Two Swedish men arrested for the attempted murder of two South Asian men reportedly gained inspiration for their attacks from Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Brevik.

The Local — a Swedish English language news website — reports that four days after Breivik’s attacks in Oslo and Utøya, a South Asian man sleeping on a bench in Västerås, a city in central Sweden, was attacked and seriously injured. In a second attack, two days later, a Sri Lankan man was stabbed while delivering newspapers.

Police reports obtained by the Dagens Nyheter daily and translated by the Local, say that one of the defendants sent the other attacker the following text message shortly after Breivik’s massacre on July 22:

A Norwegian ‘Nazi’ has killed like, around 84! From the left who, like, cheered on Islam. HAHAHA!! WHITE POWER!

The accused attacker reportedly screamed “Go home” and drew a swastika on the Sri Lankan man’s bag after stabbing him.

While the two suspects may have been motivated by a broader white supremacist ideology, Breivik appears to have served as an inspiration for them in their decision to attack South Asians. The text message indicates that they shared the same anger with left wing politics, and its supposed embrace of Muslim immigrants.

Both Sweden and Norway have growing white supremacist movements, but U.S. Islamophobes and European white supremacists appear to have found common ground in stoking fears about Muslim immigration into Europe. Indeed, Anders Breivik cited U.S. “counterjihad” bloggers, such as Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, numerous times in his manifesto.

While European white supremacists have been implicated in hate crimes against numerous ethnic and religious minorities, the growing uptick in European Islamophobia is shedding new light on the overlapping ideologies of anti-Muslim advocates and white supremacists.

For more information on Breivik and his manifesto’s references to American Islamophobes, see the Guardian’s visualization of his citations and the Center for American Progress’ new report, Fear Inc.

Yesterday on his radio show, right-wing host Jordan Sekulow asked Mitt Romney how he would have handled the Palestinian bid for United Nations statehood recognition if he was president. Romney of course immediately jumped into to the standard, tired, old hat right-wing Obama-hates-Israel talking points but then he said something rather peculiar. Romney said the United States should reconsider its relationships with countries that vote in support of the Palestinian bid:

ROMNEY: Putting aside what’s already happened, at this stage the president should make it very clear that we stand with Israel, that this is very important to the United States of America and that any nation that votes against Israel and against the United States in the vote in the United Nations will recognize that America will very carefully reconsider our relationship with that nation.

I think that people who vote against us in significant ways have to understand that there are consequenses of that and we will see them in a different light and our support for the Palestinian people will be adjusted if they continue to pursue this desire to have a separate vote and to be established as having a quasi-state status within the U.N. This is something which will end our support in foreign aid to the Palestinian effort. It will at the same time reshape our policy with regards to nations that oppose us. People have to recognize that we’re nice but we’re not crazy. And when people oppose us, we’re not going to reward them for doing so.

So which countries would a President Romney “reconsider” America’s relationship with? As it stands right now, the Palestinian U.N. bid will be up for a vote in the 13-member Security Council (of which the United States, along with France, the U.K., China and Russia are permanent members with veto power). China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa have all said they would support the bid. France and the U.K. haven’t said either way, but the New York Times reported this month that they “might vote in favor.”

If the Palestinian bid goes to the General Assembly, which could elevate the Palestinian Authority’s status from nonvoting “observer entity” to “observer state,” the number of countries that the U.S. would have to reevaluate its relationship with, under a President Romney, would grow significantly. For example, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the 118-member U.N. bloc, announced that it supported the Palestinian U.N. membership move (although it is not certain if all member states would vote in favor). Members of the NAM include most African countries — including Egypt — Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Chile, and Peru.

So how exactly would Romney “reconsider” relationships with these countries — many of them close American allies — for supporting the Palestinians? The former Massachusetts governor didn’t expound on that point. But perhaps these nations would like to know what their punishment will be if Romney moves in to the White House in 2013.