Cross-posted from Right Web.

The mass killings in Norway have caused recriminations on both sides of the U.S. ideological divide. Some observers have highlighted Anders Behring Breivik’s keen interest in American anti-Muslim bloggers like Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, and Andrew McCarthy. These writers and other purveyors of anti-Muslim paranoia are scrambling to deny or minimize their culpability. Most notably, the Rupert Murdoch papers in Britain have insisted on labeling Breivik a neo-Nazi, in spite of his avowed identification with the militarist Israeli right.

But the blame game seriously misses the point. There is no denying that Breivik’s manifesto and beliefs are rooted in a distinctly post-9/11 ideology of anti-Islamism. This relatively new ideology of anti-Islamism reveals much about the deeper pathologies in current U.S. politics.

Critics have also lambasted efforts by some U.S. media outlets to label Breivik a “Christian fundamentalist.” This is a vitally important point to understanding the larger pathology of anti-Islamism. Whereas those who traditionally speak of a “clash of civilizations” refer to a struggle between the “Judeo-Christian West” and “Islam,” the anti-Islamism circulating through the “West” is neither historically Jewish nor Christian. Rather, it is best understood as what the neocon propagandist David Gelernter calls “Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion,” with the other three being Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism—pointedly excluding Islam.

Read the rest at Right Web.