Tortured minds and tortured scribbles and a dark foreboding ...

(Above: cartoon found accompanying Daniel Pipes Equates Keith Ellison to Hitler).

... because he didn't feel like going home to an empty apartment on his birthday, and it really was extremely sudden, the way it struck him that, good heavens, he understood nothing, nothing at all about anything, for Christ's sake, nothing at all about the world, which was a most terrifying realization, he said, especially in the way it came to him in all its banality, vulgarity, at a sickeningly ridiculous level, but this was the point, he said, the way that he, at the age of forty-four, had become aware of how utterly stupid he seemed to himself, how empty, how utterly blockheaded he had been in his understanding of the world these last forty-four years, for, as he realized by the river, he had not only misunderstood it, but had not understood anything about anything, the worst part being that for forty-four years he thought he had understood it, while in reality he had failed to do so, and this in fact was the worst thing of all that night of his birthday when he sat alone by the river, the worst because the fact that he now realized that he had not understood it did not mean that he did understand it now, because being aware of his lack of knowledge was not in itself some form of knowledge for which an older one could be traded in, but one that presented itself as a terrifying puzzle the moment he thought about the world, as he most furiously did that evening, all but torturing himself in an effort to understand it and failing, because the puzzle seemed ever more complex and he had begun to feel that this world puzzle that he was so desperate to understand, that he was torturing himself to understand, was really the puzzle of himself and the world at once, that they were in effect one and the same thing, which was the conclusion he had so far reached, and he had not yet given up on it, when, after a couple of days, he noticed there was something the matter with his head. László Krasznahorkai, War and War

The point being, that if ever you're looking for a glib, solipsistic insight into the heart of darkness in Hungary (or perhaps Berlin, where Krasznhorkai has lived since 2007), then this long quote is as good as any.

That's if you want existential bleakness and a dark foreboding.

Of course you could present dozens of other names - from Dostoevsky for Russia through Nietzsche for Germany to Ingmar Bergman for Sweden.

Then you'd be right up there with, and making as much sense as, David Wilson, trotted out in the Daily Terror and The Punch, to make sense of events in Norway in A glimpse into Scandinavia's heart of darkness.

Scandinavia has extremely low overall rates of crime and murder compared with most advanced countries in the Western world. Yet it is a fundamental paradox of Scandinavia that, for all the region’s stability and order, there are deep-seated anxieties about crime and social disintegration. Beneath the tranquil surface lurks a dark spirit of foreboding.

That is why there is such an appetite in Scandinavia for the violent crime-fiction genre that conveys this atmosphere of menace, as demonstrated by the smash-hit Danish TV series The Killing or the novels of Stieg Larsson, such as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Norway has its own acclaimed writer of bestselling thrillers, Jo Nesbo.

His fictional blond, blue-eyed detective Harry Hole specialises in catching spree killers.

Uh huh. Well it makes for good atmospheric scribbling, while at the same time being utterly meaningless, as if somehow an appetite in Scandinavia for violent crime-ficiton is exceptional, as if Stieg Larsson hasn't become an international best-seller (even in places where beneath a turbulent surface lurks a dark spirit of foreboding). As if somehow there isn't a market for Agatha Christie, or Midsomer Murders or Cliff Hardy, and as if the United States hadn't cornered the market in serial and spree killers in books, movies, on television and in reality decades ago ...

Alternatively, if you've got little by way of intelligent thought to offer, perhaps the best alternative is to say nothing.

Meanwhile, over at The Australian, the anonymous editorialist does his or her best to grapple with the problem:

Hours before his attacks, Breivik posted a 1500-word manifesto on the internet calling for a Christian civil war to defend Europe against Muslim domination, for Europe to rise up in a modern version of the Crusades against Islamic totalitarianism. It is lunatic stuff - as lunatic as the diatribes we get from extremist jihadist groups.

Uh huh. Yet The Australian has routinely been a home for the writings of the likes of Daniel Pipes, as with Size of Islamist Menace (10 per cent to 15 per cent suggests that Islamists number about 150 million out of a billion-plus Muslims, more than all the fascists and communists who ever lived), Blind to the Islamist threat in the Middle East, (How well will the former Muslim inhabiting the White House, so adamant about "mutual respect" in US relations with Muslims, protect Western interests against this threat?), Islamists impose sharia by stealth (...fascists never developed a 2.0 version, nor did communists; only Islamists have done so. Because it threatens our values and our civilisation, this evolution represents perhaps an aspect of their movement no less frightening than their brutality), and so on and so forth and etc.

If you take the time to read Daniel Pipes in his home lair, you'll be surprised to discover that the February 2009 Victorian bush fires were most likely a part of an Islamist attack on Australia (Bushfire Jihad?).

These insights seem to have entirely escaped the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission (final report link here), and reports about people charged with arson in Victoria also failed to discover militant Islamics on a Jihad.

So back to the anonymous editorialist in The Australian:

In this environment, the extremist lunacy that apparently fuelled Breivik's rampage has gained ground, leading him to write his sickening tirade about Crusades and Knights Templar to save Europe from Islamic totalitarianism. It was typical of the irrationality that is motivating extremist groups across Europe and which must be dealt with effectively if further carnage is to be avoided.

Indeed.

Meanwhile, the news that Anders Behgring Breivik read Daniel Pipes has Mr. Pipes doing a little dance in Terrorists Read Me, handily updated to include Breivik amongst his evil readers.

Breivik's manifesto, a 1,518-page compendium in English titled 2083 – A Declaration of European Independence, signed with an Anglicized version of his name, Andrew Berwick, and posted on the White supremacist website Stormfront.org, has come to light. I find myself quoted and cited many times. In most cases, this occurs in the context of essays written by Breivik's anonymous countryman, Fjordman. In a couple of cases, Breivik quotes me directly, once about Syria and once about Muslims in Europe. On one occasion he discusses me directly, in the context of arguing that "it is imperative that the European Jewish community without delay take a stance on the ongoing Islamisation."

Uh huh. Who'd of thought?

But if you really want to go off with the pixies, why not try Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs, which you can find as a favoured, linked blog on the Australian Conservative website, and her defensive Murderer's Manifesto imagined cautious alliance with Jihadists: "We Both Share One Common Goal", and LA Lies.

Never mind. You could just perhaps restrict your reading to The Australian, and to Chris Kenny's righteously indignant Hussain's views on bin Laden disturbing and dangerous.

Hussain insults us all by defining the age of terror not through this insidious evil and its consequences but through a list of anti-American grievances.

This is a moral backflip that instantaneously converts the terror campaign from being a savage and unprovoked attack against western people, their supporters and their values into a tale of western wrong-doings fomenting resentment and violence.

What is the point of these words if not an attempt to provide excuses for terrorism?

Indeed. Nothing like a balanced approach.

Back to the anon edit:

Emerging are details of a conspiracy that, if only in his tortured mind, goes to the very heart of much foment being seen in parts of Europe over the perceived threat to local cultural and patriotic values posed by multiculturalism that challenges national identity.

Only in his tortured mind?

Oh dear. Let's hope he hasn't read the anonymous editorialist's own words in Editorial: The veiled conceit of multiculturalism (a misinformed tolerance finally hits its limits in Britain), Editorial: Rising nationalism is a natural response (there is a fine balance to promoting tolerance), and so on and so forth.

What's it all mean? Well of course we must blame the writers, the novelists, those conjurors who summon up the dark side of deep foreboding, but never blame the journalists and commentators writing for the newspapers, who only deliver the facts ma'am, just the facts (and never mind the ferment of opinion-making and muck-raking).

But what's the bet that after the innocent dead are buried, in due course the same hysteria and irrationality will return to the commentariat and the scribblers, and the rabid fundamentalists and their slick fellow travellers will maintain their course as they argue over the big and little ends of the egg-cutting procedure?

As for the pond, we're with Krasznahorkai:

... because being aware of his lack of knowledge was not in itself some form of knowledge for which an older one could be traded in, but one that presented itself as a terrifying puzzle the moment he thought about the world, as he most furiously did that evening, all but torturing himself in an effort to understand it and failing, because the puzzle seemed ever more complex and he had begun to feel that this world puzzle that he was so desperate to understand, that he was torturing himself to understand, was really the puzzle of himself and the world at once ...

(Below: and a cartoon to lighten the existential mood).