Longreads

At 9:31pm on 16 October 2008 a message appeared on the virulently anti-Muslim website Gates of Vienna. Under the user name Year2183, a reference to a manifesto he was writing, Anders Behring Breivik appears exasperated that his fellow far-right bloggers are too accommodating to Europe's Muslims. Responding to Fjordman, the anonymous Norwegian "counterjihad" blogger, Breivik insists that only the forced deportation of Muslims will suffice. His stance, he realises, has become too extreme even for the anti-multicultural blogosphere.

The crucial blow came as Muammar Gaddafi and much of the world looked the wrong way. The Libyan revolutionaries who swept out of the western mountains and into Tripoli, turfing a hated tyrant…