They Called a War, and Someone Came: The communicative politics of Breivik’s ideoscape

This article examines the intensely mediated debate on the relationship between ideological affinity and political implication that followed the documenting of the ‘citational ecology’ of Breivik’s 2083 compendium. Focusing on the recurring trope of war in counter-jihad blog posts and mainstream media comment, it argues that the invocation of ‘war’ is important beyond limiting debates on incitement and ‘moral responsibility’. Following Butler (2009), it examines this ‘frame of war’ and its poetics as the condition of counter-jihad networks and as the licence for mainstream polemics on the ‘failed experiment’ of multiculturalism.