacre. Not a single word has been uttered about South Africa’s rural genocide, even though it has been in the making for years. Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe hardly received a slap on the wrist for destroying the "bread basket of Africa" but the Western media swamps us with pictures of famished Somalis, emotionally blackmailing the West for more aid. Every attempt to connect the destroyed agricultural industry in Southern Africa with the impending famine elsewhere in Africa is avoided. Needless to say, the plight of poor and starving white Afrikaners is kept out of the news entirely, even though many of them have the expertise to make the difference.
The trauma of Afrikaners sinking away into a state of annihilation was for many years held as “moonshine” or “bluffing” by the rest of the world who was still gloating over the ANC’s rise to power, similar to Priestley’s Mr. Birling who, with a sigh of relief, confirmed that inspector Goole did not really exist, and whose appearance remains a mystery throughout the play. Priestley obviously intended to keep it that way, with Goole being the personification of their collective guilt...until the call came after a former factory worker had killed herself and an inspector was on his way to question the Birlings. Thus the spectre became reality.
Where the left has vigorously accused the right for this terrible act in Oslo, the harsh reality is that the left’s support for mass murderers and gangsters for many years may not easily be dismissed. White South African farmers could have played an important role in alleviating Africa’s current wave of famine, yet the lefties chose to have Communist Party leader Slovo and his radical cronies destroy the continent further while claiming they were “liberating” the people of Africa. The effects of this “liberation” may be seen in places such as Italy, Greece and the Canary Islands where thousands of Africans in makeshift rafts are desperately trying to enter the continent of their former oppressors to flee from their liberated homelands. Even faraway lands as Brazil and Argentina apparently have been surprised to witness the arrival of African refugees on leaky boats, having crossed the large and treacherous Atlantic with minimal means.
The fact is, there will always be trigger-happy loners with guns, lots of ammo and little remorse, making their ghastly appearance from time to time, and it would absolutely be in everyone’s best interest to prevent their planning from coming to fruition. However, to use this incident for political name-calling and blaming, especially from the left, the home of many individuals with a dubious past, is not only insincere, but betrays a lack of personal responsibility, an absence of principles and a loss of integrity: the key ingredients for fostering such grave acts.
To quote inspector Goole: “If men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish.”
