One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway

by Åsne Seierstad

  The Knights Templar was the organisation nominated to lead both the civil war and construction of the new society. Anyone could become a member. Those who took up arms and began to fight would automatically become part of the brotherhood, part of a network of cells spread across Europe with no central command. Andrew Berwick himself held the highest rank in the organisation – Justicious Knight Commander. He was the one who, at the inaugural meeting in London in 2002, had been asked to write the organisation’s manifesto, as he possessed special abilities and prerequisites for the task.

  This meant he was also the one who decided the enrolment rituals for new members, rituals they could perform by themselves if they liked. All they needed was a darkened room, a large stone as an altar, a wax candle, a skull or perhaps a replica, and a sword. The candle was supposed to represent God and the light of Christ. The text they were to recite could simply be printed out from the manifesto.

  Honours would be awarded, depending how many traitors one had killed. These honours had titles like Distinguished Destroyer of Cultural Marxism and Distinguished Saboteur Master. There was also an award for Intellectual Excellence. Berwick had pasted in pictures of uniform decorations from the Order of Freemasons and various branches of the armed forces, and offered hints as to where on the internet these were available. They only cost a few dollars, so the Knights Templar could easily make their own uniforms.

  At last he had a use for what he had learned in needlework lessons at Smested Primary School. He wrote that the compulsory teaching of knitting and needlework had a utopian goal: equality between the sexes.

  ‘In retrospect, however, I am grateful for having received this insight into sewing and stitching as this knowledge is an essential skill when constructing and assembling modern ballistic armours … It is quite ironic and even hilarious that a skill intended to feminise European boys can and will be used to re-implement the patriarchy.’

  ‘Be creative,’ he advised his readers when explaining the different ways of killing traitors. To cause a particularly painful death you could use bullets filled with pure nicotine.

  He dealt in depth with information like how to buy guns from the Russian mafia or from outlaw motorcycle clubs, how to send anthrax through the post, use chemical weapons or spread radiation.

  There were long lists of clever tricks and manoeuvres. ‘Always mask your real goals, by using the ruse of a fake goal that everyone takes for granted, until the real goal is achieved. Strike where the enemy least expects it. Make a sound in the east, then strike in the west.’

  If the enemy was too strong, or too well protected, as heads of government often are, ‘then attack something he holds dear’. Somewhere or other there will be a chink in his armour, a weakness that can be exploited. ‘Hide a knife behind a smile.’ Infiltration can be the easiest way to get close to a difficult target: ‘Getting a job at the youth camp connected to the largest political party is one way of doing this. The Prime Minister usually visits during summer season.’

  ‘Be a chameleon, put on a disguise,’ he continued, suggesting that his readers acquire a police uniform so they could move around with weapons unchallenged.

  The very first thing a newly dubbed Knight Templar had to think about was good financial planning. You could have a job, earn money, take out loans or acquire several credit cards and use them to the limit.

  The battle demanded the utmost of everyone, and to stay motivated it was legitimate to use ‘good food, sexual stimuli, meditation’. Anything was permitted, so long as it worked. But he did worry about the poor combat skills of modern men. Most were useless both at taking aim and at firing. ‘Urban Europeans like us, ouch ☺!’ he complained, suggesting computer games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare as a good alternative to joining a shooting club.

  To avoid being caught with incriminating evidence, he advised changing your hard disk several times during the planning stage. Equipment connected with the various phases should be buried or destroyed. Planning was everything: familiarity with the terrain, detailed timetables and reserve strategies in case anything went wrong.

  It was a fact that most attempted acts of terrorism failed. They were insufficiently planned, the bomb did not go off or the protagonists injured themselves or were exposed. The last of these was to be avoided at all costs and the author suggested making use of social taboos. ‘Say you’ve started playing World of Warcraft and have got a bit too hooked on the game. Say you feel ashamed of the fact and don’t really want to talk about it. Then the person you have confided in will feel you have let him into your innermost secrets and stop asking questions. Or say you have come out as gay. Your ego is likely to take a dent unless you are secure in your own heterosexuality, because they will actually believe you are gay. But at least they will stop digging and wondering why you have changed, and why they don’t see you so often.’ Berwick himself had a number of friends who thought he was gay, he wrote, and that was ‘hilarious, because he was most definitely 100% hetero!’

  * * *

  Behind the ruthless tone there was a hint of something friendlier, a chilly smile. The last part of the manifesto, in contrast to the first two, was addressed to someone. It had a recipient, an intended reader. Not the man in the street, not just anybody, but someone who was already on his side or on the verge of tipping over into his camp. He was at pains to show consideration, offering advice on how to counter fear and loneliness, and recommending songs and sweets as aids to motivation.

  He was a guild leader again. With full oversight of his own players, opponents and terrain. If you got cold feet, all you had to do was think of the European women, between half a million and a million of them, who had been raped by Muslims, and carry on.

  ‘In many ways, morality has lost its meaning in our struggle,’ he wrote. ‘Some innocent will die in our operations as they are simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. Get used to the idea.’

  He devoted a chapter to ‘Killing Women on the Field of Battle’. The majority of cultural Marxists and suicide humanists were women, and female soldiers fighting to preserve the system would not hesitate to kill you in battle. ‘You must therefore embrace and familiarise yourself with the concept of killing women, even very attractive women.’

  It was important to put your manifesto up on the internet before you went into action. And equally important to be mentally prepared. ‘Once you decide to strike, it is better to kill too many than not enough, or you risk reducing the desired ideological impact of the strike. Explain what you have done (in an announcement distributed prior to the operation) and make certain that everyone understands that we, the free peoples of Europe, are going to strike again and again.’

  A Knight Templar should not only be a one-man army; he also had to be a one-man marketing agency. Recruitment material had to look attractive and professional, and it was worth spending some money on marketing. ‘Sexy projections of females sell and inspire, in peacetime and during war,’ he advised. You should also equip yourself with a personal picture gallery, because if you were arrested, the police would only release ‘retarded-looking photos’ of you.

  When getting ready to have the pictures taken, you had to think about style, ‘to look your best’. Spend a few hours on the tanning bed. Work out hard for at least seven days beforehand. Have your hair cut. Use a professional make-up artist. ‘Yes, this sounds gay to big badass warriors like us, but we must look our best for the shoot,’ he wrote. ‘Put on your best clothes and take several changes with you to the studio, like a suit and tie, some casual wear and, for preference, some kind of military outfit. But do not take any weapons or anything that might reveal that you are a resistance fighter.’

  The way you presented yourself was important, both in life and in death. Andrew Berwick had also prepared a series of recommended epitaphs for gravestones such as ‘Born into Marxist slavery on XX.XX.19XX. Died as a martyr fighting the Marxist criminal regime.’ One of his other proposals was a paraphrase of Churchill’s
‘We shall never surrender’: ‘Martyrdom before dhimmitude! Never surrender.’ You were free to add decoration to your stone; he suggested angels, pillars, arrows, birds, lions, skeletons, snakes, crowns, skulls, leaves or branches.

  It was also important to give yourself a martyr’s gift, something you really wanted. He himself had laid down three bottles of Château Kirwan 1979. As his martyrdom was approaching, he had taken one of them to a Christmas dinner with his half-siblings, the second to a friend’s party. He would save the last one for his final martyr’s celebration ‘and enjoy it with the two high-class model whores I intend to rent prior to the mission’. He claimed that you had to be pragmatic in the face of martyrdom and allow ‘the primal aspects of man’ to take priority over ‘misguided piety’.

  If you died in battle, your name would be remembered for hundreds of years. Your story would be told to coming generations and your death would help to boost morale in the resistance movement. You would be remembered as one of the courageous crusaders who said: enough is enough.

  If, on the other hand, you survived and ended up under arrest because power still had not been seized from the cultural Marxists, it was up to you to exploit your situation. A trial provided an excellent opportunity and a fitting arena for a Knight Templar to denounce the Marxist world hegemony. Berwick cautioned that on such an occasion you had to speak on behalf of the Knights Templar as a whole, not as yourself. You had to demand to be released, and for your country’s regime to be brought before a tribunal of national patriotic forces.

  ‘By the time you are done presenting your demands, the judges and the trial audience will probably laugh their asses off and mock you for being ridiculous. You must ignore this and stay firm and focused. You will then achieve the status of a living martyr.’ This influential position would allow you to establish a pan-European prison alliance of militant nationalists. Prison was a first-rate arena for winning supporters and recruiting people for the campaign.

  * * *

  And then: the finale. When the civil war was over, the ideal society would be constructed to protect European genes. Factories of surrogate mothers would be set up in low-cost countries and each mother would be expected to produce ten or so blond, blue-eyed children. The possibility of developing an artificial uterus would also be explored.

  Parents who were not suitable to look after their children could place them with patriotic foster parents who would be allowed to have up to twelve children. The most crucial concern was that of replenishing the Nordic gene pool. He explained that ‘If you go black, there is no turning back.’ Blue eyes were a recessive gene and it was important to prevent this threatened eye colour from steady eradication, otherwise there would be hardly any blond, blue-eyed individuals left on the planet.

  The new society would be chaste. Sexual abstinence before marriage would be the norm. Divorce would be seen as a breach of contract and would be penalised. The patriarchy had to be rebuilt. Fathers would always be given custody of their children in cases of parents splitting up.

  Free zones would have to be set up to avoid rebellion and revolt. Every country could have its Las Vegas, where those incapable of containing themselves could live. Here there would be free sex, free marijuana and uninhibited partying. Liberal, apolitical types could live there. Berwick stressed that even if all Marxists were liberals, not all liberals were Marxists.

  * * *

  Once a day he was torn away from his writing. He had to emerge from his room into life at 18 Hoffsveien.

  The eating space in the kitchen was cramped. Their knees almost collided. If they wanted they could take their meals into the living room, where the dining table stood just inside the door to the tiny balcony, beneath two prints by Norwegian artist Vebjørn Sand and a reproduction of the Mona Lisa.

  His mother talked about things people had told her, rumours she had heard. He talked about the world with which he was obsessed. The book he was writing. Norway, Europe, Islam, the world. His mother did not really like him when he was talking about his book, he was so intense. She eventually started avoiding all subjects that might turn the conversation to politics.

  But Anders just ploughed on; after all, he only had his mother to talk to. Wenche sometimes thought: this is nonsense, this is madness and it’s got to stop. Things used to be so nice, now he just went on about his book. He suddenly started calling her a feminist with Marxist tendencies, her of all people, who had always voted for the Progress Party.

  Talking to his mother, he left out the violence. The great thing was that he didn’t have to worry about her snooping about on his computer. She would not even know how to open his files. His sister, on the other hand, would have realised that something was going on if she had come to visit. But she did not come. Still, on the other side of the Atlantic she was worried and wrote in a letter to her mother, ‘Mum, that’s not normal! He’s thirty years old but all he does is sit in his room!’

  Wenche, who was now receiving disability benefits, had her head filled with her son’s ideas. Across the outdoor café table by the Coop she would suddenly say that Norway should turn itself into an absolute dictatorship. Democracy was bankrupt. The others, a motley bunch who happened to be free in the daytime, would gape at her for a moment before getting back to their coffee refills and pleasant chatter.

  Wenche had also grown gradually more opposed to immigration, but often no more so than the others in the café. Whenever it was election time she would go along to the Progress Party’s stand by the shopping centre. Sometimes she spent the whole morning there, talking to the campaigners handing out leaflets with their message about a bluer Norway.

  Some days she dreaded going home. Her son had started suffering from wild mood swings and he sometimes reacted so violently to little things, or he would be distant, abrupt and surly. He accused her of talking to too many people who could ‘infect us’. When he was like that he did not want to eat in the kitchen but asked her to bring his meals to his room, putting the empty plate outside his door afterwards. He put his hands over his face when he needed to leave his room to go to the toilet. At times he even wore a facemask.

  But then he would kiss her cheek all of a sudden. Or he would sit down so close to her on the sofa that she found it hard to breathe. At times like that she felt he was suffocating her, like when he was a child, when he was so clingy and could never leave her in peace. It was as if he was never really sure where to sit on the sofa and was sometimes too close, sometimes too far away.

  Wenche was now single again. She had thrown out the retired captain. When Anders found out it was over, he bought her a vibrator.

  ‘That’s taking consideration a bit far,’ she said, and told him her sex life was behind her now.

  But Anders kept on asking her if she had tried out the gift.

  Wenche often wondered if he was going to move out soon, but she never said anything. She put up with him. He put up with her.

  * * *

  The Progress Party and document.no had rejected him. Fjordman had given him the cold shoulder. From now on he was on his own.

  Alone in his deep, soft, accommodating chair. Alone in front of the screen. He kept the blind pulled down over his window. The world was shut out.

  It was time to emerge from his cave. High time, in fact.

  He had carefully calculated how to keep himself afloat financially once he had made all the necessary purchases. The schedule was tight.

  He wanted to make a bomb. That meant he would have to move. For the bomb he would need fertiliser, and to buy fertiliser he had to have a smallholding. The year before, in May 2009, he had set up a one-man business called Breivik Geofarm, operating from 18 Hoffsveien. He registered the company with the Norwegian register of business enterprises, giving its objectives as ‘buying, selling and management of shares, project development including acquisition and development of real estate’.

  In the course of the spring of 2010 he started buying equipment on the internet. The first th
ing he bought was a Pelican case from America.

  ‘What do you want that for?’ Wenche asked as he took the case, which he had informed her was bulletproof, into his room.

  ‘In case anyone breaks into the car,’ he answered.

  In May he ordered smoke grenades, laser gunsights and spike strips that would shred the tyres of anyone who tried to chase him. Later he ordered flashing blue lights, a GPS, silencers and firearm magazines.

  He took control of the keys to their storage spaces in the attic and the basement. The attic spaces were only divided by wire mesh, so everything had to be well packed up. In the basement their storage space had a sturdy door, but there was a lot of coming and going down there; people used the communal space for bikes, skis and toboggans.

  When summer came he started to look for some kind of farm. He had picked out the local council districts of Eda and Torsby in Värmland, just across the Swedish border. Seeking an isolated/ vacant/abandoned farm, he put in the subject line of an email he sent to the councils’ official email addresses, to Värmland county council and to about ten estate agents in the area. He wrote the letter in a peculiar Swedo-Norwegian.

  Hello,

  My name is Anders Behring and I have decided to spend the next two years writing a book about share strategies, primarily technical analysis and psychology as related to share trading. With this in view I am trying to find a quiet, isolated location in Torsby district, a disused or abandoned small farm or similar premises.

  He stressed that it had to have a barn/garage/shed and an isolated/remote location.

  The following day an employee of Torsby district council wrote back: Hello Anders, it’s great to hear that you want to come to our district. One of the estate agents wrote Good luck with the book!