When violence becomes a way of life
The scenes and testimonies of the disaster in Norway make it difficult to justify. Pictures of children and adolescents who swam away trying to escape the killer’s bullets linger in the memory, as does the methodical and hideous cold-bloodedness that characterises the attacks. In many respects, the words run out and we stare into the opening abyss. The fantasies that abound in the extremist underground worlds on the internet have suddenly become a gruesome reality.
It is still too early to make any deeper analysis of what happened and why. There are no simple explanations, and we should guard against them. An event of this nature requires a deep and comprehensive analysis – that much we owe the victims. But some reflections are still possible.
The notions of community found in Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto can be found in a variety of shady sites on the Internet. Here are nurtured the beliefs in an ongoing ‘Islamisation of Europe’, which construes the established political parties as traitors who have sold out Western civilisation. Particularly virulent is the attack on social democracy and liberalism; it is society and its representatives, politicians, bureaucrats, media, researchers and teachers, who are seen as the main enemies; it is these forces that lie behind the encouraging and enabling of ‘Islamisation’. With this logic, they are thereby transformed into a key objective in an ongoing war.
Central to these internet twilight worlds are the constant references to the forthcoming armed struggle, like the idea of ??a corrupt elite that suppresses the backlash against Islamisation. In Breivik’s manifesto, a picture is painted of an inevitable European civil war, where the activists have no other option but to take up arms. We are said to be facing a civil war that cannot stop unless and until the ‘traitors’ have been liquidated and the Muslims who have not converted to Christianity, removed. Particularly important in these visions of history’s approaching end, and the dawn of this utopian age, are references to myths about the historical warriors who have shown the way – in Breivik’s case this takes the form of Christian crusaders, about whom Breivik writes in its manifesto:
Many brothers and sisters have fallen already, the pioneers, the brave heroes, and the first to pick up their guns. We are the legacy of these first ‘unknown’ pioneers. We did not want this but we are left no choice. Armed struggle is the only rational approach.
Brevik’s manifesto, and the environments from which he got his inspiration, are somewhat similar to the groups that American scholar Jeffrey Kaplan terms ‘the fifth wave’ of terror groups. What characterises them is not only the dream of creating a new utopian world, but also the notion that this is possible in a lifetime. To achieve this dream, large-scale killing is not only necessary but a desirable means to reach the glorified end: utopia’s arrival. Violence thus becomes the followers’ way of life.
Breivik sees himself as a defender of Western Christian civilisation, which is threatened with destruction. But even though there are links to the anti-Muslim rhetoric that can be seen in parties like the Sweden Democrats and the Norwegian Progress Party, one should be careful not to hold these parties responsible for what happened. It is important that we defend ourselves against collective guilt – just as in the case of terrorist acts committed in the name of other ideologies and religions. Distinctions of this kind are necessary for those who really are interested in exposing the mechanisms, which in their most extreme forms lead to the bomb attack in Oslo and the mass murder in Utöya.
Breivik does not seem to be a representative of any movement in the strict sense. Although he describes himself as part of a larger group, he also has some renegade characteristics. He can thus be seen as an exponent of what is called the ‘leaderless resistance strategy’. This is characterised by terrorist attacks perpetrated by an individual or a very small group, independent of an organisation built around a leader, or network. But this does not preclude the attack from being highly ideological, and in line with the views that exist within various extreme environments.
Many of those who inhabit this kind of loose network see themselves as bearers of truth – a truth that is stigmatised and considered hidden and oppressed by the hostile society that surrounds it. Others see themselves as soldiers in a growing resistance movement. Or, as Breivik says: ”We, the patriotic Europeans, will continue to effectively revolt against the ’Nazis of our time’; the cultural Marxist/multiculturalist elites, who are leading us to the cultural slaughterhouse by selling us into Muslim slavery.”
A central part of the resistance movement’s rhetoric is the constant references to ‘warriors’ who should ‘come out of the shadows’ and show how to fight; by all accounts, Breivik appears to be one such person. The political analysis is mixed with mysticism and millenarian Aryan beliefs about the end of history – the impending apocalypse, the final battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, which will result in the emergence of a kingdom of God – the ‘Aryan kingdom of a thousand years’ or some other utopian vision of a future society. At any given time, a Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma bomber) or Anders Behring Breivik could turn those ideas – which for the most part will remain dreams – into a gruesome reality.
Long before the renegade or small group puts their thoughts into action, there begins a process where the dividing line is broken between the authorities, the mainstream culture and ‘the others’, i.e., Muslims, Jews, blacks, homosexuals or any group that now applies. Everything is mixed together into a conspiracy theory, where the activists increasingly distance themselves, both physically and mentally, from the surrounding society. Society is perceived literally as demonic. To combat its different manifestations is, in fact, seen as fighting the devil himself. In this world, the activists regard themselves as the chosen warriors in a clandestine resistance movement, whose mission is to lead the way for future generations. Or, as Robert Jay Mathews – leader of the American white supremacist group The Order – put it in the farewell letter he wrote before he was killed in the FBI’s raid on the group’s headquarters in 1984:
I knew last night that today would be my last day alive. When I went to bed, I saw all my beloved, of course, as if they were here with me. All my memories passed. I’ve been a good soldier, a fearless warrior. I will die with honour and join my brothers in Valhalla. For blood and honour, for faith and race. For my children’s future. For my ancestors’ green graves.
Leaving such a message for the world is something that can be found in almost all extremist groups; it may be in a form of political or religious statement, which explains why the action was necessary; it may be through a record of how the struggle has taken place or, in some cases, an autobiography. Breivik’s manifesto falls into each of these three categories. Here can be found political and historical analyses of changes in society – in this case the impending Islamisation of Europe. In this part of the paper – a mishmash of sources that inspired Breivik, and which confirmed his worldview – are also to be found the usual description of how the ‘people’ gradually, through propaganda, lost its soul, degenerated and became filled with ”self-loathing”. It describes, among other things, how the people responsible for this ‘degeneracy’ have, by using the term ‘hate speech’, attempted to silence the opposition.
In Breivik’s argument the groups switch places – here the activists are the victims of hate crimes and the provocations of society. This is typical of the current European trend of extreme nationalist groups: portraying themselves as victims of an intolerant environment – as the ‘true defenders of freedom of speech’. But Breivik’s manifesto is also a personal diary of the choices he has made, and a practical manual of how the fight will be waged, how the bombs will be manufactured and media strategies developed. Its design follows the pattern of the underground classic The Anarchist Cookbook and beyond. Actually Breivik’s manifesto is compiled from a variety of books, crudely assembled with the help of modern information technology.
In various extremist environments there have long been two perspectives on how the armed struggle should be conducted. One favours small terrorist groups and the other the lone assassin. These ideas are expressed, for example by the American ideologue William Pierce who, until his death in 2002, was one of the modern white supremacist movement’s most important ideological bellwethers. Pierce wrote the two novels The Turner Diaries and Hunter. The former was an inspiration for, among others, the aforementioned American group The Order (aka The Silent Brotherhood), which was active in the 1980s, and for the Swedish group White Aryan Resistance, which operated in the 1990s. The novel describes how ‘white activists’ create a resistance movement to fight back against a world controlled by the ‘Zionist occupation forces’. It’s a battle that leads to the apocalypse, where all ‘traitors’, Jews and ‘inferior races’ are wiped out and the Aryan millennium commences.
Hunter, however is about how a lone, white activist (”the hunter”) starts his own private race war against Jews, media, politicians and other ”ZOG-lackeys” and ”race traitors”. Hunter could be described as an inverted detective story, where the lone serial killer is the book’s hero, the good representative, while the traditional heroes of detective literature, such as police officers and journalists, are the representatives of evil. Hunter was dedicated to the racist serial killer, Joe Franklin, who – obsessed with hatred for interracial couples and Jews – pursued his private war between 1977 and 1980. He was sentenced to death for nine murders and attacks on synagogues.
Hunter and The Turner Diaries have had many followers, even in Sweden. The books function as both entertainment, literature, propaganda material, ideological textbooks and manuals on how the political struggle should be conducted. There is also a legal reason to portray the struggle in the form of novels: how does one prosecute a novel for being seditious or being a terrorist manual?
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Renegades, like the ideals and tactics, are far from being confined to racist environments, and are also to be found in early anarchism, in the occult sects, and in various extreme religious groups. It is important to remember that this type of underground environment, regardless of ideological persuasion, is very complex and not in any way uniform. Within each category there are a number of different factions with different ideological views, methods of struggle and ultimate goals. There is an ongoing debate, where ideas and beliefs shift and clash. Jeffrey Kaplan likens these shadowy groups to the canaries that miners used to take with them into the mines to warn of impending quakes. And he points out that, long before these kinds of idea reach mainstream society, they have debated, accepted, rejected and modified in these environments. In the same way, of course, these environments are influenced by the surrounding community and the currents that move there – they do not exist in a vacuum.
There are many other underground worlds than those from which Anders Breivik Behring took his inspiration, which are in many ways similar to his own – even if the ideological and religious beliefs are radically different. For example, he has far more in common with the September 11 attacker Mohammed Atta than you might think. They, in many ways, mirror each other in their thoughts about the need for ‘holy war’ that will result in the end of history and the emergence of the utopian idyll – even if they are in a war in which they see each other, of course, as enemies.
Humanity has hardly produced a more destructive version of itself than the people who are convinced that they have been chosen to show mankind the way to utopia, and who are willing to transcend all boundaries to achieve this in a religious or political form. However horrible the acts, they are justified by serving a ‘higher purpose’. They are ”regrettable but necessary” for ”mankind”. And those who are singled out as enemies are reduced to non-humans, into symbols of evil or as ”lost traitors”. Few have clearly expressed this idea of ??being selected to carry out a gruesome but, for humanity, necessary duty, than the SS leader Heinrich Himmler. In his speech to SS officers in Posen, October 4, 1943, he pointed out with reference to the Holocaust of European Jews: ”We have fulfilled this most difficult of tasks for the love of our people, and we have taken no harm from it in our innermost, in our soul, our character.”
The internet has greatly changed the extremist landscape in terms of how ideas arise, evolve and spread. But we must also keep in mind that the internet has not only created new opportunities to reach out to the extreme factions; it has also increased our possibilities – just one click away – to get an idea of ??the currents that move within environments that were previously inaccessible to the outside world. We have a historically unique opportunity – if we really want it – to see what goes on in the darkness before it explodes in public. We must, in the study of these underground worlds, of what they in their most extreme forms are capable of, and how they cross-fertilise each other, try to keep more than one threat in our heads simultaneously.
We cannot get stuck in the belief that extreme political and religious beliefs have been forever abandoned. The formations of extremist ideas has been modified and developed. New ones arise that are syntheses of old ideas, and which therefore sometimes contain unexpected ideological combinations. Therefore it is important not to fall into biased beliefs about what the ‘terrorist’ or ‘extremist’ looks like. He or she rarely corresponds to the expected stereotype.