Norwegian massacre was teachers' fault

Rupert Murdoch may have taken a hit, but there's clearly still a long long way to go. An article republished in the Dominion Post last week stated that the orgins of Anders Breivik were at primary school.More to the point, it all began for him, according to the article, when he was forced to learn to knit.

Now, presumably the article got this information from Breivik's rambling manifesto - because nobody else has been reported as saying it all began because poor little Anders was forced to knit.

But there it was - reported as fact. In school, he had some classes where all students learnt to knit - and from then on he knew something was wrong with society.

So his criminality had nothing to do with that fact that he was a bit of an addict to violent video games, his father severed all contact when he was age 16, or the fact that he'd been hanging out in recent years with right-wing fruitloops.

No, it was those damn teachers.

Two points stand out here - first the right's pathological and irrational hatred of teachers. I recently read another stand-out example in Fritz Reck's book, The Diary of a Man in Despair (fabulous by the way) - Reck was a conservative, old-school German caught up in Nazi Germany. He wrote this secret diary before being shipped off to a concentration camp and shot.

He was a right-winger but he hated Hitler - and despised his fellow right-wingers who'd jumped on Hitler's bandwagon. And he was pathological about teachers - it's all the teachers' fault! Then he actually meets a teacher - and blow me down, if he isn't a thoroughly decent chap who hates Hitler too (you have to remember that these right-wingers have usually gone to private schools and sent their kids there, and those teachers are OK).

The second point is the way media 'balances' its reporting by running extremist views - well mainly from the right, but with the occasional token piece by Nicky Hager and Dave Armstrong, I'm sure the Dompost congratulates itself on its 'balance'.

So, there have been some good articles subsequently on the Norwegian massacre in the Dompost  - but does that justify publishing such pernicious and destructive nonsense as that a knitting class was the beginning of Anders' problems (no mention in that article that as a child he was fond of killing  ants and was disliked by his neighbours for urinating in their basements).

There is a way to go yet.