The notorious anti-Islam hater Robert Spencer was named by the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik as an intellectual influence on his thinking. The public need to know if Robert Spencer’s ideology is, for some, a conveyor belt to terrorism.

From today’s Guardian:

The American anti-Muslim agitator Robert Spencer was namechecked when Breivik listed his intellectual influences on Dokument.no, along with a pseudonymous Norwegian who calls himself Fjordman and the equally pseudonymous Bat Ye’or, who invented the Eurabia conspiracy. Spencer, along with his sidekick, Pamela Geller, was responsible for the campaign against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”.

Obviously these people cannot be held responsible for the use to which their ideas were put. No matter how deranged a killer’s ideas, he still needs a deranged personality to put them into action. But anyone tempted to take them seriously should consider what were almost Breivik’s last words on Document.no: “For the last three years I have been working full time on a cultural conservative work which will help to develop and market these political ideas.”

That “cultural conservative work” was the PDF he mailed out as he set off on his murder spree.

Loonwatch.com comments:

When you preach bigotry and fear on a daily basis, don’t be surprised when one of your followers takes the next logical step.  But Robert Spencer has a reason to feign surprise and indignation over what his hatred has incited, as the link between his hate-writing and this act of terrorism becomes clear:  Richard Silverstein notes that the right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik cited Robert Spencer 46 times in his manifesto.  He was clearly quite the fan.  This certainly seems to be right-wing anti-Muslim terrorism inspired by the king of Islamophobia himself, Robert Spencer.