ANDERS BREIVIK AND ANDREW BOLT: THE SWORD AND THE PEN OF KINDRED SPIRITS

At his blog today Andrew Bolt tried desperately to spin his way out of being put in the same ideological frame as Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik.

Bolt writes:

You will remember how eager were many on the Left to use the horrific crimes of Anders Behring Breivik to smear mainstream conservatives.

He then goes on to quote an ABC article as though it was the ABC that was trying to smear ‘mainstream conservatives’. But what the ABC piece actually said was:

Accused Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik praised four Australian conservative leaders - including former Prime Minister John Howard - in his 1,500-page manifesto.
and:

In a manifesto posted online under the Anglicised pseudonym Andrew Berwick, the killer quoted Mr Howard, former treasurer Peter Costello, Catholic Cardinal George Pell and conservative writer and historian Keith Windschuttle.

It wasn’t the ABC smearing ‘mainstream conservatives’, the ABC was merely quoting Breivik himself. What Bolt has actually attempted to do is smear the ABC.

There should be no misunderstanding here – Bolt has no choice but to condemn Breivik for what he has done, but beneath the surface of that condemnation lurks the real Bolt who has exactly the same nationalistic and Islamophobic aspirations as Breivik. But where Breivik had a gun, Bolt has a weapon far more dangerous - he has access to the mainstream media with which to peddle those aspirations.

Bolt is peddling as hard as he can to put ideological distance between himself and Breivik but the more he tries, the more he places himself in the same pigeon-hole.