[oldembed width="320" height="240" src="https://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/flash/pl55.swf" flashvars="config=http://mediamatters.org/embed/cfg3?id=201107260038" resize="1" fid="10"]
Bill O'Reilly has been blaming media bias for portraying the mass murderer from Norway, Anders Breivik a Christian. David wrote a great piece yesterday on it with ample justification for the man actually being a Christian. And let's face it: It's not the first time an extreme right wing Christian zealot took matters into their own hands. Anyway, truth is fiction and facts are inconveniences for O'Reilly on this story, which is awfully strange. He continued his denials of said facts and even brought on Queen of the Village, Sally Quinn, to defend his assertions. She pretty much trounced him.
If the tragedy wasn't so terrible I would say that BIllO's claims are absurdly hysterical for their blatant disregard for the facts. After Quinn reads quotes from Anders Breivik's own writings in which he proclaims he's a Christian, Bill O's only real defense was to constantly yell that "Mussolini" was not a Christian too. Huh?
A C&L reader sent over an archived picture of Breivik's Facebook page in which he clearly labels himself as a Christian and a Conservative. Some on the right will never admit the truth on this subject and it looks like Bill O'Reilly is championing their cause.
Salon's Alex Parene has even more details:
Breivik chose to be baptized at age 15. He self-identified as "Christian" on his Facebook page. He thought "Christianity should recombine under the banner of a reconstituted and traditionalist Catholic Church" or, later, under a new (traditionalist) European Church.
Breivik is not an American-style evangelical Christian. He is not a "fundamentalist" in that sense. Though he does identify with American cultural Christian conservatives. And he considers himself to be fighting in the name of "our Christian cultural heritage." He supports a reconstituted Knights Templar devoted to winning a war against Islam in the name of Christianity.
All of this says "Christian terrorist." His goals -- the restoration of a pure Christian world in its "traditional" home -- were analogous to the stated of goals of al-Qaida.
Does he go to church? Does he believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ? Is he a biblical literalist? I have no idea. There's plenty about him that would lead a devout Christian to consider Breivik "not a 'real' Christian." Here's the thing about that: The same is true of all self-proclaimed Muslims who commit acts of terrorism.
Terry Krepel at Media Matters has more.
