There was one in-between: The murder of Anna Lindh in 2003
I am not an intelligence expert, but the norwegian intelligence service did not expect any problem from this group of people this year, so they obviously weren't really understanding it, either.
Our local media is full of stories, and here are my conclusions:
* Anders Breivik seems to have an INFJ personality (my judgement): teamtechnology.co.uk
* As a teenager, he was protective of people who got bullied, polite etc., a nice guy.
* When he came into his 20s, he started to use new parts of his brain (according to Myers-Briggs, that would be the introverted thinking function), but got bad feedback on his thoughts.
* I attribute the bad feedback on his logic on especially two things: His father stopped seeing him and the 9/11-2001, that made him think a lot about terrorism and islamists.
So, basically, he wants to avoid 9/11 to happen everywhere, and starts to think about how to avoid that. He goes online and finds a lot of information, but does not share his own views fully. He is inspired by utilitarianism, which says that the right course action is the one that maximizes the overall "good" consequences of the action.
He then decides, that the norwegian social democratic party is the main responsible for a lack immigrant policy, that has allowed many muslims to enter the country, and in order to stop the problem, he therefore needs to target that party.
He spends more than 6 years on planning the attack, and does this very intelligently. He manages to create a farming company on a farm, buys fertilizer, buys chemicals for $20 in Poland (which is detected and observed by the intelligence service!), buys a van, becomes part of the local gun club where he starts training, buys fake police badges in east Europe, buys a plain uniform and basically produces a norwegian police uniform with his sowing machine etc.
In order to prepare for the attack, he started to use anabolic streroids - for two reasons: To improve his physical strength, and to give himself a sense of invincibility, in order to become more aggressive. He also releases a manifest videos etc., and tries to maximize the publicity impact of his actions and to promote himself.
Then, he puts the van into Oslo, and starts the timer. He then goes to the island, 1.5 hours driving away, and is ferried to the island, dressed as a policeman, under the history that he is going to inform everybody about the bomb in Oslo. Once he gets people together, he starts killing, using dum-dum bullets, which are mandatory for hunting in Norway, but illegal in war according to U.N. rules, because they make survival of the victim unlikely and have no real effect on the war outcome. But his motive is to kill. Anders brings at least 2 kinds of weapons with him - my guess is that he wants to be fully armed and ready to shoot while reloading the other gun. He is a physical strong guy, so the first people that try to stop him, get shot, including the manager of the camp and the civil-dressed security guard.
People run away etc., but not all find out that it was the fake policeman who was shooting. So he was able to find some young people that were hiding, and to get them come forward by telling them that the shooting has stopped, and then he shoots them... this goes on for 1.5 hours until the police arrives, and then he gives up with no fight, probably because he also studied the law, and expects max 21 years in prison.
One victim was trying to swim away, but decided that he could not do the 600 meter distance, so he returned to the island, where Anders Breivik was about to shoot him, when the victim then asked for mercy. Anders Breivik reacted to this request of mercy by not shooting him, turning around and going away to find others to kill.
The general conclusion is, that Anders Breivik is not different from many other people that expose extremist talk, but that he has been using modern communication technology to find opinions, tips and guides that he would not have found 20 years ago.
My personal opinion is, that Sweden and Norway always had some more extreme people around, because they are more religious, and the restrictive societies mean that some families hide problems. Problems cannot be solved by introducing laws - you need to influence each and every individual to become a good person. This opinion is entirely based on intuition, but it seems that every time there is trouble in Denmark, it is influenced by people coming from other countries.
It is interesting that Olof Palme, Anna Lindh and Stoltenberg (who was targeted by Anders Breivik) are all social democrats. Their parties originally represent the idea that everybody is the same, and that the government can issue a lot of laws that restrict personal freedom (for instance, putting tax on alcohol and cigarettes) in order to "help" society get better. The Danish social democratic party had the same ideas in the 1970s, but is very unlike that today. Their current leader is famous for using Gucci handbags and evading tax payments, so I definitely do not see her as a target for those that would target Stoltenberg, Anna Lindh and Olof Palme.
Will it spread to other countries? Well, I don't think it originates in Norway, I think Scandinavia got it from other countries. There are many terrorist attacks in the world, and have always been - RAF, IRA, Timothy McVeigh etc., but the internet has changed information availability. Now, you can get much more information without getting noticed. Anders got a lot of kills because of the location and circumstances, but I would not have been surprised if he had mentioned George Bush II as one of his main inspirations. George Bush's rethorics after 9/11 made many people scared in Europe because he was talking stuff like "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists". We had heard that kind of talk before, and did not relate it to anything good. Anders was a young guy and started to develop his ideas and plans around that time, so he probably concluded that he is "with us" and a certain political party in Norway isn't.
I hope that they conclude, that Anders is not a sane person, and put him in time-unlimited custody. |
