Condemning the Messenger: Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Anders Breivik, and the Politics of Repression

The Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, led by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, has issued the following statement regarding one of my articles on the Anders Breivik:

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Sunday, July 24 demanded that California State University Board of Trustees President Herbert L. Carter and the entire Board of Trustees condemn Cal State Long Beach Psychology professor Kevin McDonald who praised Norway mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik as a “serious political thinker” and for having “good practical ideas on strategy.” McDonald is an influential university professor and he praised Breivik in a July 23 op-ed piece in the well-read e Zine on-line alternative right newsletter.

The fulsome praise of Breivik a self admitted hater of Muslims, persons of color, and multi-cuturalism, by McDonald is vile and reprehensible and deserves swift condemnation. This gives back door validity and justification to mass murder, but also tacitly encourage others to believe that mass murder is the way to solve social problems.”

The censure of McDonald by the California Board of Trustees will send the strong message that professors at taxpayer supported institutions that spout racially loaded views do not speak for those charged with administering state supported institutions.

Endorsed by:

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable

NAACP National Board Member Willis Edwards

Youth Advocacy Coalition

Black Ministerial Alliance

Los Angeles Civil Rights Assn.

National Action Network West Coast

Black Womens Coalition

See also this KABC-Los Angeles story that includes an interview with me, death threats, etc.

Hutchinson’s claims are ridiculous. Saying that someone is “a serious political thinker” and has “good practical ideas on strategy” is certainly not to endorse his actions. Indeed, the blogs I have written (see here and here) quite clearly show that I do not approve of his actions either as morally legitimate or as tactically well-advised. And it is at least highly doubtful that they will help the cause of keeping Europe European.

One could certainly say that someone like Stalin was intelligent (he wrote on intellectual topics, e.g., his work on the nationality question) and had some good practical ideas for advancing communism without endorsing a great many of the actions of the greatest mass murderer in European history. The practical ideas that I note in the article seem obviously good ideas for building a movement to combat the current cultural hegemony of the multicultural left: (developing culturally conservative media, gaining control of NGOs. and developing youth organizations that will confront the Marxist street thugs). Who could argue with that?

I also thought that Breivik’s comments that I reviewed indicated an intelligent person who was quite familiar with the ideas that are associated with neoconservatism in America—obviously not an ideology that I am sympathetic to. (Indeed, several neocons, e.g., Pamela Geller, are scrambling to dissociate themselves from Breivik.) His book includes numerous articles from neocon websites that at least show that he is well-acquainted with these ideas, and his own expression of these ideas was quite adequate if allowance is made for his English skills. His level of thinking and expressing himself is at least at the level of your usual talking head or op-ed writer.

The problem with people like Hutchinson and the left generally is that they have a problem with any suggestion that a conservative, especially a conservative who is opposed to immigration and multiculturalism, is anything other than a high school dropout with a two-digit IQ. Nothing less than knee jerk repudiation of anything associated with him is required. Their worst nightmare is that the people who oppose the multicultural zeitgeist are honest and intelligent. Breivik may indeed be deranged, but he is certainly not an imbecile.