Anders Breivik influenced by anti-Muslim bloggers

Story from The Takeaway. Listen to audio above for full report.

Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian charged with carrying out a mass killing last week in his home country, told his lawyer he was saving Norway from Muslim domination. Breivik is an anti-Muslim extremist, and it has become clear that he was heavily influenced by American bloggers who share his fears about the threat of Muslim immigrants on Western culture.

Pam Geller is one of those bloggers — she was quoted in Breivik’ 1500-page manifesto. On her blog, Atlas Shrugs, Geller writes about the threat of Islam in America. When contacted by The Takeaway about being cited by Breivik, she responded by calling him a “lone psychopath, evil.”

“I was mentioned once,” Geller added. “And a couple of my news stories were cited in a footnote in a 1500-page document, and somehow I’m the story? And you don’t see an agenda here?”

Wajahat Ali is a journalist who is currently researching Islamophobia in America for the Center for American Progress. He told The Takeaway Breivik’s idealogy was inspired, “by what I would call the hateful anti-Muslim writings and opinions of several notorious American Islamaphobes — whom he cites many, many times over again in the memo — who have a history of working together to profit off of the creation and promotion of misinformation, fear and bigotry against Muslims.”

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