Instead of seeking a career in the Army like McVeigh, Anders Breivik decided that he was going to go into politics, and that he was going to be an entrepreneur, something he felt he could succeed at, even without finishing school. Surely this was yet another attempt at connecting with others.
Ted Kaczynski graduated from college with an undergraduate degree in mathematics in June 1962, at the age of twenty. He began his first year of graduate study at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in the fall of 1962, and had completed his master’s and Ph.D. by the time he was twenty-five. Following graduation, he accepted a position as assistant professor in the mathematics department at the University of California at Berkeley in 1967.
Kaczynski’s position there was short-lived. He seemed uncomfortable in a teaching environment, often stuttering and mumbling during lectures, becoming excessively nervous in front of a class, and ignoring students during designated office hours. After having received numerous complaints and low ratings from the students, he resigned from his position at age twenty-six.
Disillusioned and angered, he moved home to his parents for a time, before finally settling as far as possible from civilization. He had given up on people; he too had reached his turning point.
A CULTURAL CLASH
Norway’s social revolution came about when mining and timber entrepreneurs, along with the recently formed textile industries, needed funding in order to compete in the global marketplace in the mid-19th century. Banks were founded to serve these new requests for venture capital. Industries began to hire a relatively large number of workers, thus reducing those who had been scratching out their livings on small farms. This phenomenon led to a clash between rural and city development, between traditional culture and politics. Industrial conditions were hazardous. Unions were formed, and the workers demanded collective bargaining. Soon, socialism grew stronger, and eventually it became a way of life, a part of the political discourse.
How did this movement fit into a society traditionally ruled by a monarch? Economic situations just before and during the early years of this revolution had relied on an economy supported by agriculture, fishing, and timber. Several kings, in succession, had been rewarding loyal constituents of their choice with land. As the land became more depleted from years and years of cultivation, many farmers started going broke and this practice stopped. Soon the monarchy was reduced to the nation’s ceremonial figurehead, and its political power diminished. Land-owning farmers were the main source of Norway’s political bloc until the beginning of the 19th century.
Then after World War II, the Labor Party became the major political faction. Its left-wing agenda imposed state control over the rationing of dairy products until 1949 and the rationing and price control of housing and automobiles until 1960. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Einar Gerhardsen, many reforms were accomplished through state-financed organizations, including the flattening of income distribution, lessening poverty, and ensuring retirement programs, medical care, and disability payments for all citizens. These reforms resulted in public-sector growth, and the divide between liberals and conservatives began to decrease. This was a peaceful, non-conflicted time in Norwegian history. The socialist speeches about solidarity, equality, and distribution of whatever wealth could be found were welcomed by a people who had lived in scarcity and terror throughout the five-year Nazi occupation.
The Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program), named after United States Secretary of State George Marshall, consisted of monetary aid given to European countries after World War II to rebuild those countries’ economies and to prevent the spread of communism. Beginning in 1948, it was in effect for four years and had much to do with Norway’s becoming a mixed economy.
The rising cost of living over the course of several decades has spawned the question about Norway’s capability to stabilize an economy threatened in a post-petroleum era. A signatory to the European Free Trade Agreement since 1994, a trend has developed toward making Norwegian industries more open to competition. Information technology has led to small and medium-sized companies specializing in technology solutions. Successive political parties in control have reduced government ownership over companies that require the benefit of private capital, and since the late 1990s there has been increased entrepreneurship and less government funding.
FROM ENTREPRENEUR TO POLITICIAN
In 1998, the year he dropped out of high school, Anders Breivik must have been wondering how he would start his own business. He was facing an economy in transition, where the means to business production in Norway primarily existed under private ownership for the first time. Profit-seeking enterprises currently dominated the economic activity in which he hoped to compete. The nineteen-year-old could not have been fully aware of the obstacles presented by a government that used to dominate the economy, top marginal taxes, strong regulatory oversight, and various unpredictable economic downturns.
On the plus side, Norway had a rather predictable business climate overall. As one of the richest countries per capita according to the United Nations’ Human Development Index, Norway has since the 1990s enjoyed the best standard of living, education, and life expectancy combined. A stable political environment and a respected judicial system ensure well-functioning markets and a top-ten ranking in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Ranking. Norwegian monetary policy successfully maintains a stable inflation and exchange rate. The Ministry of Government Administration would be there to guide him. The Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry would offer him access to its website. The Brønnøysund Register Center would be providing practical information for both companies and individuals who wished to open a business. How could an eager candidate for business success such as Mr. Breivik lose?
To Breivik, it was all about finally being able to act upon some ideas he had been thinking about for months, like using his computer skills to start up an Internet-based telecommunications business. In his later writing, he reflected on this period in his life. He was willing to work full-time in a customer-service company to gain some financial independence while he focused on his ideas for a startup.
“I was not rich at the time,” he admitted. Here was his chance to free himself from the constant pressure of the Law of Jante and finally become the success he always felt he should be. His goal was to become rich enough to break away from his peers, who had already ensconced themselves in mainstream society and who had rejected him throughout his youth. He had already started to plant some seeds toward his dream before dropping out of school, by setting up meetings for a company called Acta Dialogue Marketing. Then in 1997, before he formally dropped out, he was hired as a salesperson by the telemarketing company Direkte Respons-Senteret (DRS). In fewer than three years, he had moved up to team leader of the company’s customer-service department. He was making money, but he wanted to be more than just another employee.
With a friend from high school, he opened his first business. His idea was aimed at immigrants in Norway who needed a cheap way to phone their home countries. He and his associate began selling cheap telecom minutes for long-distance phone calls.
In Oslo, after just starting this telecom business, Breivik began to think seriously about entering politics. He was from the affluent area commonly referred to as Oslo West, and he was an entrepreneur who believed in less distribution of wealth and more restrictions on immigration, despite the fact that his telecom business specifically targeted the immigrant population; so, naturally, the Progressive Party (FrP) appealed to him. He spent time attending the party’s school of politics, became active in debates, and contributed more than two hundred articles to the party’s blog. He wrote mostly about financial policies and immigration, but nothing aimed specifically against Muslims. On the contrary, some of his blog posts were Muslim-friendly.
In a July 11, 2002 post, he wrote:
First of all, it is important to stress that Islam is a great religion (as is Christianity) and that Muslims in general ar
e good people (as are Christians). This is not a battle against Islam but generally a battle against undemocratic habitual opinions, prejudice, and unfairness existing in Norway. The immigration, asylum, and integration politics of FrP have in principle nothing to do with Islam. There are of course some Muslims involved, but Islam as a religion should be held separate.
There are many who get burned when they criticize Islam directly when they in principle should be criticizing certain aspects of cultures (non-cultures). There is an essential difference.
Breivik’s telecom business was a brilliant idea, but the potential clients were reluctant to leave the more-established Telia for a startup. Although the company might have succeeded over time, as in his past close relationships, Breivik failed to keep a satisfactory connection with his partner. They quarreled over almost everything, and Breivik called his friend incompetent. A few months later, he stood alone in his mother’s basement, the small company he’d originated now dissolved. He decided to never again go into business with someone without sales experience. Again, Breivik’s attachment issues prevented him from keeping any meaningful relationships for long.
Bruised but not beaten, he must have realized that his ideas were timely, for he began planning another enterprise. Founding Media Group, an outdoor advertising company, he began leasing billboard space. Coincidentally, his office was in the building that housed defense attorney Geir Lippestad and his colleagues. In fact, the two occasionally shared the building’s canteen. Later, Breivik would remark how Lippestad’s impressive defense of Ole Nicolai Kvisler, a member of the neo-Nazi group BootBoys accused of murdering Benjamin Hermansen, a Jewish man, in 2001 had drawn his admiration.
The billboard business never really got off the ground, certainly not well enough for Breivik to reach the high ambitions he had set for himself. Bowing to his mighty ambitions, Breivik wasn’t above straying from the truth. Claiming that he held a degree from a Florida University, he soon began selling fake diplomas to individuals seeking counterfeit degrees from U.S. universities. At the same time, Breivik decided to blog on the Conservative Party’s website.
During these attempts at building a big-time career for himself, he was trying to be more socially active. There is evidence that he also frequented Oslo’s nightclub scene. During one such outing, he met a young woman from the Progressive Party Youth Organization and dated her for a few months. Although he appeared to lead a more normal social life during this period, none of the relationships would last.
His mother’s boyfriend, Tore Tollefsen, a former major in the Norwegian Navy, who became Wenche Behring’s partner when Breivik was twelve years old, has testified that Breivik had occasional girlfriends come around. “And they were all cute,” he told an interviewer, as if that justified or explained his stepson’s choices, or at least justified why Tore thought Breivik was normal enough and that there was no real cause for concern.
Tollefsen, then a pilot on active duty, saw Breivik mostly on weekends. Although he was generous in terms of gifts, the couple kept their separate homes and he never helped Wenche and her children financially. When Wenche had surgery and had to stop working, Breivik was the one who cared for her.
“He was a good guy,” Tollefsen said of young Breivik, “sympathetic, a soft person, not a tough guy.” He described how he had given up trying to teach the boy how to drive. “Anders failed his first driving exam because he was driving too slow and too careful.” One can only imagine how Breivik reacted to failing to live up to his mother’s boyfriend’s macho image.
Just as his fake-diploma business was taking off in 2002, Breivik was rejected by his political party. His primary goal had been to create a common youth platform for the more independent-minded younger voters, who were more right-wing in their beliefs. Despite his ambitious efforts, the Progressive Party demoted him to a choice of lesser positions, and he was crestfallen.
This follows what Dr. Kathleen Puckett believes about lone wolves being unable to connect with anyone, even those who seem to share their ideas, and thus only instead to an ideology itself. It was not Breivik’s first rejection, but it appears to have been a breaking point for him, just as failing at Special Forces in the U.S. Army had been for McVeigh and leaving academia had been for Kaczynski.
Not all radicals or fundamentalists will actually turn to violence. In fact, there is a big difference between a person with radical beliefs and a true lone wolf. “Even in violent extremist groups, the likelihood that they will act out is rare,” she said. “The extremists get together in groups to hate together.” Dr. Puckett believes the social interaction is what holds the group together, rather than going off and actually creating an agenda to plan and carry out terrorist acts. “They hate everyone together. They socialize and become part of each other’s lives. But for the lone wolves the social connection is unachievable, so the extremist ideology of the radical group is their companion. They don’t fit in, but they still have that need for connection.” And so they try again and again, as we shall see Breivik do, even after he went into his state of isolation at his mother’s home.
In 2002, a few months after September 11, 2001, Breivik embarked for Liberia in an attempt to break into the blood-diamond trade. He left a letter with one of his few remaining friends to be given to his mother in case he didn’t return. This male companion, as it turned out, couldn’t refuse the temptation to open the envelope and later testified as to its message. Breivik had written that his mother was not to feel sorry for him, that he had left to seek happiness and success elsewhere.
In Liberia, Breivik reinvented himself. Using the name Henry Benson as his new alias, he entered a war-torn country and plunged into a dangerous business. The United States government had prohibited the import of diamonds from Liberia, as Liberian president Charles Taylor had been using the diamond trade to finance wars against his neighboring countries. Was Henry Benson the transitional avatar between Morg and another identity, Andrew Berwick, the Judiciary Knight that he would later use?
While in Liberia, he didn’t buy any diamonds, but he did invest a considerable amount of money before returning to Norway. He was likely swindled by financial schemers in Liberia, who were targeting men just like Breivik who were naïvely attempting to break in to an incredibly sophisticated and corrupt black market. The police investigation after the 2011 massacre uncovered the fact that Breivik had sent thousands of dollars to Liberia while he was there, but never discovered what Breivik had invested in. He had also met with a Serbian war veteran known as “The Dragon” in Monrovia. According to Breivik, this man introduced him to the Knights Templar network; however, no proof exists that this was true. Breivik asserted that the Serb directed him to London to attend a Knights Templar meeting there. On his way, he purchased an expensive Montblanc pen, a symbol of the success that he felt sure was imminent, and stayed at the Saint Georges Hotel in London before finally returning to Oslo. (This is the pen he later sold.)
In his manifesto, he speaks of his burgeoning business career. Many who have studied his investments have found that he had reason to brag about his prowess in building a fortune. Others, content to settle for the accounts most publicized about him, point to the aforementioned failures and the more modest profits. Perhaps his amassed wealth at that time was somewhere between those extremes.
Breivik put it this way:
The next three years I worked an average of twelve hours per day with my company, E-Commerce Group. At one point I had six employees, two in Norway, two in Russia, one in Romania, and one in Indonesia. I registered an off shore company and several off shore bank accounts in order to avoid excessive taxation (anonymous debit cards and ATMs). This way, I could build up funds faster.
His desire was (and is) to start a pan-European conservative movement. Indeed, he is still trying to direct that movement from his prison cell today. As of the fall of 2014, he was still attempting to establish a new political party.
Funding for E-Commerce Group must have been c
oming in at a reasonably steady rate, for Breivik claimed it had started out with a bang, and he made his first million (NOK) at the age of twenty-four. This goal, he said, peaked at four million just a year later. At this time, in 2006, a recession lowered the income margins, and he decided to dump the company, but not before salvaging most of the funds.
He writes:
The most cost-efficient way of doing this in my country is to file for bankruptcy, which I did. I now had completed my goal and I had enough funding to proceed with the planning of an assault operation.
During the trial, Breivik claimed that he hid his radical opinions during this time in order to avoid drawing negative attention that could later ruin his ulterior plans.
The following, condensed, transcribed, and edited, is from one of his blogs after the party agreed to keep him on its board. It is as close as possible to his exact text:
June 8, 2002. I have founded and have run two companies, and am working on a third right now. I sold my last company eight years ago to a competitor. In order not to consume my saved capital, I work part-time at a bank.
Am I a Capitalist [sic]? According to the definition, I appear to be. Moreover, I react to the Socialists’ prejudice and delusions about so-called capitalists. I am an entrepreneur/capitalist and I work my ass off, and must therefore sacrifice a lot of prime time and resources on a project that might go to hell. This is a risk that I’m taking, and like all entrepreneurs I’m risking going bankrupt, having a nervous breakdown, losing contact with friends, etc. Now chances are that I can create income for the state welfare system and that I can live the rest of my life without financial worries.
I will never accept that certain people (after looking at my future Ferrari) will label me a cynical asshole of a Capitalist (who must have stolen money from the poor) driving around laughing at the homeless. Capitalism is the force behind advancing!
The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer Page 8
