The Guardian reports:

The fact that Breivik chose the internet to disseminate his ideology is important. His journey to terrorism was forged within a network of blogs where violence is glorified and multiculturalism despised, along with those who embrace it.

One expert in European rightwing extremism, Andrea Mammone of Kingston University London, says the content of Breivik’s hate was not new, only the manner in which it was fostered.

“The internet is extremely effective at formulating extremist ideals; killing for him was not so strange, it was about killing people who were not like him, who shared different values. He considered himself a new type of elite warrior.”

A bleak scenario is that Breivik – one of thousands who regularly visit such sites – is merely the debutant warrior from a generation that is the first to witness the sociological upheaval caused by the arrival of mass immigration into Scandinavia’s tightly knit, homogeneous communities. Equally crucially, it is the first generation that is internet-savvy.

Matthew Goodwin, rightwing extremism expert at the University of Nottingham, adds that Breivik was radicalised by the same online process as many of the jihadists he so loathed.