WASHINGTON, July 23, 2011 (AFP) - The right-wing, anti-government mindset attributed to the Norwegian rampage suspect has observers recalling US extremist Timothy McVeigh, behind the devastating Oklahoma City bombing.
Debris covers the area outside a building in the centre of Oslo (Pic: AP)
McVeigh, then just 26, blew up a van he had packed with explosives and parked outside a large federal building in the Oklahoman state capital, on April 19, 1995.
The blast killed 168 people, including 19 children and babies, injured more than 800, in the deadliest ever domestic attack in US history, and brought into sharp focus the threat of homegrown terrorism.
Arrested shortly afterwards, McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran, was found to have been a figure in neo-Nazi groups and even claimed to have acted for the "common good" of Americans, as he railed against what he thought was the dictatorship of the federal government.
After six years he was executed on June 11, 2001, but while on death row, McVeigh spoke openly of his part in the bombing and the anti-government hatred that motivated him.
In the case of the murderous rampage in Norway that has killed at least 91 people and shocked the normally peaceful northern European nation, a portrait of the lone attacker has emerged as a "Christian fundamentalist," and links have been made with right-groups.
Widely named by local media as Anders Behring Breivik, he identifies himself as "ethnically Norwegian," and has posted writings at length on his dismay with the Norwegian government and the ruling liberal political party.
On his Facebook page -- since deleted -- Breivik also said he was a director of an organic farming business, which gave him access to nitrate chemicals apparently used in the Oslo explosion that kicked off Norway's own worst ever homegrown attack on Friday.
An agricultural firm has indicated Breivik purchased some six tons of chemical fertilizer in early May.
The Oklahoma City bombing in the United States drew wide attention and even acclaim from some far-right militias.
"Timothy McVeigh is still seen by some groups in the US as a hero," said Matthew Goodwin, politics lecturer at the University of Nottingham in central England.
"Whether this attack (in Norway) will inspire copycat attacks itself remains to be seen. There is certainly the potential for it."
According to data compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in the United States, the number of dedicated militias with a racist, extremist agenda has increased 60 percent since 2000, from 602 then to over 1,000 recorded last year.
The SPLC estimated in 2009 that such movements were further emboldened with the election of the first black president, Barack Obama in 2008.
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