Of the major religions, he said, it seems that Buddhism was the only belief system that not only promoted peace, but whose adherents dutifully followed this creed with great discipline. He goes on to say:
“Now, one need only examine the escalating violence between Muslim and Buddhist groups in Myanmar to see that Buddhism can no longer be considered as belonging in a separate category. Have the tenets of Buddhism changed? Not at all. Given the violence perpetrated by Buddhists, should we now consider Buddhism as ‘not a peaceful religion’? I don’t think so.
“Thus, I would submit that however we characterize Islam—as a peaceful religion or as one that promotes violence—we would, to be fair, objective, and mindful of history, need to perceive every other major religion in the same light.”
Breivik, so disconnected with his own pain, transferred his frustrations with Norway’s culture and, via proxy, the government to fear and hatred of Muslims.
It is clear that Breivik agrees with George Orwell’s quote “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Breivik’s idea of truth is repeated over and over and examined from every angle and source and related fact, as if the very redundancy of it will convince the reader and perhaps himself of its validity. Breivik writes:
“Approximately 70 percent of Western European males would sacrifice their lives to prevent Europe from being conquered by Islam while less than 10 percent would sacrifice their life for their race. As such, it isn’t exactly rocket science to foresee which ideology (with given rhetorical strategies) will win over the ‘modern patriot.’ Waking up enough of our fellow Europeans will take several decades. Do not expect him to accept and embrace the light immediately; especially when we are fully aware of [the fact] that he has been taught to avoid the light.”
Again, we see the influences of computer games in Breivik’s writing. And throughout his entire manifesto, he is convinced that there is a conspiracy of the politically correct governments and the Muslim communities against the native European populations. We now begin to understand Breivik’s transformation from lonely outsider to murderer.
At the conclusion of his essay “A European Declaration of Independence,” Fjordman writes in a voice that might as well be Breivik’s:
“If these demands are not fully implemented, if the European Union isn’t dismantled, multiculturalism isn’t rejected and Muslim immigration isn’t stopped, we, the peoples of Europe, are left with no other choice than to conclude that our authorities have abandoned us, and that the taxes they collect are therefore unjust and that the laws that are passed without our consent are illegitimate. We will stop paying taxes and take the appropriate measures to protect our own security and ensure our national survival.”
It isn’t surprising that Book 2 concludes with “Islamization of Europe and Policies to Prevent It.”
Breivik wanted to see European policies on multiculturalism and immigration become more like those of Japan and South Korea. He admires the monoculturalism of Japan and calls on all “nationalists” to join in the struggle against the cultural Marxists or multiculturalists.
He writes, “I believe Europe should strive for: A cultural conservative approach where monoculturalism, moral, the nuclear family, a free market, support for Israel and our Christian cousins of the east, law and order and Christendom itself must be central aspects (unlike now).”
Up until that point, everything reads as fairly consistent with the thoughts and writings of others who support Norway’s Progressive Party. But when we look closer at Breivik’s solution, we can see that it moves into much more extreme territory and comes very close to a fundamentalist Islamic society—in other words, everything he detests. Breivik’s new society is based on hierarchy, patriarchy, and strong authority (totalitarianism). He wants to reinstate the patriarchal model, the nuclear family, and get rid of “the creation and rise of the matriarchal systems, which are now dominating Western European countries.”
For instance, he wants to abolish freedom of choice regarding abortion. Although Breivik states that he had a happy childhood and can’t remember Child Protective Services’ involvement, his ramblings in the manifesto are a clear indication of his own issues growing up, and especially his issues with his mother. In Breivik’s ideological construction of society, we find, according to Øystein Sørensen, professor in modern history at the University of Oslo, the following characteristics:
• A great number of supreme laws and principles, with extremely detailed rules on what is allowed and what is not;
• An institutionalized religion that permeates all of society, especially cultural aspects;
• A cultivation of an idealized past, and a cultivation of traditional values;
• Hierarchal and patriarchal reform;
• A strong aversion against Western liberal sexuality and against Western feminism;
• A ruthless hunt for and cleansing of anything or anyone deviating from the detailed laws and principles;
• A parliament with limited authority;
• Strict rules governing public advocacy of political views; and
• A conservative council whose role is to guarantee and protect the political system.
The country whose regime most resembles Breivik’s solution is Iran, based on Ayatollah Khomeini’s political and cultural ideas and his implementation of a totalitarian state.
Ironically, had Breivik somehow been successful, he would have helped create the type of society he was trying to destroy. By now, his thinking had become so deranged that he believed the arrival of Muslim immigrants in Norway was tantamount to an invasion. He wasn’t a racist, and ultimately, despite the words in this section of the manifesto, it really wasn’t the Muslims who concerned him: it was the government—his government—that he believed discriminated against Norwegians and gave more privileges and rights to Muslims. These Muslims weren’t integrating. They weren’t respectful of Norwegian culture. Yet the Norwegian government gave them more attention and care than they did Norwegians like Breivik. At least this is how he saw it. But they were there, and the Norwegian way was to assimilate, always assimilate, with little regard for the individual parts of the whole. The government was not forcing these new immigrants to assimilate, and Breivik could not forgive this.
A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
That Breivik used 2083: A European Declaration of Independence as the title for his manifesto brings us right down to the essence of his suffering. As he explains in his manifesto (taken from an essay on political correctness written by the Free Congress Foundation), the United States’ founders recognized three primary values in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The essay goes on to state that the order of these fundamental rights is crucial, and if they are to be switched—with happiness before liberty or liberty before life—the result is moral chaos and social anarchy. This is Breivik’s cause against these conditions, described by Judge Robert Bork as “modern liberalism.” The problem with modern liberalism, according to Bork, is “radical egalitarianism,” or equality of outcomes rather than of opportunities, and “radical individualism,” meaning the drastic reduction of limits to personal gratification. The first is what exists in Scandinavia, and the second is closer to the social climate of the United States.
The “appropriate measures” that Fjordman mentions in his essay are interpreted by Breivik as violence and murder and, in the end, ethnic cleansing. He must have taken Fjordman’s writings, as well as others, as justification for what he would ultimately do. In his narcissistic mind, the world depended on him. He would show them. He would finally matter. Again, he was connecting with ideology, making that ideology his sole reason for living.
His conclusion that Muslims want to take over the world, and that the government must be overthrown, is an attempt to find a solution for a problem that no one else knows how to solve—but him. Breivik’s reasoning has now degenerated, and he has merged his hatre
d of Norwegian society and hatred of the Muslims. Once that occurs, he finds himself on an irreversible path of destruction. Soon, he will cease to be another voiceless person who doesn’t matter. Soon, the very system that has tried to silence him all these years will hear his message, and everyone will know who Anders Behring Breivik is. He will make sure of that.
CHAPTER SIX
JULY 22, 2011:
FINALLY TAKEN SERIOUSLY
Defending your people and culture from genocide is the most basic and recognized human right and one of few causes actually worth dying for.
—ANDERS BREIVIK MANIFESTO
THE BOMB
The large white-paneled Volkswagen van is caught on the surveillance camera as it drives past a no-entry sign and into the plaza fronting Norway’s seventeen-story central government building in downtown Oslo. After coming to a stop for almost two minutes, the driver turns the vehicle in a complete U-turn and drives closer, with its hazard lights blinking, to the H-block section, where the prime minister’s offices are located. The main entrance, with its beautiful lobby, is hidden in this view, but it is just a few meters away.
Seconds later, the driver is seen getting out of the van. The video is a bit grainy, but against the white vehicle it is easy to see that he is wearing a helmet, the kind with a clear face shield, and dark clothing that resembles that of a security or police officer. From certain angles, one can see that he is holding what looks to be a large pistol against his thigh. He seems to pause while two figures hurriedly cross the camera’s view on the sidewalk nearest the camera. Then he calmly begins to stroll, left to right on the video, picking up his pace a bit now as he puts distance between himself and the van.
Another surveillance camera shows the side view of the building, with the glass-fronted H-block section on its extreme right profile. The tall trees between the camera and the high-rise move slightly in the silence. Then suddenly, the entire building seems to rock from a horrendous impact. A bright glow emerges along the building’s front, and it looks like everything up and down the many stories of offices is being forced from the inside out. Flames, smoke, and a belching cloud of debris, containing objects turned into shards and floating particles, engulf the street. The trees show the force of the shockwave as they move back and forth in a whip-like frenzy.
Cell-phone videos captured at the time later revealed office workers stumbling out of the main entrance. Some quickly fell in pools of their own blood. Others staggered out into the cold afternoon, their faces frozen into masks of pain, shock, and utter confusion. Something terrible had happened. Never, victims and witnesses thought and uttered in snatches of disoriented speech. Not here. Not at home. Not in Norway.
The debris cloud rained paper, torn strips of draperies, and shrapnel from furniture, cement, glass, and metal. Whole window frames and large sheets of glass were still falling from the height of several stories. Alarms from nearby buildings in the square howled as the shockwave struck their façades, breaking windows and throwing debris. The street began to fill with stunned people, some who had come from blocks away to see what had made the earth shake straight through their vehicles and into their stomachs. Most, though, were afraid there would be a second explosion, and they hurried away from the impacted zone. At the same time, the police arriving at the scene ordered everyone to get as far away as possible.
Ambulances began to arrive, their sirens and blinking lights enabling them to get as close as they dared to the most seriously injured. As moments passed, rescue workers in yellow vests and hardhats began to help in any way they could, their commands to others hesitant in their own ignorant panic.
“Was it a gas main?”
“More like a bomb.”
“From a plane?”
“My God! Is it another September 11?”
“How can we help these people?”
“I saw one lady with a piece of steel impaled in her forehead walking about.”
“There must be hundreds out here bleeding!”
The crater where the lobby had been slowly became clear through the haze of sulfur-infused smoke. There was little left of the white van that had been right there in that same area just minutes before.
Breivik had spent his last day as a “normal Norwegian boy” at his mother’s apartment in Oslo, his white Volkswagen Crafter containing the bomb parked down the road.
McVeigh had slept in his Ryder truck, guarding the bomb, at a gravel lot near a roadside motel in northern Oklahoma. It was past 7 A.M. when he pulled out of the parking lot and started making his way to his target in Oklahoma City. He had planned to be outside the FBI building at 11 A.M. but changed his mind as he woke up that morning. He didn’t want to take the risk of causing suspicion waiting at the motel, so he left early. Driving toward his target, McVeigh made sure to take his time, drive cautiously, and stay well within the speed limit. The last thing he needed was a traffic accident with the explosives in the back of his truck. Furthermore, he didn’t want to be in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building before it was filled with people. The whole point of his mission was to be heard, to make a statement that couldn’t be ignored. The number of bodies mattered.
A careful planner, much like Breivik, McVeigh had prepared for every aspect of his attack. Apart from constructing the bomb, he had scrutinized the exact route he would take to Oklahoma City, looking at speed limits, highway construction, road hazards, and underpasses too low for his truck.
McVeigh was ready to kill anyone who got in the way of his mission, according to Michel and Herbeck. Not far from Oklahoma City, he noticed a police car behind him. Considering possible scenarios, McVeigh decided that he would run the police car off the road if he had to, or shoot the officer with the loaded Model 21 semiautomatic .45-caliber Glock pistol he was wearing in his shoulder holster. Breivik was armed with the same type of gun. The police car, however, was not planning on stopping McVeigh. After a while, the officer exited the highway and took a different road.
According to Michel and Herbeck, McVeigh had planned to park the car in front of the building, light the two fuses sticking into the cab of the truck just behind his left shoulder, and walk away. “If needed to, I was ready to stay in the truck and protect it with gunfire until the bomb blew up,” he said. He was not suicidal but, like Breivik, he was ready to give his life to his cause. He also realized that he might be captured or killed after the bombing, and he had left an envelope with articles in his escape car, hoping they would be made public in the event he could not return.
The date of McVeigh’s bombing—April 19—signified the second anniversary of the raid in Waco, Texas, as well as the 220th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the beginning of the war between the American patriots and their British oppressors. “To McVeigh,” Michel and Herbeck wrote, “this bombing was in the spirit of the patriots of the American Revolution, the stand of a modern radical patriot against an oppressive government.”
No one noticed the Ryder truck on that warm and sunny day as McVeigh reached the downtown area. Ryder trucks were all over the city, which was one of the reasons McVeigh had chosen that vehicle. As he spotted the location he had chosen for his bomb, McVeigh was relieved to see that it was empty.
Walking with a measured speed away from the truck and the government building, McVeigh, wearing earplugs, was about 150 yards away from ground zero when he felt the explosion. Even that far away, it lifted him an inch off the ground. He later said that even with the earplugs, the sound was deafening.
“The brick façade tumbled down from one of the buildings,” Michel and Herbeck wrote. “A live power line snapped and whipped toward McVeigh. Some falling bricks struck him in the leg, but he was able to hop out of the way of the power line. Smoke and dust billowed high into the air. Fires erupted.”
At ground zero, a massive ball of fire outshone the sun, and the north side of the building disintegrated. Traffic signs and parking meters were ripped from the pavement. Glass shattered
and flew like bullets, mutilating pedestrians blocks away. Buildings in a sixteen-block radius surrounding the blast were damaged, many of them so badly that they later had to be demolished.
McVeigh never looked back, not even to admire his work. He kept walking away from the mayhem and toward his escape car with the sign PLEASE DO NOT TOW in the windshield.
Sixteen years later, Anders Breivik appeared equally calm with his helmet on the passenger seat as he drove the silver-gray Fiat he had named Sleipnir (The Slipper), after Odin’s mythological eight-legged horse, out of Oslo. Anyone, if they were to look across the lane into his face, would have seen a man not all that different from most others driving that afternoon. But behind his calm front, Breivik was listening to the radio, curious as to the ramifications of his bomb and maybe even estimating the number of individuals he had destroyed or maimed for the rest of their lives. The sound of his creativity, the feel of its fruition coming up through the floorboards—finally, he had made his mark for all to witness.
Still, there was more work to be done. From the radio, he learned that the government building had not collapsed, and this disappointed him. He had hoped to top McVeigh’s explosion in Oklahoma.
Time to execute Plan B.
His getaway had been clean so far. Unsure of the level of damage caused by his attack, he was encouraged by how many vehicles were on the road. They had to be evacuating Oslo. On the other hand, the last thing he needed was a traffic jam. Would he be able to make it to the island in time to catch his prime target, former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, also referred to as “Mother of Norway”?
As a man who vowed to live by precise planning, he must not panic now.
At approximately 4:20 P.M., he pulled onto a two-lane road that would take him to the ferry dock. Knowing the MS Thorbjørn departed on the hour, he slowed the Fiat to a halt. This would give him ample time to take care of a few preparations before meeting with the port’s guard. The less time he spent chatting with him, the better. The tricky part that, no doubt, worried Breivik was persuading the man to help him load his heavy Peli case of weaponry and ammunition onto the ferry without any hassle.
The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer Page 11
