I described my project--which is to name and rank the 81 most historically influential Scandinavians--to a Norwegian whom I met a few months ago. Which living Norwegian would rank highest, he asked. I replied "Gro Harlem Brundtland."
Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway's first (and to date only) female prime minister--who is also a former Director of the World Health organization and currently Special Envoy on Climate Change for the United Nations--remains, in my estimation, not only the most influential living Norwegian, but easily one of the most influential individuals ever to have originated from Norway. Off the top of my head, of all Norwegians in history, only Nansen and Ibsen, to date, can definitely claim equal or greater total influence.
Anders Behring Brievik apparently agreed. Gro Harlem Brundtland seems to have epitomized the "Multicultural Marxists" whom he railed against in his manifesto. He called her the murderer of his nation, presumably because of the liberalization of Norwegian immigration laws under her regime.
If Breivik had his way, Gro Harlem Brundtland would no longer be among the "living Norwegians." Just hours before his rampage, the wildly popular Brundtland, a life-long Labor Party member, had given a speech to the summer campers. They were still electrified in the aftermath of her presence when Brievik arrived on his "martyr's mission." Apparently, Brundtland had been his primary target. She departed before he got there.
Now I must finally confront a perverse question. How about Anders Brievik? Is this self-proffesed "knight Templar Crusader" a candidate for the Scandinavian 81? I draw no distinction between positive and negative influence. Vidkun Quisling, the traitor who invited Hitler to invade Norway and ruled it briefly as a Nazi proxy, certainly has a place in the ranking. Nor is there any doubt that Brievik's horrible acts will be influential. They drew, and will continue to draw, the horrified attention of the planet. Norway has already irreperably changed.
I don't believe Brievik will have the influence--as he put it, "the ideological impact"--that he intended. No public tragedy goes unexpolited by politics. Far from inciting a right-wing revolution in Europe, I believe he has helped the opposite cause. His killing spree was a political disaster for resurgent European right, which has for the most part, and not at all surprisingly, denounced him in the strongest terms. But the damage was done. The reputations of all those he cited approvingly have suffered. The whole movement will be on the defensive for a long time. Anyone critical of European immigration policies, European Islamic cultural practices, or (so-called) "Multi-culturalism" will be tainted by the association. This will include, unfortunately, reasonable critics. Everyone but extremists and psychopaths will be alienated.
Brievik's "mission" indeed created martyrs, but he is not one of them. The martyrs are the 77 people (so far) whom he murdered in the coldest of blood.
Anders Brievik is not currently under consideration for placement on the Scandiavian 81. I don't expect he ever will be. But this is not to early to say: July 22, 2011 has replaced April 9th, 1940 as the most infamous date in Norwegian history. And "Anders Brievik" has replaced "Vidkun Quisling" as its most infamous name.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Radical Christian Terrorist
Complied from reportage in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wikipedia, Reuters, Herald Sun, The Australian, BBC, Sydney Morning Herald, stuff.co.nz, others
I. "Atrocious but necessary"
The New York Times keeps calling it "the bigest massacre by a single gunman in modern times." As if there might have ever been a bigger one before then. It was the biggest massacre by a single gunman, ever.
The death toll has been revised, from 93 down to 76. For a surreal moment, I'm euphoric, as if 17 innocent people had been miraculously resurrected from death. It passes quickly. Many remain unaccounted for--how many, police have declined to reveal. An additional 96 are reported wounded, many of them critically. The death toll may yet climb.
Two hundred thousand mourners, "a wave of good will," washed over the streets of Oslo. The city is said to be "filled with love." Flowers, candles, Norwegian flags, wreathes, photos, and other tributes to the victims soon blanketed the city cathedral. "It would be easy to be angry at this time," said a survivor of the massacre. The perpetrator, Anders Brievik, "wants anger and he wants attention. He's a small person. I don't want to give him the attention."
Brievik, meanwhile, stands charged under Norway's terrorist laws. Police are considering a further charge of crimes against humanity. From his jail cell, in isolation and on suicide watch, Brievik requested a public hearing, and permission to appear in a miliatry uniform. The judge denied both requests. According to his lawyer, the defendent admits to the "factual circumstances" of both the bombing and shooting. But he will also plead "not guilty." He had been trying, as he explained, to save Norway and western Europe from "cultural Marxism and Muslim domination." His actions had been "atrocious but necessary."
II. The Perpetrator
Anders Behring Brievik was born in 1979, the son of a civil servant and a nurse. His parents, who both identified politically as left-of-center, divorced when he was one. He has one sibling, a sister, with whom he appears once to have been very close. He was raised in a middle class neighborhood, primarily by his mother. He blames a "super-liberal, matriarchal upbringing" for "feminizing" him, "to a certain extent."
His best childhood friend, for many years, was a Pakistani. "He resented everything about Norway and Norwegians (me being the exception)," Brievik recalled. "I have known a lot of Muslims over the years which triggered my interest in Islam."
As he aged, Brievik's stance on Islam hardened. He began to resent the ever-increasing influx of immigrants into Norway and western Europe, particularly from Muslim countries: Iraq, Eretria, Afganistan, Somalia. He "latched onto reports of attacks against ethnic Norwegian men and rapes of ethnic Norwegian women by immigrant gangs." For several years he was affliated by with Norway's populist, anti-tax, anti-immigrant "Progress Party," but quit in 2007 to protest its move to the center and the mainstream.
Brievik traced his radicalization to the NATO bombing campaign of Serbia in 1999. "(A)uthorized by criminal western European and American leaders," he saw the war as the betrayal of fellow Christians for the sake of Muslims. It was proof that "a core of Cultural Communist elites" had stealthily seized political power, in order to "destroy western civilization, European traditions, national solidarity, and Christianity."
III. Conflagration
The bomb was allegedly made from the same mix of fertilizer and fuel as the one that Timothy McVeigh used to destroy a federal building in Oklahoma city (1995). Last Friday, at half past three in the afternoon, it exploded out of the trunk of a Volkswagen, parked near the Prime Minister's office in Oslo. An entire complex of government buildings shook on its foundations. Shockwaves ripped open walls and blew out thousands of windows, showering the street below with glass and debris. Fires broke out all over the place. The blast, mistaken by many for thunder, had been heard for miles.
Through the haze of dust and smoke that settled over the complex, survivors described a scene of people "screaming and crying, running around with blood coming out of wounds, covered with blood." If July hadn't been such a popular vacation month for government employees, the bomb would have probably claimed may more lives. As it was, eight were killed in the blast. Already it was the worst act of violence in Norway since World War II.
It wasn't over.
IV. Utoya
About an hour and a half later, just as the first, confused reports of the Oslo bombing filtered through the media, a man in a police uniform stepped off the public ferry onto the tiny, wood-covered island of Utoya, 25 miles north of Oslo, where hundreds of people, mostly teenagers, had recently converged to attend the Norwegian Labor Party's annual youth summer camp. The presumed policeman signaled and motioned to gather a crowd. He anounced that he had been sent to assure their safety after the terrorist attack, and that he had important information. When he had an audience, he reached into his duffle bag, pulled out an automatic weapon, and began firing hollow point bullets.
"I heard screams," said one survivor. "I heard people begging for their lives and I heard shots. He just blew them away...I was certain I was going to die."
For ninety minutes, Anders Brievik murdered with impunity. "He seemed to be enjoying it," said one survivor. "He walked around the island as if he had absolute power." There was nowhere to go. Utoya is accessible only by boat. There was no way for everyone to hide. Utoya had become a 26 acre death-trap. Breivik shot campers in the back as they stampeded away. He shot them as they fled into the lake. (Some of the missing may have drowned.) He shot them as they madly tried to scramble up trees, as they flung themselves desperately down a steep rocky slope. "I'll kill you all," Brievik was heard to say, repeatedly. He dumped extra rounds into fallen bodies to make sure of killing anyone feigning death.
One of the victims, Gunnar Linaker, had been on the phone with his father when it started. "He said to me, 'Dad, Dad, someone is shooting, and he hung up." His father later described him as "a calm, big teddy bear with lots of humor and lots of love." Gunnar was 23. Most of the casualties were younger.
A fifteen year old survivor told later of hiding behind a rock that Brievik was standing on. "I could hear him breathing," she said.
For ninety minutes, Brievik murdered with impunity.
The official rescue operation was a travesty of unprepardness. One of the first to die was a security guard, a 51-year old former police officer. He hadn't been armed; even active officers rarely carry guns in Norway. As the people on the island frantically called special services from their cells, they were ordered off the line unless calling about the bombing. Undoubtedly this had been the assassin's intention; the bomb had been, in part, a diversion.
SWAT units weren't dispatched until 50 minutes after the first calls for help. With no helicopter on standby, it took the team of 10 commandos 20 minutes to drive to the shore of lake Tyrifjorden. It took them another 20 to commandeer boats. One almost sank with the weight of their arsenal; they had to bail water the whole way across. When they finally stormed the island, they didn't fire a shot. They found Brievik awaiting them in a posture of surrender, standing with his hands behind his head, weapons on the ground.
"I'm finished," he said calmly. He'd just slaughtered sixty eight innocent human beings--mostly teenagers.
He still had plenty of ammunition. He'd been planning this for years.
Hours before the first explosion, Brievik emailed hundred of copies of an online manifesto. At over 1,500 pages, it's more than twice as long as Mein Kampf, and it carries the title September 11th 2083: A European Declaration of Indenpendence. It's been described as "part political discussion, part confessional and part action plan." An English forensics psychologist has already described it as "one of the scariest documents I've ever read."
"We, the free indigenous peoples of Europe," it says, "hereby declare a preemptive war on all the cultural Marxists/multicultural elites of Western Europe. ...We know who you are, where you live and we are coming for you..."
I. "Atrocious but necessary"
The New York Times keeps calling it "the bigest massacre by a single gunman in modern times." As if there might have ever been a bigger one before then. It was the biggest massacre by a single gunman, ever.
The death toll has been revised, from 93 down to 76. For a surreal moment, I'm euphoric, as if 17 innocent people had been miraculously resurrected from death. It passes quickly. Many remain unaccounted for--how many, police have declined to reveal. An additional 96 are reported wounded, many of them critically. The death toll may yet climb.
Two hundred thousand mourners, "a wave of good will," washed over the streets of Oslo. The city is said to be "filled with love." Flowers, candles, Norwegian flags, wreathes, photos, and other tributes to the victims soon blanketed the city cathedral. "It would be easy to be angry at this time," said a survivor of the massacre. The perpetrator, Anders Brievik, "wants anger and he wants attention. He's a small person. I don't want to give him the attention."
Brievik, meanwhile, stands charged under Norway's terrorist laws. Police are considering a further charge of crimes against humanity. From his jail cell, in isolation and on suicide watch, Brievik requested a public hearing, and permission to appear in a miliatry uniform. The judge denied both requests. According to his lawyer, the defendent admits to the "factual circumstances" of both the bombing and shooting. But he will also plead "not guilty." He had been trying, as he explained, to save Norway and western Europe from "cultural Marxism and Muslim domination." His actions had been "atrocious but necessary."
II. The Perpetrator
Anders Behring Brievik was born in 1979, the son of a civil servant and a nurse. His parents, who both identified politically as left-of-center, divorced when he was one. He has one sibling, a sister, with whom he appears once to have been very close. He was raised in a middle class neighborhood, primarily by his mother. He blames a "super-liberal, matriarchal upbringing" for "feminizing" him, "to a certain extent."
His best childhood friend, for many years, was a Pakistani. "He resented everything about Norway and Norwegians (me being the exception)," Brievik recalled. "I have known a lot of Muslims over the years which triggered my interest in Islam."
As he aged, Brievik's stance on Islam hardened. He began to resent the ever-increasing influx of immigrants into Norway and western Europe, particularly from Muslim countries: Iraq, Eretria, Afganistan, Somalia. He "latched onto reports of attacks against ethnic Norwegian men and rapes of ethnic Norwegian women by immigrant gangs." For several years he was affliated by with Norway's populist, anti-tax, anti-immigrant "Progress Party," but quit in 2007 to protest its move to the center and the mainstream.
Brievik traced his radicalization to the NATO bombing campaign of Serbia in 1999. "(A)uthorized by criminal western European and American leaders," he saw the war as the betrayal of fellow Christians for the sake of Muslims. It was proof that "a core of Cultural Communist elites" had stealthily seized political power, in order to "destroy western civilization, European traditions, national solidarity, and Christianity."
III. Conflagration
The bomb was allegedly made from the same mix of fertilizer and fuel as the one that Timothy McVeigh used to destroy a federal building in Oklahoma city (1995). Last Friday, at half past three in the afternoon, it exploded out of the trunk of a Volkswagen, parked near the Prime Minister's office in Oslo. An entire complex of government buildings shook on its foundations. Shockwaves ripped open walls and blew out thousands of windows, showering the street below with glass and debris. Fires broke out all over the place. The blast, mistaken by many for thunder, had been heard for miles.
Through the haze of dust and smoke that settled over the complex, survivors described a scene of people "screaming and crying, running around with blood coming out of wounds, covered with blood." If July hadn't been such a popular vacation month for government employees, the bomb would have probably claimed may more lives. As it was, eight were killed in the blast. Already it was the worst act of violence in Norway since World War II.
It wasn't over.
IV. Utoya
About an hour and a half later, just as the first, confused reports of the Oslo bombing filtered through the media, a man in a police uniform stepped off the public ferry onto the tiny, wood-covered island of Utoya, 25 miles north of Oslo, where hundreds of people, mostly teenagers, had recently converged to attend the Norwegian Labor Party's annual youth summer camp. The presumed policeman signaled and motioned to gather a crowd. He anounced that he had been sent to assure their safety after the terrorist attack, and that he had important information. When he had an audience, he reached into his duffle bag, pulled out an automatic weapon, and began firing hollow point bullets.
"I heard screams," said one survivor. "I heard people begging for their lives and I heard shots. He just blew them away...I was certain I was going to die."
For ninety minutes, Anders Brievik murdered with impunity. "He seemed to be enjoying it," said one survivor. "He walked around the island as if he had absolute power." There was nowhere to go. Utoya is accessible only by boat. There was no way for everyone to hide. Utoya had become a 26 acre death-trap. Breivik shot campers in the back as they stampeded away. He shot them as they fled into the lake. (Some of the missing may have drowned.) He shot them as they madly tried to scramble up trees, as they flung themselves desperately down a steep rocky slope. "I'll kill you all," Brievik was heard to say, repeatedly. He dumped extra rounds into fallen bodies to make sure of killing anyone feigning death.
One of the victims, Gunnar Linaker, had been on the phone with his father when it started. "He said to me, 'Dad, Dad, someone is shooting, and he hung up." His father later described him as "a calm, big teddy bear with lots of humor and lots of love." Gunnar was 23. Most of the casualties were younger.
A fifteen year old survivor told later of hiding behind a rock that Brievik was standing on. "I could hear him breathing," she said.
For ninety minutes, Brievik murdered with impunity.
The official rescue operation was a travesty of unprepardness. One of the first to die was a security guard, a 51-year old former police officer. He hadn't been armed; even active officers rarely carry guns in Norway. As the people on the island frantically called special services from their cells, they were ordered off the line unless calling about the bombing. Undoubtedly this had been the assassin's intention; the bomb had been, in part, a diversion.
SWAT units weren't dispatched until 50 minutes after the first calls for help. With no helicopter on standby, it took the team of 10 commandos 20 minutes to drive to the shore of lake Tyrifjorden. It took them another 20 to commandeer boats. One almost sank with the weight of their arsenal; they had to bail water the whole way across. When they finally stormed the island, they didn't fire a shot. They found Brievik awaiting them in a posture of surrender, standing with his hands behind his head, weapons on the ground.
"I'm finished," he said calmly. He'd just slaughtered sixty eight innocent human beings--mostly teenagers.
He still had plenty of ammunition. He'd been planning this for years.
Hours before the first explosion, Brievik emailed hundred of copies of an online manifesto. At over 1,500 pages, it's more than twice as long as Mein Kampf, and it carries the title September 11th 2083: A European Declaration of Indenpendence. It's been described as "part political discussion, part confessional and part action plan." An English forensics psychologist has already described it as "one of the scariest documents I've ever read."
"We, the free indigenous peoples of Europe," it says, "hereby declare a preemptive war on all the cultural Marxists/multicultural elites of Western Europe. ...We know who you are, where you live and we are coming for you..."
Monday, July 25, 2011
The Utoya Massacre
Expect the spectre of Sigurd the Crusader to haunt the aftermath of the bloodbath.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
The Utoya Massacre
I'm numb from this. I'll never comprehend it. Some barriers can't be overcome. I almost can't try. I still don't really believe it. I'm going to wake up and, I hope, not remember the nightmare.
Could one man have done all this alone? Construct and detonate at least two powerful car bombs in the heart of a government building complex and, almost simultaneously, slaughter more than 80 human beings at point-blank range with automatic weapons? It doesn't seem possible. I try to contemplate the logistics--but my mind rebels and will not permit it. Not yet, maybe (and I hope) not ever. But it just doesn't seem possible.
Police are investigating witness reports of a second shooter. The killer, who calmly surrendered to police when they finally arrived on the island, claims to be a part of a larger terrorist organization. I dread the details, whatever they are. And the deluge has begun. The killer's name is Anders Behring Breivik. A stunned neighbor said he seemed like "a regular guy." He apparently had no known links to radical right wing groups. "His main enemy is not Muslims," said the editor of a right- wing Norwegian web site on which Breivik regularly posted, "but what he calls cultural marxists." He is a Freemason and had been a member of the Norwegian "Progress Party," which favors tighter restrictions on immigration, particularly from Muslim countries. Breivik wrote a 1,500 page manifesto published online just before his rampage. In it he rails against the impending Islamization of Europe and he calls for a violent conservative Christian coup, a "Crusade," against the acquiescent European political and cultural establishment. "Once you decide to strike," says the manifesto, "it is better to kill too many than not enough..."
Late last year I decided, half whimsically, to attempt a multibiography of historically influential Scandinavians. I immersed myself in political, scientific and cultural history, collecting almost one hundred pertinent books and other source materials, with no limit yet in sight, towards the goal of discovering just which individual Scandinavians have had the greatest impact, positive or negative, on human history. Over the course of this quest I have discovered, or perhaps projected, strong affinities between myself and virtually every Scandinavian man and woman whom I seriously studied. I came to fancy that, in examining their lives, in attempting to understand and assess their achievements, I was meeting a long-estranged extended family. I was surprised by the depth of affection I found myself feeling for this assortment of scientists, diplomats, explorers, novelists and vikings. Without having consciously sought them, I had found my people.
I'd be lying if I denied that my ethnic connection hasn't personalized and intensified my experience of the Utoya bloodbath. And this is to say nothing of my equal ethnic connection to the monster who committed the atrocity. A Norwegian assassinated all those scores of Norwegians, and others. A Norwegian premeditated and meticulously carried out what is surely, and by far, the most massive slaughter of human beings by a lone (?) gunman in all of history. It makes me sick.
One person with a belief may have the force of one hundred thousand with mere interests. But the perpetrator of this disgusting act, this cold-blooded butcher of helpless, terrified young civilians, is without beliefs. He's the definition of a nihilist.
Norway has no death penalty. Anders Breivik may live to be one hundred. I'll never understand.
These are muddled early impressions.
Could one man have done all this alone? Construct and detonate at least two powerful car bombs in the heart of a government building complex and, almost simultaneously, slaughter more than 80 human beings at point-blank range with automatic weapons? It doesn't seem possible. I try to contemplate the logistics--but my mind rebels and will not permit it. Not yet, maybe (and I hope) not ever. But it just doesn't seem possible.
Police are investigating witness reports of a second shooter. The killer, who calmly surrendered to police when they finally arrived on the island, claims to be a part of a larger terrorist organization. I dread the details, whatever they are. And the deluge has begun. The killer's name is Anders Behring Breivik. A stunned neighbor said he seemed like "a regular guy." He apparently had no known links to radical right wing groups. "His main enemy is not Muslims," said the editor of a right- wing Norwegian web site on which Breivik regularly posted, "but what he calls cultural marxists." He is a Freemason and had been a member of the Norwegian "Progress Party," which favors tighter restrictions on immigration, particularly from Muslim countries. Breivik wrote a 1,500 page manifesto published online just before his rampage. In it he rails against the impending Islamization of Europe and he calls for a violent conservative Christian coup, a "Crusade," against the acquiescent European political and cultural establishment. "Once you decide to strike," says the manifesto, "it is better to kill too many than not enough..."
Late last year I decided, half whimsically, to attempt a multibiography of historically influential Scandinavians. I immersed myself in political, scientific and cultural history, collecting almost one hundred pertinent books and other source materials, with no limit yet in sight, towards the goal of discovering just which individual Scandinavians have had the greatest impact, positive or negative, on human history. Over the course of this quest I have discovered, or perhaps projected, strong affinities between myself and virtually every Scandinavian man and woman whom I seriously studied. I came to fancy that, in examining their lives, in attempting to understand and assess their achievements, I was meeting a long-estranged extended family. I was surprised by the depth of affection I found myself feeling for this assortment of scientists, diplomats, explorers, novelists and vikings. Without having consciously sought them, I had found my people.
I'd be lying if I denied that my ethnic connection hasn't personalized and intensified my experience of the Utoya bloodbath. And this is to say nothing of my equal ethnic connection to the monster who committed the atrocity. A Norwegian assassinated all those scores of Norwegians, and others. A Norwegian premeditated and meticulously carried out what is surely, and by far, the most massive slaughter of human beings by a lone (?) gunman in all of history. It makes me sick.
One person with a belief may have the force of one hundred thousand with mere interests. But the perpetrator of this disgusting act, this cold-blooded butcher of helpless, terrified young civilians, is without beliefs. He's the definition of a nihilist.
Norway has no death penalty. Anders Breivik may live to be one hundred. I'll never understand.
These are muddled early impressions.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Norwegian Death Toll at 17
Norway was attacked today. At least two bombs shook Einar Gerhardsen Plaza, transforming placid mid-afternoon Oslo "into a scene reminiscent of terrorist attacks in Beirut or Baghdad or Oklahoma City," said the New York Times. Almost simultaneously, a gunman impersonating a police officer opened fire with an automatic weapon into a crowd of kids on nearby island of Utoya, where there's a Labor Party Summer camp. The Times reports the death toll at 17. A witness claims to have seen twenty to twenty five bodies.
The alledged gunman, described only as a 32-year-old Norwegian man "not known to have any ties to Islamic extremists," has been arrested. Ansar al Jihad al-Alami, or "Helpers of the Global Jihad," claimed credit for masterminding the attacks. It is not known whether the group actually exists, but Ayman al-Zawahri, the late Bin Laden's successor at the helm of al-Qaeda, had repeatedly threatened to inflict harm on Norway for supporting the U.S. led NATO invasion and occupation of Afganistan.
In Oslo, the explosions set one government building ablaze, and blew out virtually every window of another across the street. Buildings as far as 5 blocks distant were damaged. The prime minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenborg, was present but unharmed by the attack.
I think it's fair to say today was the worst day in Norwegian history since April 9th, 1940.
first postscript:
I went back to the Times. The death toll has been raised to 87. Fuck.
second postscript:
The man arrested in connection to the attacks is allegedly named Anders Behring Breivik, described as blond, blue eyed and probably an ethnic Norwegian, leading to speculations that Right Wing native militants, and not Islamic fundamentalists, were responsible.
The alledged gunman, described only as a 32-year-old Norwegian man "not known to have any ties to Islamic extremists," has been arrested. Ansar al Jihad al-Alami, or "Helpers of the Global Jihad," claimed credit for masterminding the attacks. It is not known whether the group actually exists, but Ayman al-Zawahri, the late Bin Laden's successor at the helm of al-Qaeda, had repeatedly threatened to inflict harm on Norway for supporting the U.S. led NATO invasion and occupation of Afganistan.
In Oslo, the explosions set one government building ablaze, and blew out virtually every window of another across the street. Buildings as far as 5 blocks distant were damaged. The prime minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenborg, was present but unharmed by the attack.
I think it's fair to say today was the worst day in Norwegian history since April 9th, 1940.
first postscript:
I went back to the Times. The death toll has been raised to 87. Fuck.
second postscript:
The man arrested in connection to the attacks is allegedly named Anders Behring Breivik, described as blond, blue eyed and probably an ethnic Norwegian, leading to speculations that Right Wing native militants, and not Islamic fundamentalists, were responsible.
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