History’s Darkest Echo: When Mass Murderers and Presidents Think Alike

Trump’s use of a terrorist’s mantra should terrify us all...

The 32-year-old Norwegian considered himself a deep thinker and a big fan of the rightwing and Russian propaganda which argued western civilization was rotting from within because of multiculturalism, empowered women, racial/religious minorities, and liberalism. Putting pen to paper, he wrote:

“When I first started blogging I was concerned with how we could ‘fix the system.’ I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that the system cannot be fixed, and perhaps shouldn’t be fixed. Not only does it have too many enemies, it also has too many internal contradictions.

“If we define the ‘system’ as mass immigration from alien cultures, globalism, multiculturalism and suppression of free speech in the name of ‘tolerance,’ then this is going to collapse. It’s inevitable.

“The goal of Western survivalists — and that’s what we are — should not be to ‘fix the system,’ but to be mentally and physically prepared for its collapse, and to develop coherent answers to what went wrong and prepare to implement the necessary remedies when the time comes.

“We need to seize the window of opportunity, and in order to do so, we need to define clearly what we want to achieve.”

After writing over 1500 pages describing how it’s the essential duty of every white man in the world to marginalize or even kill as many non-white non-Christians as possible, Anders Breivik set off a bomb in Oslo’s Government Quarter, killing eight people.

He then drove to Utøya, an island in Tyrifjorden where the Norwegian Social Democratic party’s youth organization, the Workers’ Youth League (AUF), held their summer camp. There he used a semiautomatic rifle to kill another sixty-nine people, most in their teens or early twenties. He shot and wounded another 41 mostly young people, leaving many with life-changing injuries.

The epigraph to the paragraphs cited above was the polestar of Breivik’s philosophy, one he’d learned from studying the writings and lives of his heroes: Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte. He opened the chapter with it at the top of the page, apart from all the other text:

“He who saves his country, violates no law.”

The phrase was most recently quoted three weeks ago — on January 24, 2024 — by El Salvador’s notoriously violent and lawbreaking President Nayib Bukele, who also tweeted: “He who saves his country violates no law.”

Napoleon overthrew the Directory in 1799, naming himself as First Consul, and then declared himself Emperor in 1804 with those same words: “Celui qui sauve sa patrie ne viole aucune loi.”

Emperors like Napoleon and dictators like Bukele don’t bother with trivial details like obeying the law. They rule by decree. Write it down, put your signature on it, and boom, it’s now the law of the land.

That was also Breivik’s hope for the Scandinavian countries: throw off the yoke of the “globalist” EU and embrace a racist strongman to lead the continent into an era of whites-only paradise. Replace “the system” of democracy with a white supremacist Christo-fascist oligarchy.

Which is why it’s so troubling that Trump tweeted the same Napoleonic phrase that Breivik made famous. The phrase every white supremacist has memorized, along with the fourteen words and the number 88 as code for “Heil Hitler.”

It would be a mistake at this point to think that when Trump quotes people like Breivik he’s just trolling us: People are now dying all over the world because a half-billion dollars’ worth of USAID food is rotting in storage; millions have lost access to AIDS drugs that were keeping them alive; children in cancer drug trials have been cut off from lifesaving medication; and federal workers who thought Civil Service would protect them are now on the verge of homelessness.

He means it. And for three weeks he’s been acting on his words, largely with impunity.

So long as he’s “saving the country,” he argues, he’s “violating no law.” It’s why he’s defying court orders right now to eject Musk’s teenage hackers from the Treasury Department or restart NIH and USAID funding.

And, truth be told, six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court have already ratified the White House’s new American dictator doctrine with the Trump v US decision last July, saying that if the president breaks the law while executing “official acts,” he’s immune from criminal prosecution for the crime.

He just gets away with it. As long as he’s saving the country, he violates no law. Don’t even bother going after him, the Republicans on the Supreme Court said; it simply won’t succeed.

It’s probably why Trump is now talking about running for a third term — perhaps even pulling a Putin and running for VP with a figurehead for president — because, like most dictators throughout history, he knows that the minute he’s no longer in power he’ll be facing prison.

This declaration by Trump was no passing joke or meme. He posted it both on Truth Social and on Xitter.

He wants us all to see it.

To hear it.

To know that he means it.

He’s shoving it in our faces. Pounding it out on the keyboard. Declaring it to the world. Quoting Anders Breivik.

And perhaps not just on his own behalf. Kyle Clark, a reporter for 9News Denver, believes it’s a shout-out to the armed insurrectionists Trump recently pardoned:

“As a journalist who covers extremism at the local level, I think it’s a mistake to view Trump’s Napoleonic statement as solely about presidential power.

“Consider if it’s interpreted as a wink and a nod for any extremist to act outside the law to ‘save’ the country as they see fit.”

Time to start killing liberals? Harassing queer people? Burning down the homes of undocumented immigrants?

After all, the rightwing gangs in Russia and Hungary enthusiastically do all these things with the tacit approval of Putin and Orbán.

And now Trump is doubling down; yesterday he retweeted a rightwinger’s message that he could defy the courts if he chose to because he is “saving the country.”

And his fellow billionaire, Elon Musk, is burning through our federal government like a California wildfire.

TS Eliot was wrong: sometimes the world does end with a bang rather than a whimper…

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