The License to Hate: Peder Jensen's Fascist Rhetoric in Anders Breivik's Manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence

Abstract

This article examines the writings of one of the key voices who influenced Anders Breivik: Peder Jensen. Writing under the pen name Fjordman, Jensen has developed a range of writings, some of which have come to operate at the interface between Islamophobic populism and contemporary fascist terrorism. To explore this interface, this article analyzes the various writings by Jensen/Fjordman that Breivik himself reproduced in his manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence. It concludes that, while not directly instructing Breivik to carry out an act of terrorism, there is nevertheless a looser connection between Jensen's rhetoric, which points toward violent action, and the behavior of others such as Breivik. It explores this link through the lens of “license,” a methodology developed by Aristotle Kallis. This approach allows the analysis to highlight that, beneath a veneer of more moderate anti-Muslim populism, the discourse Peder Jensen has written under the pen name Fjordman evokes many of the tropes of fascism, including coded endorsement of ethnic nationalism, misogyny, conspiracy theories, a concern with profound cultural decadence, and a palingenetic language that idealizes revolution coming about through war.