But this is not the case for a lone wolf. Dr. Puckett believes that being unable to connect is not a situation that anyone chooses, and that the lone wolf suffers before taking action. Being alone is not easy. Humans are social animals. Even Kaczynski, isolated as he was, wrote of wanting to be with a woman and have a family. Yet evidence suggests that he was never able to establish a sexual relationship with even one woman.
“If you can’t connect to others, and you’re intelligent, you’re able to connect with an idea,” Dr. Puckett said. “You don’t have the social distractions other people have.”
Breivik could not connect with others. The attachment issues he experienced as a young boy, with an unstable mother and a distant father, no doubt contributed to his difficulty in developing meaningful relationships and to his rejection from every group with which he tried to connect. He embraced the ideology of a group that, as we will soon see, wanted nothing to do with him. Furthermore, he knew that, in Norway, he would probably live to see himself vindicated as the grand person he believed he was.
“All [the] lone offenders I studied wanted to take care of themselves,” Dr. Puckett explained. The lone wolf is, according to her, not suicidal. “He [Breivik] was self-protective, and he planned very, very well for the violence he unleashed. It had to be at a societal level. He had to be seen as mattering, as being doing something more important than anyone else.”
A few days at Ris Junior High School passed. Anders had been absent for most of them, and his mother was beginning to show signs of a breakdown. She had already received the first of twenty-two letters from the school’s principal. Student Breivik was causing trouble.
CHAPTER THREE
BULLYING AND REPRESSION
The fact that hundreds of kids our own age all over Oslo West, and even Oslo East, looked up to us was one of the driving forces, I guess. At that time, it felt very rewarding to us. . . . The more reckless you were, the more respect and admiration you gained.
—ANDERS BREIVIK MANIFESTO
Isolation doesn’t happen overnight. Bullying, especially when it happens at a young age, makes one retreat even farther. Kaczynski and McVeigh both experienced some form of bullying, Kaczynski because of his intellect and for being so much younger than his peers; McVeigh, highly sensitive, was so affected by the bullying he experienced that he transferred those feelings of anger to the government.
Everybody in Norway, even the king, goes to public school. There’s no motivation to get better grades until secondary school, and then only if one wants to attend medical school or civil engineering studies, both of which are also subsidized by the government. Only a few private schools and even fewer educational opportunities exist for the gifted. A young person goes into the system and can’t really get around it. Regardless of which school one attends, it is the same system, through and through.
After six years of primary school, Breivik entered Ris Junior High School at a turbulent time in his life. At his previous school, his attendance had been fairly consistent, and although the teachers at this level didn’t issue him grades, Breivik, like the other students, was given progress reports to take home. His evaluations would be recorded in the school archives and, for many years, school still presented no problem.
Although he often skipped school, he still performed well. But now, as a junior high student, his primary ambition was to be “cool.” Joining a gang might be the safest way to assimilate into the mainstream, but Breivik had something to prove. He had made it plain that he wouldn’t back down if threatened and expected his friends to have his back and not “sissy out” when called upon for help when he was being picked on or bullied.
He thought a particular Muslim friend, also an outsider, shared this type of pride under fire. But before long he, too, disappointed Anders. He was already taking on the personality of a lone wolf, unable to connect with others, even in fringe groups. Faced with becoming just an anonymous student as he fell out with his “gang,” and again at a new school, he thought he might be good at a form of vandalism called “tagging.” Considering the spraying of paint onto public structures and buildings to be an art rather than an act of defacing property, he decided to give the practice his best effort.
The first thing he learned after a few tries was that he’d need a lot more paint than he could afford. Finances were tight at home. His mother wasn’t working, and he wasn’t sure when he would see Tove, his stepmother, again. When he was about twelve, Tove divorced his father, and, as part of her job as a diplomat, she was sent to different countries far away from Norway. Although they did keep in touch, they didn’t see each other often, so Tove couldn’t be the presence in his life that either of them might have liked her to be. Early on, Breivik took on odd jobs before and after school in order to make his own pocket money and to keep up with the other students. His father did assist with child support, but still finances were tight, and his mother depended on social welfare to make ends meet.
In 1994, Breivik, in the midst of carrying out a tagging adventure, was picked up by the police at Oslo Central Station. He had been to Denmark, where he had obtained forty-three aerosol paint cans at a taggers’ black market. Child Protective Services found that his mother had no knowledge of his trip to Denmark, nor was she aware that he had already had two charges against him for tagging. CPS resumed its observation of his home environment.
Although Norway had legislated all unauthorized street art to be considered disgraceful graffiti, the police took no further action. Breivik never acknowledged his guilt in any way. This seemed to be his mantra: Never admit you were doing anything wrong, and never confess to a crime.
Tagging gave Breivik a taste for underground activity. It also taught him the importance of planning his acts. He had learned to be secretive about the cache of tagging gear and spray paint he hoarded at home. The more strategic planning he put behind his illegal moves, the more he felt that he would never again be apprehended. Not a talented tagger, he began to execute a plan he hoped would make him notorious: he began to paint over other taggers’ masterworks. For him, it was more about the illicitness of the ventures—and being noticed—than it was creating pieces of art.
His signature while tagging, Morg, would become his alias, his first “other self.” Most likely, Breivik had thought his new alter ego, lifted from the evil Marvel Comics character, would bring him notoriety, since the alias sounded like “morgue,” and in the popular comic, Morg’s weapon was an ax which he used on his own people.
Although showing signs of unwillingness to follow the rules of society, Breivik did not lack empathy or emotion. At around fourteen years old, his stepmother Tove took him on a vacation to one of the Greek islands. In an interview, she recalled Breivik as a gentle and caring boy. He was fascinated by the history and culture of the place and eager to try new types of food. One night, young Breivik discovered some newborn kittens under his bed at their hotel. According to his stepmother, Breivik cared for them for the rest of their stay and was in tears when he wasn’t allowed to take them with him back to Norway. “What’s going to happen to them when I’m gone?” he wondered.
The lone wolf is no sociopath, someone who is completely devoid of empathy for others. When a lone wolf commits his gruesome acts, he takes no pleasure in harming others. As a child, McVeigh had a strong sense of what was right and wrong, and he couldn’t stand injustice or cruelty. One incident—one that in many ways echoes Breivik’s story—marked him. Tim watched a neighbor drowning small kittens in a pond near where they lived. When he asked what was happening, the neighborhood boy said “Those are kittens my cat had. We had to get rid of them.” Young McVeigh loved animals and especially kittens, and the realization of what he was witnessing hit him hard. He ran home and cried for days.
Kaczynski’s outlook also conforms to the précis that lone wolves are not psychopaths or bloodthirsty killers. The killings for him were a necessity, the point of his ideology, but it was not killing for killing’s sake.
It was also a way to release some of his built-up rage.
“Since committing these crimes reported elsewhere in my notes I feel better,” Kaczynski wrote. “I am still plenty angry, you understand, but the difference is that I am now able to strike back, to a degree. . . . My first thought was to kill somebody I hated and then kill myself before the cops could get me. (I’ve always considered death preferable to life imprisonment.)”
Traditionally, Ris Junior High was a school attended by wealthy Norwegian students. The Labor Party and the 1968 generation did get rid of most of the stigmas of the different classes, yet some of the students who went to Ris later said that they applied to go to a different high school than those available in that district because they wanted more diversity, more differences in opinion, and, basically, more freedom. Instead of being defined by traditions and old habits, they said they wanted to discover new things, to take part in more socialistic political discussions, or be involved in activities such as theater. In speaking of Breivik’s early education and specifically of Ris Junior High School, author Aage Storm Borchgrevink wrote “Freedom flourishes best in an open, egalitarian, and inclusive society.”
What he and so many other Norwegians haven’t considered is that they went from the tyranny of a class-divided society to a different kind of tyranny, but a tyranny all the same. The ultimate personification of Norwegian society—the Labor Party and its followers—were less open and honest about their tactics. Using brainwashing and the Law of Jante, which is a traditional mantra utilized to disparage a positive attitude toward individuality, they have suppressed the right of the individual to be just that: a unique person. The result is an uneasiness: a collective feeling of guilt for not wanting to be like everyone else—even if, on the surface, people appear to be part of the group.
Norway is now one of the wealthiest nations in the world and gives away billions to developing countries. The professed sentiment is that all wealth should be redistributed, that it is evil for an individual to make too much money, and that people with money are somewhat unethical or immoral. Yet, secretly, everyone wants to have more for themselves, and they don’t want their income redistributed.
Maybe an entitlement state is the right thing for society, and maybe it isn’t. But that’s not the point. The population has been bullied into espousing social-democratic ways, and there is no room for anything else. “Just look at the capitalistic United States and all its problems,” they say.
This is not freedom. This is mind control. Yes, the United States has problems; but by focusing only on what is wrong with others, Norway was missing things that were still wrong with Norway. The Law of Jante is ingrained in Norwegian society; and by the time children start attending primary school, it is so familiar to them that the young students don’t even ask any questions. A lot in Norwegian society doesn’t feel right; but at the same time, people have been taught not to speak up about certain matters, taught to accept whatever the group decides to do, no matter how wrong it might feel. It has gotten to the point where the citizens are so numb that the conformity probably doesn’t even feel bad to them any longer. The group has become the government, and its truth is the only truth. Norway’s young people have been persuaded into a pattern of group behavior that opposes individual self-aggrandizement as unworthy and inappropriate.
Omnipresent throughout a Norwegian’s life, the Law of Jante originated as a concept at the beginning of the twentieth century by Danish-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose. In his novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks (En flyktning krysser sitt spor, 1933, English translation published in the United States in 1936), the notion was identified by ten rules, all beginning with the word Don’t, as in Rule One: Don’t think you’re anything special.
Children become aware of the Law of Jante before starting primary school, and the law is constantly reinforced later in school where students are told not to stick out. Very quickly, a child learns to hide his or her academic success or creativity so as not to be punished.
Don’t think. . . . Don’t think. . . . Don’t think. . . . Long before a child has heard of the Law of Jante, the ten rules are already burned in his or her brain.
1. Don’t think you are anything special.
2. Don’t think you are as good as we are.
3. Don’t think you are smarter than we are.
4. Don’t think you are better than we are.
5. Don’t think you know more than we do.
6. Don’t think you are more important than we are.
7. Don’t think you are good at anything.
8. Don’t laugh at us.
9. Don’t think anyone cares about you.
10. Don’t think you can teach us anything.
Sandemose’s book containing those ten stifling rules that govern Scandinavian culture is taught to students in junior high school. The novel is a classic, much as 1984 and Brave New World are. Jante, a fictional Danish city, could be any Scandinavian town. Sandemose, back in the 1930s, captured current Norwegian culture. Yet, although the book—which is taught in the schools as a warning—shows how pack mentality brings out the evil in a person, nothing in the schoolroom or anywhere else moves past a basic discussion. Debates may ensue; however, nothing changes.
Breivik must have felt like an outsider, someone to whom rules and the law of the land did not apply. Perhaps he didn’t have an earnest desire to adhere to what was expected of him in Norwegian society.
In his manifesto, he later described himself this way. “I was able to function socially when I set my mind to it. I was good at putting on the game face.” This manipulation of the self is indicative of the Norwegian mindset. One must hide one’s true identity and put on a “game face” if one is to survive in society. That is what Breivik did. He felt he had no choice, in order to be accepted. But he was never able to keep that “game face” on for very long, either with regard to school or socially, amongst his peers.
When a few Muslim students had begun to enter his school, a public institution that had, for years, been “all white,” his Lutheran classmates, though not overly religious, balked at welcoming the new students. “Just too different,” some said openly. “And they have no intention of changing, either.”
But Breivik befriended a Pakistani classmate. Both were considered outside the circle: his new friend, because he was a Muslim, and Breivik, because he hadn’t yet come to fit in with any group, at least none that accepted him for long. Perhaps he couldn’t quite bring himself to adhere to a gang mentality born from the Jante law’s rules against individual success, given his ambition to be somehow exceptional. But his need to connect made him try in different environments. In his manifesto, he claims that his Muslim acquaintances from his youth were tactical alliances, most probably to justify his earlier friendships to his current anti-Muslim audience.
He writes: “In Oslo, as an ethnic Norwegian youth aged [fourteen to eighteen], you were restricted. If you didn’t have affiliations to the Muslim gangs, [y]our travel was restricted to your own neighborhoods in Oslo West and certain central points in the city. Unless you had Muslim contacts you could easily be subject to harassment, beatings and robbery. Our alliances with the Muslim gangs were strictly seen as a necessity for us. At least for me. . . .”
Since the Muslim integration had been gradually increasing for a decade, the two boys would be exposed to classes teaching tolerance and respect for other ethnic beliefs and customs. Muslims were accepted by most citizens because they had no choice. Yet many of these new citizens didn’t adhere to their new country’s customs, and certainly not the Laws of Jante.
At the age of thirteen, Breivik, still underdeveloped physically, was persuaded by his sister, Elisabeth, to spend more time in the gym. She was the one who had brought him there for the first time. With Elisabeth getting ready to move to California, Breivik had a new workout mate in his Muslim friend. The two of them started going to the gym regularly in an effort to build their muscles. As was true with many boys
his age and older, he began experimenting with anabolic steroids. For one this young and underdeveloped, we can only guess how these drugs, containing hormones, would affect him, if he indeed continued using them.
Around this time, other boys in his class began “mobbing” him, catching him off guard and belittling him in front of girls. Breivik had disciplined himself to weather the attacks with little outward emotion. Teachers would remark years later that he had become invisible. One of his teachers from this period of his life, when contacted by the police after the attacks in 2011, vaguely remembered him. “Just another unremarkable kid,” was all she recalled.
Maybe, in his own way, he had learned to hide his loneliness and alienation from the remaining few people with whom he had tried to connect. Maybe he was already beginning to disconnect from the pack. The people around him marched to a law that seemed part of their DNA. Perhaps Breivik began to regard the idea of having an all-knowing set of rules as paradoxical to success.
Even in junior high, hip-hop music had begun to work its way into the students’ awareness. Movies, television, and video games tended to rely on violence for their success in gaining a foothold in the culture. And drug and alcohol abuse were no strangers to this generation of teens (nor are they today).
This age group is always the first to feel the slack caused by unprepared or unqualified teachers. A faculty that begins to lose control of its students seems at its worst when faced with junior high students who realize they’ll never be punished for deeds that deter not only their own education, but the education of others. It’s as if they have an acute sense of smell, one that enables them to sense the fear emanating from their new teachers’ failure to discipline them. They also pick up fear and weakness from someone who is alone and vulnerable, as both Breivik and Kaczynski were.
The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer Page 6
