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.
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