Thomas Hegghammer: The Rise of the Macro-Nationalists

Thomas Hegghammer is a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment in Oslo and the co-author of “Al-Qaida in Its Own Words.”

AT first glance, the 1,500-page manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the man accused of the terrorist attacks in Oslo, appears to be a fairly standard ideological treatise of the far right. The document, which Mr. Breivik posted online on July 22 just hours before the attacks and which he titled “2083 — A European Declaration of Independence,” evokes several of the movement’s central themes and cites numerous right-wing ideologues.

On closer inspection, however, Mr. Breivik’s worldview does not fit squarely into any of the established categories of right-wing ideology, like white supremacism, ultranationalism or Christian fundamentalism. Rather, it reveals a new doctrine of civilizational war that represents the closest thing yet to a Christian version of Al Qaeda....

Indeed, the more belligerent part of Mr. Breivik’s ideology has less in common with counterjihad than with its archenemy, Al Qaeda. Both Mr. Breivik and Al Qaeda see themselves as engaged in a civilizational war between Islam and the West that extends back to the Crusades. Both fight on behalf of transnational entities: the “ummah” — or “community” of all Muslims — in the case of Al Qaeda, and Europe in the case of Mr. Breivik. Both frame their struggle as defensive wars of survival. Both hate their respective governments for collaborating with the outside enemy. Both use the language of martyrdom (Mr. Breivik calls his attack a “martyrdom operation”). Both call themselves knights, and espouse medieval ideals of chivalry. Both lament the erosion of patriarchy and the emancipation of women.

Of course, these similarities should not be taken to mean that Mr. Breivik is inspired by or emulates Al Qaeda. Rather, they suggest that Mr. Breivik and Al Qaeda are manifestations of the same generic ideological phenomenon: “macro-nationalism,” a variant of nationalism applied to clusters of nation-states held together by a notion of shared identity, like “the West” or the “ummah.”...