The Norway Tragedy, Fear and Loathing.......and Turner Classic Movies

The elements in my title may seem an odd grouping to readers, but I will make clear how they link together.

The (alleged) shooter, who is reported to have turned himself in to police and confessed, has stated through his lawyer that what he did was 'atrocious but necessary'.  Other translations of what his attorney said used the words cruel but necessary.  Anders Breivik will explain himself at greater length in court on Monday, and whichever words characterize his thinking on the subject, we will have more of them then.
From AJE:  Lippestad said: "He has said that he believed the actions were atrocious, but that in his head they were necessary."

For any reader who might raise an eyebrow at my quoting from Al Jezeera English as a reporting source, let me elaborate.  I like to review a wide range of sources, and to then evaluate them for their accuracy and bias.  What I do not want to do is to rely on only one segment of the media for information, so I don't want to rely exclusively on U.S. media to cover the U.S., but instead look at international media coverage of us as well.  On the topic of Islam-related subjects, and our international policy, particularly in the area of our conflicts in predominantly Muslim countries, I don't like to rely exclusively on western media.  This doesn't mean that I take the information any of those sources provide without critical thinking, but rather that I look at them as sources to be evaluated. 

Looking at AJE, they impressed me with having done some good reporting.  In contrast, we have the Telegraph from the UK, which did not do nearly as well in their response to the Norway tragedy.  They went with an presumption of an "Islamoterrorist" attack, at some length from the site zerohedge:

As of June 2011, there were still six F16 fighters from the Royal Norwegian Air Force operating in Libya, which is a possible motive for the attack. However, it is unlikely that Colonel Gadhafi has the ability to mobilise such an attack.
Norway has deployed around 500 troops in Afghanistan, and three Norwegian newspapers (Aftenposten, Dagbladet and Magazinet) published the controversial Prophet Muhammad cartoons in 2005-2006, providing another possible motive.

There is precedent for jihadist targeting of Norway, with public spaces, government offices and media targets most at risk.
One possible culprit is the Pakistan-based core al-Qaeda group, which has previously shown interest in attacking Norway. In July 2010, three Norwegian residents, one of whom had received explosives training with al-Qaeda in Pakistan, were arrested on suspicion of plotting attacks against unspecified targets. One of them had attempted to construct the same hydrogen peroxide-based explosives as used in the 2009 al-Qaeda bomb plot against the New York subway and the 7/7 bombings in London.
Nevertheless, Norway is not a priority country for jihadists, and any al-Qaeda targeting of Norway would probably be opportunistic, based on the fact that they had happened to recruit a Norwegian national. We also assess that any plans for spectacular attacks in Western Europe would probably have been altered or put on hold following bin Laden's death, pending internal security reviews. A further possibility, therefore, is that the attack was led by Norwegian jihadist sympathisers acting on their own initiative, possibly after receiving basic training from jihadist groups overseas.

This pattern was seen in Stockholm in December 2010, when Swedish citizen Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly blew himself up in a busy shopping street. He had visited Iraq for jihad, but appeared to have received minimal, if any, external training and guidance when planning the Stockholm attack. One possible training provider would be Somalia's al-Shabab, which maintains fundraising networks among Norway's Somali community and has proven attractive as a destination for Swedish and Danish jihadist sympathisers, though it has not so far shown interest in deploying its foreign fighters back home to conduct attacks.

I think it is safe to say that the Telegraph's leap to a conclusion impressed me less.  For those unfamiliar with the press in the UK (from wikipedia):

The Daily Telegraph has been politically conservative in modern times.[27] The personal links between the paper's editors and the leadership of the Conservative Party, along with the paper's influence over Conservative activists, has resulted in the paper commonly being referred to, especially in Private Eye, as the Torygraph.[27] Even when Conservative support was shown to have slumped in the opinion polls and Labour became ascendant in them (particularly when leader Tony Blair rebranded the party as "New Labour" on becoming leader after the death of John Smith in 1994), the newspaper remained loyal to the Conservatives. This loyalty continued after Labour ousted the Conservatives from power by a landslide election result in 1997, and in the face of Labour election wins in 2001 and the third successive Labour election win in 2005.

But it wasn't just the Telegraph that 'went off the rails'; from the Think Progress by way of the site Dump Bachmann, writing about the Washington Post:

When news began to unfold on Friday of the terror attacks in Norway that has left more than 90 dead, many blogs and Twitter accounts immediately lit up with speculation about who was behind the massive bombings in Oslo and the subsequent attack on a youth camp 20 miles away.

But some pundits, mostly right-wing neoconservatives, proclaimed that this bore all the hallmarks of Islamic terrorism, even going so far as to draw policy prescriptions. At the Washington Post, normally a well-respected news outlet, Jennifer Rubin quoted the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies‘ Thomas Joscelyn and AEI scholar Gary Schmitt to say that the attacks were the result of Islamic terrorism. She then concluded the “jihadist” attack on Oslo means the U.S. shouldn’t cut military spending:

This is a sobering reminder for those who think it’s too expensive to wage a war against jihadists. [...] Some irresponsible lawmakers on both sides of the aisle…would have us believe that enormous defense cuts would not affect our national security. Obama would have us believe that al-Qaeda is almost caput and that we can wrap up things in Afghanistan. All of these are rationalizations for doing something very rash, namely curbing our ability to defend the United States and our allies in a very dangerous world.

Until Monday's elaboration in court, I think it is safe to characterize Anders Breivik, based on the information currently available through the press, as a dangerously Islamophobic man.  This is a man who has asserted in the past that there is a danger of Islamacisation of Europe, as well as being concerned about too lenient immigration, and supporting a national identity.  He characterizes himself as a Christian whose views on religion appear to be fundamentalist, and he characterizes his views as conservative.

I would characterize Breivik's views as afraid, and as ignorant about the people from Islamic countries who have immigrated to Norway and other parts of Europe.  And I would assert that not only our news media, but especially the right wing mouthpiece media, has contributed heavily to those misinformed views. 

More than that however are the more subtle ways in which our OTHER media has contributed to a skewed and biased viewpoint.  This is where Turner Classic Movies has come in.  Most of us think of TCM as simply that delightful cable network that shows old movies, including old silent movies.  A network which eschews politics in celebrating entertainment oriented content.  Yes, they are that, but the network also promotes a very legitimate understanding of ourselves by looking at the history of images in film. For the past several years they have used two nights a week throughout the month of July to look at how different groups have been portrayed in films over time, how stereotypes have changed and evolved, even what actors have portrayed those roles.  For example, there have been largely caucasian actors who portrayed American Indians / native americans on screen over the years, and many caucasian actors who have portrayed Asian characters as well.

What could this possibly have to do with the Norway tragedy?  This year the month of July was dedicated by Turner Classic Movies to examining the images of Arabs and Muslims in film.  The analysis was thoughtful, not at all 'preachy', and was fact based, with an analysis preceding the showing of a cross-section of films. Their selection includes old and new movies, cartoons, dramas and comedies, full length movies and shorts, even the silent films of Rudolph Valentino, The Sheik,  and the subsequent The Son of the Sheik, to illustrate the analysis. 

Viewed together, with the introductions, they demonstrate how powerful those images in entertainment rather than news are in affecting our thinking, and our feeling, about groups of people.  These are influences where we have less conscious awareness of an effect compared to the way we filter and absorb the information from news.  That gives those images a different, but very real power to influence us, including to predispose us to the kinds of fears evident in the Telegraph, and evident in the alleged actions of Anders Breivik.

The primary host for Turner Classic Movies is the urbane and polished Robert Osborne.  For the series Race and Hollywood: Arab Images on Film, his co-host is the equally erudite and well spoken Dr. Jack Shaheen.  His bio on the Turner website is impressive.  But what has impressed me so much more is how eloquently he speaks to the stereotypes, as an individual included in those stereotypes.

I learned my greatest understanding and appreciation for the subtleties and destructiveness of racism when I employed a black handler to show my dogs.  I watched the occasional racist dog show judges who would for example, shake the hands of every exhibitor but this extremely talented and professional man who was showing my dogs, along with other more subtle slights.  During those incidents, I came to see that racism through the eyes of my friend, which is what that handler came to be.  We even had a code between us, a gesture to underline those events: two fingers of one hand rubbed across the back of the other hand, signifying that color, race, doesn't 'rub off'.  That was a reference to a belief by my very much loved, intelligent maternal grandmother who was, frankly, a racist.  She didn't like black people touching her things, or in her home, because she had an unreasonable fear that their color would rub off on things, a belief based on the fact that some parts of their bodies, like the palms of their hands, were lighter.

The Turner Classic Movies introductions, where the comments about the images that are shown are made through the very gentle and dignified insights of Dr. Shaheen affect me the same way.  They underline for me the importance of seeing ourselves and our views through the eyes of someone else, someone who is affected by those views in very serious and potentially damaging ways.

Robert Burns in his poem, To a Louse, penned these words:

O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.
(O would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us.)

Those words sum up perfectly for me the value of including Al Jezeera English in the sources I review for news, and they sum up perfectly the value of seeing our stereotypes through the eyes of those demeaned and demonized by our stereotypes, as reflected in the exceptional presentations of Turner Classic Movies.

I hope Penigma readers will check out both, and in depth. The Turner Arabs in Images nights are Tuesday and Thursday, but excerpts are shown periodically between other movies as well, as part of their between-movie 'filler'.  They have tremendous power to change us in large and small ways, to make us more insightful, more objective, more aware, and more intellectually critical.  Perhaps most of all, I believe both have the power to make us all less fearful, less unreasonably and unreasoningly fearful.

If there was ever an occasion for the necessity of doing that, the events in Norway are an excellent example of why you should do so.  They are the best 'push back' against Anders Breivik and those who think like him that exist in a world where we strive to be factual and objective, not fearful.