An abbreviated version of the following essay was published by FrontPage Magazine.
The first week of the trial against the confessed mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik has been completed in Oslo. The way it has been carried out has intrigued visiting foreign journalists in both positive and negative ways. A representative of the television news channel CNN was impressed that Norwegians take âpride in the fact they are a society who will respect Breivikâs human rights, even when he showed no respect for the lives of others.â
Many are shocked to find out, though, that the maximum penalty one can get in Norway for any crime is 21 years in prison. Thatâs in total, not per murder, although there are admittedly mechanisms in place for keeping a person locked up indefinitely if he still poses a threat to society.
If Breivik is judged to be sane he will thus get just a few months in a comfortable jail for each of the 77 murders he committed. Is that a sign of a society that values human life, or is it a sign of a society putting the rights of criminals above those of their victims?
Friday April 20th was the worst day so far. That day the terrorist described in horrifying detail and with shocking indifference the dozens of individual murders he committed during his shooting spree on the island of UtĂžya outside Oslo. Yet he had cried publicly only a couple of days earlier when the court showed his own rather silly and unprofessional propaganda movie.
The political commentator John Olav Egeland said that Geir Lippestad and the other defense lawyers worked hard in court to make Breivik appear as rational as possible. The purpose of this was to have him declared sane, as well as âto spread the responsibility for the actions Breivik has done.â
I finished reading his manifesto a week before the trial began. I was struck by how much he has quoted the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, and how little focus on this has been appeared in the mass media â as opposed to the fact that he cites some Islam-critical writers.
Calling Breivik âthe Wikipedia terroristâ is perhaps an exaggeration, but he certainly uses this source very extensively, from discussing weapons and body armor, to the nuclear reactors he fantasizes about blowing up. He admitted during the trial that the English language version of Wikipedia has been his main source of education. It has probably shaped his strange and imprecise political vocabulary, too. For example, he employs the term ânational anarchists,â which is not commonly used in major publications.
Breivik in his long statement in court, Breivik quoted in a slightly modified version the American President John F. Kennedy: âThose who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.â This was also highlighted in his 1518 page so-called manifesto, in which he quoted another former US President, Thomas Jefferson, that âThe tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.â These quotes are more militant than anything ever written by Robert Spencer, Bat Yeâor, Andrew Bostom, Melanie Phillips, or myself.
On page 1120, ABB cites the American Declaration of Independence from 1776 in favor of his views. This document was written primarily by Thomas Jefferson. He mentions the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, the right to bear arms, and thereafter refers to Mahatma Gandhi and the quote âDisobedience of the law of an evil state is therefore a duty.â
The Western mass media have widely portrayed those quoted in Breivikâs manifesto â against their will â as dangerous right-wing extremists. Do these alarming extremists include Thomas Jefferson and Gandhi?
On page 1164 Breivik quotes the Marxist leader Fidel Castro, who ruled Cuba for half a century, as stating that âI began the revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I would do it with 10 or 15 individuals with absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action.â Mr. Castro represents a totalitarian ideology, and although he is revolutionary Socialist, he has not been blamed for inspiring Breivik.
Much has been written about Breivikâs alleged ties to the English Defence League. The truth is that the EDL are quite marginal in Breivikâs manifesto. In the single longest mention he makes of them, on page 1436, he specifically denounces them as being a bunch of useless, non-violent sissies. He has repeated this view in court, but many notoriously dishonest journalists couldnât care less about the facts and keep repeating these false allegations.
On page 1111, the author in his manifesto stresses the importance of finding âa nationalistic oriented (patriotic) lawyer,â not a person representing the ruling regime. If so, why did Breivik himself choose defense lawyer Geir Lippestad, who is an active member of the ruling Labor Party and was initially reluctant to take the case?
On page 1263 he writes that âCurrently, 99,9% of individuals involved in the European resistance movements have never done anything illegal and will and should continue to operate within the law.â So how does he expect to win sympathy from these people, which he hopes he will get, by committing such hideous atrocities?
In a striking number of cases Breivik doesnât make logical sense even when read on his own terms. In general, he comes off as logically incoherent, exceptionally self-centered and seemingly devoid of any conscience.
Anders Behring Breivik repeatedly stresses that he is against âracism,â yet later in the manifesto he suddenly decides that race does matter after all. This is just one of the many and sometimes large logical inconsistencies to be found throughout this puzzling text. His writings must therefore be taken with a grain of salt. Breivik is an uneducated poseur with a God complex, not a serious or complex thinker, and he should be treated accordingly.
Jan Oskar Engene, an Associate Professor in Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen specializing in terrorism, cautions against attempts made by commentators to reconstruct an elaborate ideology behind the terroristâs acts. Itâs not evident that Breivik the high-school dropout espouses any coherent political ideology.
Breivik is the anti-Nazi who admires neo-Nazis, the anti-Marxist who admires Marxist revolutionaries, the anti-Islamist who openly admires and emulates Islamic Jihadist terrorists, the non-religious person who thinks he will be canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church for murdering unarmed teenagers, a âperfect knightâ who calls his sister a slut, and a modest man who believes that his candy-eating habits are of geopolitical importance.
Breivik is consistently inconsistent, or very nearly so. He contradicts himself so frequently that itâs hard to keep track of his basic ideas, if he has any at all apart from glorifying his own person through murder. One of the few ideas he is consistent about is that he admires the mentality and methods of Islamic Jihadist terrorists, from potential suicide attacks to their propaganda and the idea of posting videos of beheadings on the Internet.
ABB has stressed multiple times in very clear words that he wants to emulate the Islamic terror network al-Qaida, which he sees as a successful revolutionary organization and a blueprint for a similar, European version. On page 1367, the manifesto cites Mohammed that âWar is deceit.â He discusses the practice of taqiyya (sacred lying) and notes that Muslims are âmasters of deception.â
Breivik admires these Islamic traits, as well as the Marxist talent for organization. He drew on methods similar to the taqiyya practices of lies and dissimulation employed by Jihadist terrorists such as Mohammed Atta in order to remain undetected while planning his terror attacks.
He has learned a great deal from Muslims on how to stage deadly attacks in order to attract media attention. Breivik doesnât hide this inspiration, either. On pages 1074-1075 of his manifesto/compendium, he explicitly writes about âLearning from the Muslims,â especially when it comes to âmartyrsâ and the treatment of these.
This connection is not at all marginal but has been repeatedly emphasized by Breivik himself, in his manifesto as well as during police interrogation and talks with psychiatrists. Muslim Holy Warriors and so-called martyrs derive their inspiration from the Koran, the hadith and other Islamic texts describing the Sunna or personal example of Mohammed and his early companions. Given that Breivik betrays great admiration for Muslim militants, and partly models himself after their behavior, this implies that one of his most important indirect inspirations is actually the Koran and other Islamic texts. Yet few mainstream journalists have highlighted this connection.