Inside Higher Ed has a brief article up today noting that the Norwegian right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto attacks “intellectuals such as Antonio Gramsci, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno.” If you go to Inside Higher Ed’s source, Galleycat, you’ll find a longer list, including Wilhelm Reich, which for some reason IHE decided to omit (orgone energy a little too risqué?). And you’ll also find “Breivik’s” laments that Shakespeare and Chaucer aren’t taught any more.
See those scare quotes? It’s fishy, isn’t it, that this guy isn’t rattling on about that Millennium Trilogy but instead about English-language classrooms. That’s because, as seems to be the case for much of Breiviki’s writing, this is lifted from an American right-wing source. This section on the evils of Deconstruction and literary multiculturalism comes from a piece that bills itself as a product of the Free Congress Foundation, one of the original stretches of anti-union populist astro-turf.
But remember: guilt by association and problematic influence only works on the left. People like Breivik are rugged individualists off on their own path, and it’s unfair to link them to the organizations whose documents they cite.
Update: Scott McLemee at InsideHigherEd has written a more thorough examination of Breivik’s “interpretation” of cultural theory. Spoiler: Breivik doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and his writing is laden with paranoid fabrications.
