Careless Talk Costs Lives

Right-wing Media commentators like Melanie Phillips (far right) and Glenn Beck (far left) provide the pseudo-intellectual background to the conflict-centred worldviews of men like Anders Breivik and Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh.

In the wake of the terrorist atrocities in Norway, a timely analysis of extreme rightwing networks and the dangerous overlap between the rhetoric of populist politicians and media pundits and the violence of men like Anders Breveik and Timothy McVeigh. The writings of journalist Melanie Phillips were cited in Breivik's manifesto, while Glen Beck constructs conspiracies and raves about insidious threats to the USA on his TV and radio programmes - setting the scene for people like Breivik and Timothy McVeigh to to develop their ideas of conflict with Islam and those "traitors" who fail to agree with their analysis. Whilst not directly or personally responsible for violence, their journalism is sloppy, ignores facts that contradict their wild assertions and lends, however slightly, a sort of pseudo-intellectual succour to such men as they develop their atrocious response to their apparently shared worldviews.