Digital Diffusion of Delusions

Abstract

The hatching and diffusion of conspiracy theories is a permanent and sometimes disturbing fact of contemporary culture. Norwegians became painfully aware of this in the summer of 2011 with the bomb explosion in Oslo and the mass killings at a Labour Party Youth camp at Ut0ya where 77 lives were lost. The perpetrator Anders Behring Breivik’s rambling ‘manifesto’ is a chilling reminder of the connection between theory and action in this case, as in numerous other cases. Breivik’s defense for his actions was, as he stated in his ‘manifesto’, that Europe was the victim of the Eurabia agreement, a sinister plot to ‘Arabise’ the continent. The centerpiece of Breivik’s ‘manifesto’is an essay written by his countryman Fjordman (alias for Peder Jensen) titled EU’s Eurabia Project (The Eurabia Code) — Documenting EU’s deliberate strategy to Islamise Europe. This essay is a presentation and discussion of the ideas presented by the French author Bat Ye’or (pseudonym for Gisèle Litman), who maintains that following a meeting between European Union (EU) officials and representatives of Arab states in the wake of the oil crisis in 1974 an agreement was made allowing for greater Arab and Muslim influence in Europe (Ye’or 2005). This agreement has again resulted in a profound demographic change in the European countries, resulting in what has also been called ‘Islamisation’. For Breivik, taking this as a cue, European culture was under attack from Islamists and their unwitting allies, the ‘cultural marxists and mulitculturalists’, and he claimed his actions were justifiable as pre-emptive attacks in a civil war.