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26 july 2011, the chill from norway

I somehow omitted norway in my recent sweep of europe's fringe (26 march 2011, let's ignore the rise of the right), which now looks a big miss after anders' breivik's horrific attacks. They were all the more horrendous for me as I spent many of my childhood summers at such youth camps. Though the incident represents one man's madness and depravity, his connections with the far right, including the english defence league it does again suggest that such movements have a vile and violent tail and provide succour and morale support. No need to look to extremists though for easy scapegoating: the front page of the sun, now britain's best-selling newspaper, ran with the utterly presumptuous headline of "al quaeda massacre", instinctively fingering muslims, exactly the killer's currency. Again, we instinctively reach for the bogeyman - the new jews. Almost as instinctively we go a little further down the security axis, at the cost of liberty (12 jan 2010). On the very same day as the massacre, the uk government blurred its firm commitment to destroy the dna currently stored of those swabbed but later found to be entirely innocent. Though we are who we are, that's an ever-changing state.