Breivik

They say he acted alone for a Europe white and free
A sick and twisted man from an otherwise sane society
The image of Aryan blond, almost iridescent
With a manifesto quoting from the Crusades to the present
But he stood on many shoulders, of this we can be sure
A millenia of xenophobes who slaughter to be pure
Since before the First Crusade, when a mighty Christian band
Hacked and stabbed and burned their way to the Holy Land

They say he acted alone but in his mind he was another
Of those who came before him, his mighty Christian brothers
Who rode, covered in armor, and served their masters well
They vowed to chastity, they vowed to kill the infidel
They marauded west and east in the name of Christendom
They killed Jews, pagans, Muslims, fellow Christians by the thousand
In the name of Jesus, from the Jordan to the Rhine
The red cross on their chest plates, their terrifying sign

In the shadow of the Knights Templar

They say he acted alone, no one said this of the Pope
Whose victims were left burning or hanging from a rope
The Lord’s own Inquisition for six centuries
The ethnic cleansing of a continent, a Christian tyranny
European Jews and European Muslims
Fled the Christian Caliphate to be protected by the Sultan
For five hundred years they prospered beneath the Turkish sky
For those left behind: convert or die

In the shadow of the Knights Templar

They say he acted alone but he’s living in a country
Where the xenophobic right is the second-biggest party
And he’s living on a continent that is over-run
With Prime Ministers who tell us multiculturalism is done
They talk of their traditions, they swell with Christian pride
For their civilization built on holocaust and genocide
Anders Breivik pulled the trigger but he didn’t write the play
That script was being written a thousand years ago today

In the shadow of the Knights Templar

They say he acted alone and they want us to believe
That moderating rhetoric is the best we can achieve
but moderating rhetoric will bring us nowhere near
To the understanding that the problem is right here
European empires, European greed
European Christians, poison European seeds
European racists running European states
European tolerance for European hate

In the shadow of the Knights Templar

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“Breivik” originally appeared on the CD, Meanwhile In Afghanistan, in 2012.

The mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, killed 77 people in Oslo and on the nearby island of Utoya on July 22nd, 2011. The Norwegian Prime Minister at the time said he acted alone. Which he did, evidently. But in other ways, including in terms of the way he himself identifies himself in a political-historical context, Breivik is part of a very old European tradition of racism and xenophobia. The medieval organization he especially identifies with, the Knights Templar, were sort of the shock troops of the Crusades. After the hordes of European Christian rapists and murderers went home to their families in France, England, etc., the Knights Templar were the ones who did their best to hold onto the geographical gains of the Crusaders. More often, that aspect of their legacy is downplayed, and the fact that they also represented an old, primitive version of what would later become the banking system, is emphasized.