Saturday, July 23, 2011

Triple down Andrew

OK, well, who didn't think that Islamic terrorism was probably behind the terrible events in Norway earlier today? I mean, even Geraldine Doogue on Radio National this morning opined that it appeared to be an attack that would have had to involve several people and much care in planning, and (I think) there was mention of the Mohammed cartoon controversy.

So, I can't really say Andrew Bolt can be blamed for suspecting the same.

But when it turns out that it wasn't Muslim terrorism, why do this? It appears to be one of the strangest cases of doubling down on an error that I have ever seen:

UPDATE

In fact:

“Explosives were found on the island,” deputy Oslo police chief Sveining Sponheim told reporters. He said a man detained by police was aged 32 and ”ethnic Norwegian.”

Even so, the history of Islamic violence in Scandinavia suggests Muslim immigration there has been a bad deal for the locals:

It was not immediately known who was behind the bombing, but Norway’s intelligence police agency (PST) said in February that Islamic extremism was a major threat to the country…

... police last year arrested three Muslim men based in Norway suspected of planning an attack using explosives in the Scandinavian country.

And then, Andrew does a triple down on a kinda offensive attempts at point scoring by noting with apparent approval John Hinderaker's very American argument that drives me crazy: to paraphrase, "well, that just goes to show what happens when you don't have enough normal people carrying guns". (Particularly when they are in swimmers on an island enjoying the sunshine, or at an Australian historical site, I suppose.) Hinderaker writes:

Many facts are still unknown, but at this point it appears that a key ingredient in the tragedy was the fact that the killer had the only gun on the island.
I honestly think that this type of argument is anathema for about 95% of Australians, yet Andrew gives it a run.

He's getting worse by the day.

No comments: