Oslo Massacre: Christian Fundamentalist or Extreme Anti-Marxist?

About 76 people were killed, 8 in a huge blast that devastated the main government building complex in central Oslo, and at least 68 of them about an hour later, participants in a Labour Party youth camp near Oslo on Friday July 22. All of the mayhem apparently the work of one man.

What kind of motive could be behind the double massacre in Oslo ? The self-avowed killer, Anders Behring Breivik, has told the police that his actions were "terrible, but necessary". In the hours since his arrest, a wealth of documentation has turned up, produced by himself and posted on the net. The first material that showed up was from a Norwegian conservative political website (document.no). The website is known as highly critical of muslim imigration to Norway and Europe, and while its conservative tendency is obvious, it cannot in my view be regarded as extremist. The site editor of document.no, obviously sensing the heat that was on when the suspect's name became known, compiled and published Breivik's “collected works” in one file in its pages the morning after the horrific events.

In what sense could he be a "Christian fundamentalist"? Judging from the 45 pages of his comments rambling across political topics, there is nothing to indicate a Christian fundamentalist leaning. There is hardly any talk of the Bible, God or Jesus Christ and what their teachings would dictate as right political action in today's world. The writer does declare himself to be a “conservative Christian”, and makes it clear that this makes him very critical of the Protestant Church of Norway. Apparently, though, he has referred to himself in his statement to the police as a "Christian fundamentalist".

This fits well with a propaganda video (a "manifesto", in English) which subsequently surfaced on the internet, produced by a man who calls himself "Andrew Berwick", and which is attributed to the suspect by the authorities. The themes of the video are anti-Marxist and anti-Islam, and the heroes are all the brave knights - especially crusading knights - who have kept Islam at bay through the ages. Curiously, there is no recent hero (ironically, El Cid is included though he spent years fighting for Muslims against Christians).  Notably, no heroes at all are portrayed in the fight against Marxism. That would perhaps have brought him uncomfortably close to the nazism that many of his ideas resemble, but which he takes care to stay clear of in all his statements. The video ends by showing the author himself posing in various gallant garb, in the last image posing with a machine gun.

The message of the video is clear. That of his other writings are more vague. There is a certain preoccupation with the pragmatic aspects of winning the soul of the Norwegian people for conservative causes, and a clear admiration of the success of the political left in Norway in monopolizing the country's political space for “Marxism” (he never talks about “socialism” and rarely about social democracy). That success of the left must in Breivik's view be destroyed, after which a new day will come for “conservative culture”. He views himself and other conservatives in Norway as hounded by “Marxism”. In a key passage Breivik says that “Today, Conservatives don't dare to flag their views on the street as they know that extreme Marxists will club them down. We cannot accept that the Labour Party subsidizes these violent 'Stoltenberg Jugend' [ref to Jens Stoltenberg, the Labour Party leader and Prime Minister] who systematically terrorize political conservatives.” (For those who do not know the country it may be added that there is no political violence occurring in Norwegian political life today that matches this description.) In a different context he also perniciously puns on the unofficial honorary label “Landsmoder” (Mother of the Country”) for the former Labour Party PM Gro Harlem Brundtland, making it “murderer” instead of “mother”. In short, there can be no doubt of his hatred for the Labour Party.

Breivik's obsession with what he sees as the need to stop Marxism and his hatred of the various political “boot camps” (youth camps) of the parties of the left are the most pronounced aspects of his writing that I see pointing toward the horrific deeds of July 22.

Among the latest materials to surface is also a sort of diary of the last 80 days before his attacks, detailing all his preparations of the bomb, test explosions, scares of being found out before he was ready, etc., the last entry made a few hours before the attacks.

This  man is clearly psychologically disturbed, but shows all the signs of normal intelligence. He has planned his acts meticulously, he writes well both in Norwegian and English and argues his viewpoints with considerable skill. A hard case to understand in all its grotesque inhumanity. If he wants to be known as a Christian fundamentalist, that may be a reflection of his evident admiration of the methods used by fundamentalist Islamists, a way to mark his "cause" as equally righteous as the beliefs held by the "marxists" and Islamists he hates so much. 

Indeed, the video is so full of hate that it alone explains the actions that followed. It is also so well made that it points to more than a lone man's work.

(This blog has been revised since July 23 due to the wealth of new material about the case. The number of victims was adjusted downward by Norwegian authorities from 93 to 76 on July 25.)