The moment you began to read this story, you became part of Anders Behring Breivik's grand, insane, murderous scheme. He wants you to read about him, and hopes you will see him as he does. His attacks on July 22 — the bomb that tore through central Oslo, the shooting spree at a nearby youth camp, the entire arc of violence that left 77 people dead — were just a throat-clearing introduction for what he considered to be the main act: himself. And now we, writer and reader alike, are doing exactly what he wants: we're poring over his online manifesto, debating his lunatic ideas about Christendom and Islam, and contemplating, however incredulously, his call for civil war in Europe.
How could we not? We're obliged to look closely at Breivik — if nothing else, then for the sake of the 77 he killed. Perhaps there's a preventative lesson to be learned from asking why he did what he did. But as the dead continue to be buried in Oslo, and Norway readies itself for a national day of mourning on Aug. 21, the challenge remains: how to learn from a violent narcissist without giving him the attention he craves.
(See pictures of the tragedy in Norway.)Since we're already doing what he wants, we might as well begin where Breivik would want us to: his online manifesto, titled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence. On the morning of his crimes, the 32-year-old mass-murderer-to-be e-mailed the 1,500-page English-language manifesto to more than a thousand people, most of whom he didn't personally know, but apparently considered "Western Europe patriots." But even this document, the stage he had carefully prepared for years, doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny.
Much of it is utterly predictable. There are huge sections of borrowed dogma, including hundreds of pages outlining historical crimes, as he sees them, perpetrated by Muslims against Christians. There is also plenty of massive self-aggrandizing, the purest stuff of madmen and megalomaniacs. Breivik anoints himself "a real European hero" and the "saviour of Christianity." He portrays attacks like the one he carried out on July 22 as a form of tough justice. "As a Justiciar Knight," he writes, "you are operating as a jury, judge and executioner on behalf of all free Europeans."
(See how tolerant Scandinavia became a haven for the far right.)It's worth taking a moment here to spell out the full extent of the horror he wrought, so there's no mistaking the level of fantasy necessary to invoke words like hero and saviour. At 3:26 p.m., a massive fertilizer bomb on a one-hour timer exploded in a parked van in the heart of Oslo's government district. The blast registered on the Richter scale in Sweden, tore the face off several government buildings, and killed eight.
It was, we now know, as much a diversion as anything. By the time it exploded, Breivik had already donned a policeman's uniform and was headed for a youth camp run by the ruling Labor Party on Utoya Island, 39 km northwest of Oslo. Security guards waved him through, and a ferryman helped him lift his heavy duffel bag — full of weapons and ammunition — onto the boat. After calling as many of the campers as he could to him, saying that he was there to protect them, he opened fire: 69 people, mostly teenagers, were killed. The youngest was 14.
The manifesto that this violence was supposed to promote has been compared to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's infamous antigovernment treatise from 1995. But it reads, in some crucial sections, as much like Hitler's Mein Kampf, not in historical importance or staying power, but in the way it uses bits of autobiography — much of it fabricated — to launch into long tracts of specious political theorizing.
An Ordinary Life
Here's what we do know about Breivik. He was born on Feb. 13, 1979. His father was a civil economist who worked for the government, his mother a nurse. Their marriage did not last long, and when Breivik was a year old, his mother rented a comfortable first-floor flat in a leafy Oslo suburb of three-story mustard-colored townhouses where Breivik would live until he was 16.
In 1980s Norway, multiculturalism had already taken root, to the point where the prevailing mood could be quite intolerant about, well, intolerance. More Norwegians began to chafe at the monopoly of liberalism, perhaps because of the increasing (though still small by European standards) influx of non-European refugees. The Progress Party, which Breivik would later join for a time, emerged as a leading xenophobic force in Norwegian politics.
(See "Interview with a Madman: Breivik Asks and Answers His Own Questions.")
Breivik's childhood was ordinary, complacent and actually quite multicultural. His playmates were often Muslim boys from the neighborhood. His closest friend until he was about 16 was a boy whose family arrived from Pakistan, Arsalan Sohail. Breivik also mentions a friend named Faizal Rafique. The families of both were shocked to find themselves mentioned in the manifesto and are afraid of getting dragged into the mess. Omar Rafique, 26, the younger brother of Faizal, says no one in his family was particularly close to Breivik. "I knew him from the neighborhood," he told TIME. "He and Arsalan were very good friends."
In the manifesto, Breivik says what he learned about Arsalan contributed to his rejection of multiculturalism. He accused Arsalan, without providing proof or details, of various racist crimes against Norwegians and wrote that he could not understand why Arsalan "loathed Norway and my culture so much." Breivik claims that white women were targeted by immigrant youth, that he and his white friends were beaten up by Pakistani gangs, that he was lucky that he only suffered a broken nose.
(See pictures of Anders Behring Breivik, the extremist behind Norway's massacre.)
But that's not how his childhood associates remember it. "It was always peaceful here," says Rafique. "There was no conflict." Arsalan declined to be interviewed. A friend who sublets Arsalan's apartment in central Oslo told TIME: "He knew [Breivik] a long time ago and has not had any contact since then. He does not want anything to do with this."
Those who knew Breivik as a teenager describe him as cold and often distant. He became obsessed with his appearance, taking up weight lifting in the sixth grade, and he felt self-conscious about his social status. Breivik and his friends began getting into trouble, spraying graffiti around town at night and blasting hip-hop and electronic music. One time, when his friend Peter Svaar — now a journalist with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation who wrote about his relationship with Breivik — commented on his bulging muscles, Breivik admitted that for the past few months he had been getting up early to work out at 6 every morning before school at Steve's Gym in downtown Oslo. "Anders was somebody who could decide on a goal, and implement it — even if it took weeks, months or years. He was tenacious," wrote Svaar.
Yet Tove Oevermo, Breivik's stepmother, said in an interview with TIME that there was no indication that tenacity would take a dark turn. "He was just like everybody else, a well-raised Norwegian boy," says Oevermo. She allows that Breivik could have used more paternal attention: he had stopped speaking with his father when he was a teenager. "He had a desire to have more contact with his father," she says. But none of his family members seem to have detected a resentment strong enough to qualify as a transformative trauma.
A Changing Nation
The country at large was also changing. As the number of immigrants grew — they've doubled in the past decade, rising to more than 12% of Norway's population at the start of this year — feelings grew more conflicted. Some 90% of Norwegians say they want newcomers to have the same employment opportunities as Norwegians, but half want to make asylum more difficult to get. The Progress Party is now second only to the dominant Labor Party. To the outside world, Norway seemed a remarkably well-adjusted country: one of Europe's richest nations, which had an almost negligible crime rate and was a major global supplier of peace negotiators. But to Breivik, the country was being overtaken by what he snidely refers to as the "Oslo
ummah": the seditious caliphate that he says devours Norway's culture from the inside.
The manifesto is little help in describing Breivik's adult life. It makes dubious claims of investment fortunes won and lost. It's clear that Breivik dabbled in politics, moving in and out of association with the Progress Party, finding online communities of like-minded (if not similarly intentioned) Europeans and Americans. He joined the Freemasons and began calling himself a Christian conservative. But by the end, the Oslo Pistol Club, where he practiced marksmanship by shooting at cutouts of Nazis, was one of the few organizations to which he actually belonged.
(See "Fighting Terrorism with Democracy: How Norway's Prime Minister Plans to Heal His Country.")
Breivik was creating another cardboard fascist: himself. He took steroids to bulk up. He boasted to friends some years ago that he had plastic surgery in the U.S. Norwegian intelligence officials believe he corrected his nose and brow to make himself look more Aryan. Not even his hateful ideas were original: they can be found on Islamophobic sites all over the Internet.
Before the attacks, Breivik had a Knights Templar uniform made, including an arm patch with the image of a skull being pierced by a sword that Breivik had custom-ordered from India. But the modern Knights Templar organization he claimed membership in likely doesn't exist, and even the conservative guardians of the Knights Templar history are denouncing and denying Breivik. His "press kit" included a selection of photographs, a video explaining the attacks and his manifesto. On July 17, just days before the attacks, he created pages on Facebook and Twitter. He has asked to wear his "uniform" during court appearances; the request has been denied. And he is refusing to have his mug shot taken in jail to prevent the image from circulating on the Internet.
(See TIME's photos: "Inside the World's Most Humane Prison.")
The Internet — or at least its own self-appointed Knights Templar, the hacker group Anonymous — has been trying to erase Breivik's works and his social-media sites. The group hacked his Twitter account and deleted his posts, writing, "We want Anders to be forgotten ... Labels like 'monster' or 'maniac' won't do either. Media should call him pathetic; a nothing. #Forgethim." But we may not have to forget Breivik to foil his plans after all. The world is seeing him for who he really is, not who he wants us to think he is. The self-styled savior of Europe is shrinking away before our very eyes.
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