The Guardian has an article about Oslo terrorist Anders Behring Breivik’s connections to a far right “counter-jihad” blogger named Paul Ray, who goes by the name “Lionheart” online. Ray is denying having anything to do with Breivik, of course, and vocally condemning the attacks: British rightwing blogger denies meeting Norwegian gunman.

A rightwing blogger who is a member of an anti-Muslim group with a similar name to the one Anders Behring Breivik claimed to belong to denies meeting the Norwegian gunman.

Breivik said in his 1500-page manifesto that he attended the founding meeting of the Knights Templar Europe “military order” in London in 2002 where he met a “mentor” who used the pseudonym Richard – after Richard the Lionheart.

Paul Ray, who writes a blog under the name Lionheart, says he belongs to an anti Muslim group called The Ancient Order of the Templar Knights but denies ever meeting Breivik and says he was horrified by the mass killings in Norway on Friday. In a telephone interview with Associated Press, Ray said he was not at the 2002 London meeting that Breivik described in his manifesto.

“I’d like to express my deepest sympathy to the people of Norway and to the families who have lost children,” Ray said. “It’s a horrendous crime that has been committed by someone what goes beyond the realm of human understanding.”

I noticed this article because I had my own encounter with Mr. Paul Ray, and I strongly suspect that his condemnations are anything but sincere.

In 2008, when I wrote an LGF post about “Lionheart” and his troubles with the British legal system (he was prosecuted for “stirring up racial hatred,” oddly enough), and noted that Paul Ray was a supporter of the white supremacist British National Party, he responded on his blog with this post:

Little Green Footballs you are a traitor, nothing less than the equivalent of a Second World War Nazi collaborator who would have been shot because of his treason - Iam sure there are many who would have obliged!

Yes, that’s right — the same guy who’s now pretending to be “horrified” by the Oslo atrocities wanted to see me shot for treason, like a Nazi collaborator, because I criticized him for belonging to a white supremacist group.