Anders Breivik is on trial for the mass-killing of 77 people last summer in Norway, a crime that was explicitly motivated by an intense hatred for Western European political correctness, multiculturalism, and the “Islamification” of Europe.

Breivik killed eight with a bomb in Oslo and proceeded to shoot 69 more at a left-leaning political youth camp on the island of Utoya. Given the magnitude of the violence, it’s tempting to dismiss the acts as those of an insane lone-wolf, driven by alienation from society and not by ideology.

So the media coverage of Anders Breivik’s trial has focused on the killer’s gruesome account of the day of the killings and speculation about his mental state, largely leaving aside the question of his motivation.

When the media does venture into the realm of explanation, it often depicts Breivik as an ideological loon, dismissing his beliefs by playing up his alleged relationships with shadowy groups like the Knight’s Templar and the Freemasons.

One of the most unsettling developments in the Breivik trial so far has been the reemergence of the “video-games-as-cause-of-violence” hypothesis. Breivik’s admissions that he used Call of Duty some sort of training tool and World of Warcraft as a cover while developing his plans have gotten the old Columbine conspiracy train rolling again.

The link between  video games and violence is tenuous at best, of course. In this case though, it’s little more than a childish oversimplification. It’s an attempt to distance ourselves from the fact that Anders Breivik is a terrorist whose ideology bears an uncomfortable similarity to our own Western beliefs.

To find his true motivation, we need look no further than his own writings.

Breivik’s 1,500-page “compendium” called 2083: A European Declaration of Independence is all the explanation anybody should need for last year’s murders. It is an extensive piece attributing the apparent decay of Western Europe to a modern Muslim invasion brought on by a culture obsessed with being politically correct and ethnically tolerant. It is intensely nationalistic and intensely traditionalist.

“I’ve spent a total of 9 years of my life working on this project,” Breivik says in 2083.  “The first five years were spent studying and creating a financial base, and the last three years was spent working full time with research, compilation and writing.”

Anders Breivik was a completely deranged man, but a thoroughly rational actor. We pretend otherwise – “He was a lone wolf!”, “He’s crazy!” – because he was acting on behalf of an ideology that is shamefully similar to that held by many Americans and Europeans.

Chapter 1 in 2083 explains, in Breivik’s assumption, the root causes of Europe’s decay: political correctness, multiculturalism, feminism, homosexuality…

Read his plea for a return of the 1950s and you’ll be struck by the familiarity to the longings of American social conservatives.

Most Europeans look back on the 1950s as a good time. Our homes were safe, to the point where many people did not bother to lock their doors. Public schools were generally excellent, and their problems were things like talking in class and running in the halls. Most men treated women like ladies, and most ladies devoted their time and effort to making good homes, rearing their children well and helping their communities through volunteer work. Children grew up in two–parent households, and the mother was there to meet the child when he came home from school. Entertainment was something the whole family could enjoy.

What happened? If a man of the 1950s were suddenly introduced into Western Europe in the 2000s, he would hardly recognise it as the same country. He would be in immediate danger of getting mugged, carjacked or worse, because he would not have learned to live in constant fear. He would not know that he shouldn’t go into certain parts of the city, that his car must not only be locked but equipped with an alarm, that he dare not go to sleep at night without locking the windows and bolting the doors – and setting the electronic security system.

If he brought his family with him, he and his wife would probably cheerfully pack their children off to the nearest public school. When the children came home in the afternoon and told them they had to go through a metal detector to get in the building, had been given some funny white powder by another kid and learned that homosexuality is normal and good, the parents would be uncomprehending.

In the office, the man might light up a cigarette, drop a reference to the “little lady,” and say he was happy to see the firm employing some coloured folks in important positions. Any of those acts would earn a swift reprimand, and together they might get him fired.

When she went into the city to shop, the wife would put on a nice suit, hat, and possibly gloves. She would not understand why people stared, and mocked. And when the whole family sat down after dinner and turned on the television, they would not understand how pornography from some sleazy, blank-fronted “Adults Only” kiosk had gotten on their set.

Were they able, our 1950s family would head back to the 1950s as fast as they could, with a gripping horror story to tell. Their story would be of a nation that had decayed and degenerated at a fantastic pace, moving in less than a half a century from the greatest countries on earth to Third World nations, overrun by crime, noise, drugs and dirt. The fall of Rome was graceful by comparison.

What a nutcase.