A psycho in Norway

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Gaear makes an excellent point -- the focus should be on the victims and their families. In a way it is -- after a tragedy of this magnitude, we all say "those victims should not have died -- what happened that caused this horrible event, and what can we do to reduce the risk of it happening again?"

So we look for reasons -- a pattern. We look to see if the killer acted alone or if there are more out there like him. We look to see if as a society we enabled or encouraged this. We look for policy changes that will stop further such attacks. All of that is natural. So is the desire to scapegoat those with whom we disagree. It's a natural reaction. But it must be tempered with reason, logic and fairness.

 

Where are all you guys defending various muslim clerics around the world who have been inciting hatred and fear when some misguided murderous lunatic has taken their word as gospel?

 

I'd say it is, in most cases. From what I'd seen, where Breivik's background is commented, it is usually with a sort of surprise and shock. To most people, guys that look like him, talk like him and come from a Western society don't do that kind of thing. (Most) people are trying to understand what happened and why, adjust their expectations of what is possible and not, and not to slam "people like him" out of hand. They are, basically, still trying to come to grips with what happened.

Where you see a desire to "scapegoat", I see disbelief. People are trying to understand how this happened - because it shouldn't have happened, according to most. I do not mean "should not have happened" as in it is morally wrong, but as in "the world isn't supposed to work that way." This isn't an assault on an immigrant or vandalism. Part of what makes this so shocking - and newsworthy - is that a white, supposedly Christian Norwegian who looks like a graduate student or a young entrepreneur, no matter how extreme his right-wing views are, is not the kind of person who could be expected to do such a thing. It makes no sense to people, and we need our world to make sense.

 

There are a-religious right-wingers and nationalists, and for instance the neo-cons, who see that religion serves a useful societal and cultural function. I think that Breivik likewise sees religion, conservative Christianity in his case, as having the important function to create societal cohesion against the Great Islamic Horde, in particularly in perpetuating so-called 'Judaeo-Christian' values, whatever that is. He disliked the Norwegian Protestant churches he frequented because he saw them as being left wing, watered down, multicultural.

The main charge against 'Cultural Marxists' by right wingers, well beyond just Breivik, is that their egalitarian, (perhaps overly) tolerant, multicultural ways lead to moral relativism, and as a result national weakness - against foreign influences like by them Islamics (it was Communism before that).

The Theo-Cons who obsess over issues like abortion, gay marriage and the like are their allies in this, because they still command the attention their flock of religious people, but are looked down upon as useful idiots by their secular conservative allies. The benefit of these alliances is purely functional. So far, in the US for instance, the Theo-Cons in such alliances have usually been placated, but never were able to exercise the sway they wanted.

Not doing more than to placate the Theo-Cons is good politics too, since eliminating the sources of their grievance would demobilise them. Keeping them aggrieved keeps the alliance intact. It is my view that that is why under Bush, even with a rubber stamp congress, the R's didn't take concrete steps to overturn Roe vs. Wade - that wedge issue is just to valuable to be destroyed. As a result, they Theo-Cons end up almost always being betrayed, but they are too angry about their pet issues to quit because they ideologically can't ally with the 'arch enemy' instead (perhaps the true curse of a bi-polar political system is that it allows for such switch and bait polarisation) - their narrative remains one of perpetual persecution by the 'Multiculturalist Liberal Left' and of an epic struggle (and that, very ironically, even endures in times like Bush's 43's reign). Maybe the tea party zealots change that, but if they do, there will be a backlash against them by the rest of the country.

 

Here a few things I wanna know:

Does one ( him ) have to be a mad-man in order to do such, or is this the cold-logic of his believe.

It seems a bit easy for me to label him a raving-lunatic.
Are people afraid to accept that he may be sane just like everyone else? Is it not possible that evil is not only the mad-man's thing.
The logic of evil led many people in WW2 to commit ugly crimes on the Jews and others.

And:

Is it true that he insisted on being examined by a Japanese Shrink. Arguing that the Japanese could truly understand his xenophobic-world-view and his honor. Since the Japanese are xenophobic themselves to a degree and are still free of cultural-Marxism.

 

I think he is not mad but that he acted with cold logic on his beliefs. He is not alone in his beliefs, obviously, just in acting logically on their premise. That is why I think dismissing him as mad is an all too convenient way to not having to reassess these beliefs for validity. Those conservatives who buy in on the threat supposedly being posed by 'World Islam', the 'Grand Islamic Horde', the 'Caliphate', are trying to get away cheap ignoring that.

When the German left wing terrorists of the RAF murdered or attempted to murder military people, politicians and industrialists to destroy 'the system' oppressing the working class, their ideological premise was very much key to understand the evil they were committing. They, too were not insane, but acted coldly and consequently on their beliefs. Germany's RAF could not have lasted as long without their support network (the semi-legal Rote Hilfe) of left wing sympathisers.

When the Nazis murdered the Jews and the Gypsies and scores of other people that was the amoral and immoral logical consequence of their monstrous ideology that saw them as not much more than vermin, feeding on the body of the 'Aryan race', that needed to be removed, one way or the other.

Breivik for one is of the opinion that Muslims have to be expelled from Europe ... his equivalent to the Beneš decrees (which he lauded) or perhaps the Madagascar Plan. His idea is to have a final solution to that pressing problem of Judaisation, err, sorry, Muslimisation.

Ideology is highly relevant here. It is highly relevant because it is the ideology that identifies the targets and the reasoning for attacking them. Anyone who dismisses Breivik, who killed left wing youths, because in his eyes the left wing destroys Norway, just as a madman, is kidding himself. Acting with cold logic on sets of political beliefs is merely the difference between an ordinary ideologue and the ideological extremist.

But that is only a gradual difference. The underlying ideological sets of beliefs are still and remain the foundation both of the ideologue and the ideological extremist. That also means that the people peddling the ideology cannot just easily divorce themselves from the extremists as aberrations. Ideological extremists are bred. They don't fall from the sky or wake up one morning with a blood thirst.

As America's COIN-istas like to say, "It Takes a Village to Counter an Insurgency", since insurgents live in the sea of the local population and live with, more depend on, their support, their approach is to win over the village to deny the insurgents this vital support (as opposed to just levelling the village, Hama style, which works too, but gives bad press and creates some lingering resentment among the survivors). Likewise, ideological extremists, Left and Right or Muslim, live 'in their ideological village'. As long as that village merely denies any involvement the insurgency will continue.

One only needs to look at the abortion violence. Does anyone here seriously think that as long as the practice is legal, anti abortion violence will end? It's just a matter of time till one other politically and religiously aggrieved nut takes a shot at another doctor or clinic. Inexplicable! An epidemic of lone wolfs!

NOT!!!

 

Pretty much all the worst atrocities in the history of the world have been committed by people absolutely certain that they were doing something good. As Ragusa said, their deeds are the logical conclusion of their beliefs. Muslim terrorists are convinced that the west are out to get them, that we want to kill them and destroy their culture and they feel a need to defend and retaliate same with Breivik. It is like good Christians who try to convert people, it is the logical thing for them to do if they care about their fellow humans. If they don't show others the light they are doomed. This is why I feel kinda upset that Christians I encounter do not try harder to save my soul, guess I am not worth saving.

 

joa,
re: conversion - depends. The apparent compulsion to convert is common with, to put it broadly, Evangelicals, Jehova's witnesses and Mormons, and far less pronounced with more 'mainstream' (in the European context) protestant sects or Catholics.

 

Whilst some branches of christianity take the conversion of their neighbours as a duty of each member there are just as many that believe the Holy Spirit will make Himself known to people in their time of need, and more still that follow discussion of faith is encouraged but God gave free will to follow Him as a gift and to interfere with that mandate would risk the balance of that gift.

 

It might be a bit of a threadomancy, but today I saw this on the facade of NDK - one of Sofia's monuments and a building situated pretty much in the center of the capital.

For those of you who can't see it very well or are somehow unable to read Bulgarian (really, shame on you ignorant people), it reads "Eternal glory to Brejvik's feat". At first, I almost didn't believe my eyes, but there you go - some ******* didn't just approve of what that man did, but was impressed enough to waste his time and some black paint defacing an iconic landmark right in the middle of Sofia.

 

More than a bit of threadomancy....

Twenty-one years ... that's all for killing 77 people. In the US he would have been given death or 77 consecutive life sentences -- either way it ensures he would never get out into society again.

To me, this is an incredibly lenient sentence. If you get 21 years for one or 77 murders why would a criminal ever leave witnesses? He would have nothing to gain by leaving witnesses alive and everything to lose.

 

I read this on NBC . The law in Norway allows them to extend the sentence beyond 21 yrs if they feel he is dangerous and the experts say he will never get out... hopefully that attitude toward this madman sticks.

 

Well, the death sentence is just wrong on more than one level, and this guy will never leave prison. I think Norwegian law states 21 years is the maximum term in 1 sentence, but in occasionw where the prisoner is considered a danger, it just gets extended pretty much indefinitely. In Breiviks case; he will never get out.

 

21 years is the maximum up here, yes. But we have something called "forvaring", wich means after 21 years, if they still belive he is a danger (wich he is), he can be held longer. So its more or less a probation hearing, or something like that, wich he will never win.

 

What is the point of sentencing someone to thousands of years of prison time? Breivik got the harshest possible sentence allowed under Norwegian law. In a way even harsher than the hundreds or thousands of years he would have gotten in the US(or death in the states that is used). Even if those sentences are limitless in reality they do have a theoretical limit. This does not, 21 years in one go and as has been stated he will be evaluated after those years and they can tack on another 21 years and another indefinitely. As for it being lenient it could have been much worse.

 

thats how all norwegian prisoncells are. Criminals gets treated way better than old people in resthomes etc.

 

While I of course have absolutely no sympathy for this guy, I can't say I like the "if we feel like it" sentence extensions, so in that sense I do prefer thousand year sentences over 21 years plus court-elective bonuses.

Also treating him well is just ridiculous. I understand being civilized and not torturing people, etc., but that's a far cry from granting all these modern creature comforts.

 

The point is you get penalized for each crime you commit. I don't necessarily have a problem with a 21 year maximum sentence. But it should be up to 21 years for each person he killed. I agree with T2 that you risk upping the body count. If it's 21 years whether you kill 1 person, a dozen, or a hundred, as T2 said, why leave witnesses?

Mental note to self - if I ever decide to become a mass murderer, move to Norway and get citizenship there first.