Okay, now let’s summarize what we know about Breivik’s money trail, based not on what he says in his diary but on what little investigative reporting has been done on the matter. It boils down to this: His tax records show a small income in 2007 – the year all that money miraculously appeared in his bank account – and a bit more in 2008. He had no reported income in 2006 and 2009. Prior to that, there is no evidence of his “first million” anywhere to be seen.
While his diary emphasizes that he saved every penny to finance his terrorist operation, there had to be some income coming in from somewhere. And then there’s that mysterious $115,000 – did he rob a bank? Or did he have a benefactor? Here is where Breivik’s money trail simply … trails off.
The idea that Breivik acted alone is absurd: he had to have help, just on logistical matters, never mind the financial side of such an operation. Furthermore, it’s hard – nay, impossible – to believe he kept the secret to himself for nine years. In order to escape detection, and have the means to carry off such a complicated operation, Breivik must have had some organized assistance – and not from amateurs, by any means. At this point, we don’t know from whom.
However, we can see in the reaction to his murderous assault a kind of support network that has sprung up, if not to defend him personally then to defend his motivations and the ethos from which his hatred welled up. As I have said in my other columns on this subject, the so-called counter-jihadist milieu – whose writings were copiously cited in the online manifesto – provided the theoretical basis for Breivik’s horrific actions. The “anti-jihadist” pro-Israel blogosphere played an important role in reinforcing and elaborating Breivik’s crazed worldview, and there is even some frightening evidence that they played more of an activist role than that.
In a post dated June 24, 2007, Pamela Geller, a leading light of the counter-jihadi movement, posted the following on her web site:
“I am running an email I received from an Atlas reader in Norway. It is devastating in its matter-of-factness.
