Sane and Guilty: Breivik Behind Bars

Our Norwegian editor Ragnhild Freng Dale offers a perspective from her home country on the outcome of the trial against terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, after the Oslo bomb attack and Utøya massacre on 22 July 2011. 

On 23 August, Norway drew a collective sigh of relief. The verdict in the case of terrorist Anders Behring Breivik was given, and as the newspaper Klassekampen wrote, the judge and the verdict “erased all doubt.” He is sane, guilty of his crimes, and sentenced to 21 years – the maximum penalty in Norway’s judicial system.
Whilst 21 years may not sound like a lot to some, it is important to remember that Norway has no sentence that would invoke life imprisonment – and the death penalty has been abolished for over 40 years. Breivik is sentenced to detainment, as the court thinks he has both the intention and capability to carry out mass killings in future. The sentence can be extended if he is still deemed a threat to society after 21 years, and can then be renewed for five years at a time – indefinitely. It is highly unlikely he will ever be released.

The full 90-page document giving reasons for the verdict emphasised that Breivik’s ability to carry out these acts could be explained as a combination of his expressed ideology, the fact that he took performance enhancing drugs prior to the act, and has trained himself in self-suggestive techniques. The judgement emphasised that he is sane, and “has, after several years of planning, carried out a bomb attack against the country’s government, and thereby against the democratic institution of the country”. The court has, in other words, carefully considered all the evidence and the conflicting psychiatric assessments, and concluded that there was not significant evidence to suggest that he had been insane at the time of the crimes. Instead, they insist, the massacre was a politically motivated mass murder, an act of terror on a scale Norway has never seen before.

Breivik may have acted alone, but not in isolation. He saw his actions as part of a war against multiculturalism, which he claims is poisoning ‘pure’ Norwegian society. He saw it as his duty to act. He is a manifestation of the lingering fascist undercurrent in Europe, what Umberto Eco calls Ur-Fascism, which “can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world.” Breivik’s counterjihadism is cloaked in the liberal defence of “freedom of speech”, a version of right-wing extremism that has never been properly faced up to, but which will return to haunt us unless we confront it. It is a tribute to the Norwegian judicial system that the court demanded a new psychiatric assessment, when the first one excluded important aspects of the wider political context.

When the trial started, many expressed the importance of it as a chance to say that we do not accept his actions or the grounds on which they were carried out, as valid, through a fair and open trial. Far from giving him a platform to spread his “ideology”, the court case allowed the world to watch it fall apart. It has proven his ‘facts’ wrong – and thereby shown that those he attacked, both directly and indirectly, are valued members of society who will be commemorated.

Yet even in the wake of the judgement, we must not forget the wider picture. Arnulf Øverland, a well known and controversial Norwegian poet, wrote a poem in 1936 titled “You must not sleep”, to warn Norwegians of the rising Fascism. Times may be different today, but his call to remain vigilant could hardly be more relevant. We must remember that freedom of speech does not mean everyone is entitled to express their opinion unchallenged: it is about having an open, public arena where we actively challenge attitudes based on factual errors, fantasies and conspiracy theories. To take an opinion seriously is to challenge its basis, to remain awake and delegitimise those views that have no root in reality; especially when these incite violence or advocate the exclusion of entire groups, whether implicitly or explicitly.

We must never forget that ideology and actions are not separate. They are intimately related and rely on each other in such a way that a man can explain over a 1000 pages of a manifesto and coldly recount in court why jihadism and conspiracy theories justified his killing of young, politically engaged people. He is not alone, and so we must continue to challenge such worldviews. Breivik may not see the court or the trial as legitimate, but Norwegian society has sent a clear message the other way: We do not accept his reasons, or his actions, as legitimate. We do not accept his ideology. And we will not let his terrorist acts change our values. The outcome of the trial has vindicated both the solidity of the Norwegian legal system, and the fact that our society is stronger than anything this atrocity could tear apart.

By Ragnhild Freng Dale (@ragnhildfd)