Dead or alive. It was up to him.
I searched for a response from the man behind the weapon, but all I could see was the open black chasm in his telescopic sight. My body prepared itself for the bullet that was going to penetrate it. My skin stung around my heart and on my forehead.
He closed his eye.
Now it was over.
Then he lowered his weapon, turned on his heel, and vanished. I gasped for air. At the same moment, my knees gave way beneath me. With shaking steps, I only barely managed to get up onto the island before I collapsed on the rock.
For some reason, I was still alive.
Pracon was later shot at the end of Breivik’s massacre, and he was probably the last victim. Breivik had decided to come back, and as Pracon was still lying on a rock, playing dead, he shot him in the shoulder. Pracon remembered feeling Breivik’s shoe and hearing him breathe directly above him. Right after he fired his last shot at Pracon, Breivik went to surrender to the police. In his final day of testimony, Breivik revealed the reason he had allowed his victim to live.
“Certain people look more leftist than others,” he said. “This person appeared right-wing; that was his appearance. That’s the reason I didn’t fire any [more] shots at him. When I looked at him, I saw myself.”
In his own twisted, narcissistic way, perhaps Breivik felt some sort of tenuous connection with this victim.
Pracon fought with his own emotions long after the massacre, and is still doing so today. Unable to express his anger and confusion, he turned to a response that had nothing to do with candles and roses.
Several of the survivors have expressed difficulty dealing with their feelings of anger and hatred. Crown Prince Haakon said in his speech on July 23, “Tonight, the streets are filled with love.” In the messages given by the authorities in the days and weeks after July 22, it was as if there was no room for any other feelings. The message was clear. If you had dark emotions, such as anger or hatred, you were put in the same evil category as Breivik himself. Pracon and other victims of the massacre have admitted that they struggle with feelings of guilt and shame, because they had been expected to respond to their injuries with flowers and love, not with hatred and a desire for revenge.
Lara Rashid survived Utøya, but her sister, Bano, was killed. “It has become taboo to hate,” she said, “because there is so much talk of love and dignity. I’m so angry with him, I want to. . . . There is a lot of aggression. But it is very difficult because I can’t do anything about it, and then I take it out on others. But I hate him. After all, he has ruined my life.”
Lars Weisæth, professor of disaster psychiatry at the University of Oslo, told TV2: “For those directly stricken, a red-glowing hatred is more natural. If they felt that they had to suppress it, that they could not show it, that could have been a burden for some. It could have been made clearer that one is allowed to have such strong feelings of hatred, that one has a wish to kill.”
Another survivor with anger issues is Eskil Pedersen, head of AUF. Pedersen had left the island soon after Breivik started shooting, on the same ferry Breivik had arrived on. He, too, has mentioned feeling guilt for surviving when so many of his friends didn’t. “Toward someone who has taken that many lives, one should be allowed to plunge down to the darker parts of the human mind,” he told TV2.
“When I feel inside that it boils, and it has been boiling often,” Pracon said. “One feels very alone and excluded when one goes around feeling angry over time.”
Pracon regrets his outburst on those innocent bystanders in Oslo and says that he takes full responsibility for his actions. At the same time, he believes it is important that other victims who might be feeling this rage seek help to deal with it before it’s too late.
“I’m not saying that there are other ticking bombs out there,” he said, “but there are many that spend a lot of unnecessary energy to control those feelings.”
Maybe Pracon, without knowing it, is on to something. This suppression, always controlling one’s feelings and opinions, always living within the designated limits of society, always being politically correct, is the very cancer of our society that helped create the monster Breivik.
A NEW “WE”
It has been said that on that day in July 2011, Norway lost its innocence. But has it changed anything? And if something has changed, what?
Knut Arild Hareide, head of the Parliament’s July 22 Commission, hesitated when he was asked this question by NTB (the Norwegian News Agency). Although he immediately thought the massacre would change Norwegian society drastically, he is no longer so certain. He did experience an increased solidarity and camaraderie, a new “we,” in the Norwegian people in the weeks after the attacks, but he also says the long-term effects shouldn’t be overestimated.
Wakas Mir, a Norwegian-Pakistani radio host for the program Voice of Oslo on the Norwegian-Pakistani radio channel, said to NTB that many immigrants are disillusioned by the reactions of ethnic Norwegians after the attacks. “We have received a lot of response from our listeners about this,” he said, “and they claim that July 22 has not led to less discrimination or racism in Norway.”
Many immigrants are saddened by the fact that if not even “such a huge tragedy as July 22, that happened because of hatred of immigrants, can reduce racism, nothing will,” he said.
Jon Reichelt, lieutenant colonel and chief of psychiatry (KPS) in the Norwegian Army, isn’t surprised. “Big crises are not usually enough to create a permanent change in a people’s mentality,” he said to NTB. “Incidents such as July 22 make impressions, but one soon gets back to normal. It’s not the case that we become nicer, more tolerant, or more suspicious because of such one-time incidents.”
Former Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s statement to Samtiden sums it up in this way: “With time I have learned to live with the fact that I’m fumbling to find an answer that will do. . . . I think the correct response will come much later. And it will come in pieces that will be carefully put together into an expanded and nuanced mosaic.”
That is, if anyone really wants to get to the truth.
WHERE ARE THE ANSWERS?
Questions persist. Can Breivik be compared to others? Why is he Norway’s first such madman when other countries’ histories are marked with many? According to the New York Times, the FBI’s survey over the past thirteen years concludes that mass shootings like those in 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, are occurring with greater frequency. The average annual number of shooting sprees with multiple casualties was 6.4 from 2000 to 2006. That jumped to 16.4 a year from 2007 to 2013, according to the study of 160 incidents of gun mayhem since 2000.
Could it be that this small society that has given the world the Nobel Peace Prize has itself been in the process of changing? Are Norwegians as nice and kind to each other as has been portrayed for so many years, or has something evil been able to work its way below the surface? In a country that prides itself on being picture-perfect, have social rules become outdated compared to real time?
It is imperative to answer these questions honestly before another Breivik with another cause begins killing.
ROLE MODELS
Experts in the field of terrorism believe Breivik could be an inspiration for countless repressed young souls who, in this threatened atmosphere we live in, wish to seek a level of martyrdom. Breivik was the first in Norway. He will not be the last. Presently, he has become a mega-superstar, attaining a status to which those following in his footsteps aspire. The new mass murderers are anything but silent, and Breivik is no exception.
Norwegians seem to be in a state of denial. They believe—or say they believe—that the massacre was a one-time event, never to occur in their country again. Most citizens will not say nor do anything that might bring them criticism. They don’t want to discuss—or even think about—the killings and the reasons behind them. Most individuals join en masse to light c
andles and walk in the streets with roses, their voices insisting “Let’s meet the hatred with love.”
What about the anger? The wish and the need for justice? No one can truly mourn the dead and the injured. The perpetrator upon their lives remains free of any real punishment for his crimes, and instead has managed to obtain exactly what he wanted. Martyrdom. A voice. The power to influence.
Now, in the aftermath of Breivik’s trial, Norway’s response to this act of terrorism will be closely examined. The people of this small nation chose to act without any revised measures. Rather than reacting with hysteria, the people acted within the rules of established law. This proved to be a different approach than how the United States, after the September 11 attacks, bypassed its own criminal justice system in numerous ways. Both the United States and some European countries, including the United Kingdom and France, relied on administrating detention and deportation to other countries where torture was used upon suspected terrorists. Which would Breivik choose?
Ironically, despite his desire to be treated like a warrior, he was prosecuted under Norwegian law as an ordinary criminal.
POLITICAL FURY
The multiculturalism debate in Norway is almost evenly divided between the political parties. After Anders Breivik’s atrocities, the anger continued to rise along both the liberal and conservative fronts. The liberals (left-wing) maintained that authorities ignored the dozens of anti-Muslim messages from Breivik. “We have not really been prepared for right-wing extremism in Norway,” a Peace Research Institute representative said.
Conservative observers directed their ire at the government’s open-door policy on immigration in numerous blogs and Twitter feeds. Some analysts believe the shootings may reflect growing national disillusionment with the country’s immigration policies. “The political establishment of Norway consists of relatively well-off people who live in areas where there are simply no immigrants, so it’s just poor people that are being pushed out of places they used to live and whose jobs are in jeopardy,” Norwegian terrorism expert Helge Lurås said.
Norwegians are said to be fed up with their country’s brand of what has been dubbed “radical liberalism.” In the growing debate over multiculturalism, many on the right believe the liberal policies have set the government against its own people. Nabila Ramdani, a political journalist, said: “In Norway, far-right sentiment is wider than Norwegians are ready to admit. And there is a polite and respectful attitude toward those kinds of views in the mainstream media. But the reality is that 50 percent of Norwegians are against multiculturalism.”
As Norway attempts to heal after the massacre, the two sides continue to battle over a type of immigration the world has never before experienced—multiculturalism. Talking heads on international media point out how easy it will become for Islamic terrorists to impose their knowledge of destruction and their will to carry it out upon innocent countries. The Islamic State (ISIS)—the self-proclaimed caliphate and state in Iraq, Syria, and the Middle East—is using social media as one of the methods to intimidate and attract new members to its cause. This terrorist organization is known for its use of death threats, torture, and mutilation to compel conversion to Islam. It executes clerics refusing to pledge allegiance to ISIS, as well as prisoners of war, and it sexually enslaves Iraqi women and girls. Despite its brutality, ISIS manages to attract new members, especially teens, from Western countries who are converted by ISIS members sent out to recruit.
On the other hand, much of the media expect a police crackdown on the growing number of far-right groups worldwide, fearing that their actions will escalate and add undue tension among the Muslim communities. Both sides of the political debate agree that Breivik’s attack might not be the last one in Norway. With multiculturalism comes rage on all sides, especially when that rage cannot be openly expressed.
Bruce Bawer, in his book The New Quislings, insists that Norway has never really had an open debate about multiculturalism because the left, by using Breivik’s massacre as a premise, has silenced any true discussion.
Quoting a “wise observer,” Bawer says: “If you want to know who is responsible for Breivik, it’s not the people whose books he read. It’s the people who refused to debate and discuss the contents of those books.” Bawer goes on to point out how the liberal establishment continues to exploit the massacre in hopes of restoring its control over the parameters of public debate. This, he claims, is what caused the problem in the first place.
A summary of Norway’s dialogue policy regarding multiculturalism was presented at the CRONEM Conference, University of Surrey, in June 2012 by Christian Stokke, of Buskerud University College. This study found that Norway’s integration debates paralleled those in many European countries where multiculturalism was under attack. Although Norway promotes tolerance toward gender equality and emphasizes the need for individual rights, there is really no true policy on how to manage the influx of Muslims moving into Norway in great numbers who are not integrating into Norwegian society in the way other immigrant groups have in the past.
MANY FACES OF MULTICULTURALISM
In a September 2011 article, Irene Bloemraad, of the University of California, Berkeley’s sociology department, addresses far-right groups in Northern Europe, such as Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party in the Netherlands, the Sweden Democratic Party, the True Finns Party in Finland, the Danish Peoples’ Party, and the Progress Party in Norway. These political factions insist that multiculturalism undermines social cohesion, and this has fueled their political success.
In October 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel proclaimed that Germany’s multicultural approach had “utterly failed.” In February 2011, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called multiculturalism a failure, and British Prime Minister David Cameron described his country’s policies in much the same way.
Bloemraad writes: “Revealingly, in seven of nine studies tracking anti-immigrant attitudes over time, researchers found stable or increasingly negative attitudes toward immigrants, especially in Western Europe, while only two studies reported positive trends.”
Another article, this one by Prithi Yelaja, examines Canada’s recent experiences with multiculturalism. Titled “Multicultural Canada: A Haven from Norway-style Violence?” it contains a warning.
“There’s no reason for Canadians to be smugly confident,” says Barbara Perry, associate dean of the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at the University of Ontario, Institute of Technology. “Pockets of resistance to changing demographics exist in Canada—most notably in Quebec and Western Canada—just as they do in Europe, particularly in Scandinavia.”
Canada has been perhaps the most welcoming of all nations to immigration. Multiculturalism has remained a touchstone of Canada’s identity and a point of pride for its people. Perry suggests that a resistance is building against this identity: “Everyone doesn’t welcome multiculturalism. It’s not universally loved, this notion of being open to all comers.”
“So it’s both an anti-immigrant and an anti-Muslim sentiment they are dealing with, which are both new features for [the Canadians],” Perry continues. “It’s a trend that makes me fearful—the connection between political imagery and negative political rhetoric and public opinion.”
In many ways, Canada, which is part of the Commonwealth and is under the Queen’s reign, is more like Europe, a class-designated society. In the United States, where one’s title (such as count or duchess) means next to nothing, multiculturalism occurs through exposure, marriage, and frequently choice. No doubt, the United States has incredible ethnic diversity, and that may be the reason there is no formal label or policy of “multiculturalism” to ostensibly counteract a class-designated society.
Society and global interaction have changed since the United Nations started encouraging multiculturalism following World War II, when the ideology seemed so noble. That practice, which can be simply defined as assimilation into another culture, is one more way that Breivik—and the Tsarna
ev brothers—were isolated into their own worlds. Multiculturalism made them feel even more remote from the culture they were expected to embrace. Breivik felt he was being discriminated against in his own country. And from the viewpoint of those worlds, the only way to change society was murder.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE LONE WOLF KILLER
To be honest, if I felt that other people could do my job I would not do what I do, that I can guarantee you. I don’t want to do what I do, I would rather focus on starting a family and focus on my career again. But I can’t do that as long as I feel like a person caught in a burning spaceship with nowhere to go.
—ANDERS BREIVIK MANIFESTO
A person caught in a burning spaceship. That is how Anders Breivik described his life, and it is a common feeling among such killers. In truth, Breivik could not focus on starting a family or reviving his career. If he could have, he would not have chosen the path he took. But trapped in that burning spaceship that was his own head, he could not escape and establish meaningful relationships with anyone. All that remained was a cause that could show everyone who had betrayed him how wrong they had been.
Mass murder is not unique to any one country. The worst massacres have been recorded over centuries in the various wars that were propagated, not by the conquest of land, but by the desire to spread ideology. One might suggest that a holocaust perpetrated by armed legions is a far cry from those caused by one individual’s planning. But are they?
A DIFFERENT KIND OF KILLER
The lone wolf shares qualities of mass murderers, but he also differs in important ways.
• Attachment—Someone failed him at an early age. At the same time, and perhaps because of this early failure, he had difficulty establishing meaningful attachments to others.
• Intelligence—He possesses medium to high intelligence. What he can’t learn in a group, he’ll learn on his own.
The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer Page 22
