A Lone Nut in Norway

[scottycelt]

That even more prolific mass murderer, Josef Stalin, held similar views in reverse ...

Of those relatively fortunate souls that were left breathing, he locked up thousands of perfectly sane political opponents in lunatic asylums on the grounds that they were 'insane'.

Professor Cold is entitled to his view ...

[burning dog]

Someone with such (in everyday parlance) "nutty" views should expect to be marginalised in any society

Admittedly from the Daily Mail

Women, the enemy. He argues women should be killed, saying: ‘You will face women in battle and they will not hesitate to kill you"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2018206/Norway-gunman-Anders-Behring-Breiviks-manifesto-Vlad-Impaler-genius.html

Don't think 'Right Wing' covers it ...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i see that Glen Beck has likened the Utaya camp for Labour Party youth to the Hitler Youth ... there is no shortage of deluded monsters .... on the other hand there is considerable debate in the USA with comparisons being drawn to McVeigh etc ... and some considerable discomfort at the attribution of 'right wing' to Breivik .... angels on ideological pins are being counted ...


meanwhile Gilligan in the Torygraf draws attention to the preposterous claims that white extremists are a greater threat than al-Qaeda etc ...

[aeolium]

Not so preposterous perhaps, with the rise of far-right parties throughout Europe (with a couple of exceptions):

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,719842,00.html

The main exceptions are Britain, where the BNP is in decline, though possibly because all mainstream parties have moved further to the right (and with the Tories' immigration crackdown which is even being criticised by papers like the Torygraf), and Germany for historical and legal reasons - some sentiments that are openly espoused by some other far right parties in Europe could not even be legitimately expressed in Germany. However, as the Der Spiegel article makes clear, that could be changing.

[Mahlerei]

Glenn Beck is a particularly poisonous toad, and to even suggest that the youngsters of Utoya Island are modern-day Hitler Youth is frankly sickening. But then the far-right - in the US especially - is very good at twisting facts to suit their own warped agenda.

And still on the right, listening to the Republican leader last night saying he used to run a small business in the back of beyond so he knows how to deal with the US deficit would be funny if he weren't so serious. Parochial politics that threatens to demolish us all.

[Stillhomewardbound]

A few years back I was working as on a cruise liner and one of my most memorable visits was to the city of Oslo where I spent an enchanted afternoon. I reproduce a brief memoir from that time as a balm to the current, terrible sadness:


"Oslo. One of those terrific stops where the ship seems to dock almost in the town centre, though in the case of Oslo it’s easily done as the city is very small. Off the ship then at midday, and just following my nose (and ears) I come across a busy square where there is a busking session in play.

This being Norway the buskers are actually a very versatile and technically accomplished tuba quartet playing all sorts of classical bon mots, some fugues and a dash of Abba for good measure. Forty delightful minutes I pass in their company and although it’s a busyish Saturday for Oslo the population is that small that you never feel crushed.

When the quartet wrap up I decide to move on but just seconds later my ears are twitching to more musical sounds. This time it’s a marching band passing on by, somewhere, out of sight. There are plenty of crowds following on though, so it’s only a question of rushing to the top of the line where there are two military bands and their escorts in full ceremonial dress. I later discover that this is H.M. the King’s Guards Band and Drill Team, acknowledged as one of the finest marching and playing outfits in the world, and today they are the marking the King’s birthday. So, their rig is spotless, their drill is smart and their playing crisp and colourful. The soldier musicians are I would imagine mostly conscripts and few seem more than their twenty.

Of course, they are all Finns so they are as uniform in their physical appearance as their dress and while they look deadly serious they have of them the aspect of a Trumptonesque model army. An impression further enhanced when they reach a small square by the town’s harbour district and embark on a dazzling display of close quarter drill and marching in which rifles are raised, dropped, hurled (with bayonets affixed) and and ripely tap-tapped on the paving stones in time to the soldiers’ smart steps.
This is followed by a brilliant drum reveille by the bands’ drummers as they rat-a-tat and syncopate while also juggling their drum sticks and knocking out responses on their neighbours’ instruments.

They’re slick, slick, slick and very cute with it and still there’s more to come as they stand to attention and sing what I take to be the Norwegian national anthem with thin, reedy voices. They follow this with a most familiar and jaunty song which I recognise, but can’t place. My lack of Finnish isn’t helping until I twig that it’s a musical favourite, ‘Hey Look Me Over’. For why, for why, I know not, but it all adds to the gaiety and charm of the occasion.

Then it’s back to some more marching followed by a sharp halt and a barked command as they come rigidly to attention before laying down their rifles. What’s this? What’s this?, the crowd wonders, their curiosity further whetted as the band strike up with a dainty waltz.

This provides the cue for the young men of the platoon break ranks, disappear into the crowd, and then with young and not so young ladies that they then dance around the square. Now, I know I’m in Trumpton!

It’s a typically Scandinavian moment as this peaceable nation seems to say, hey why make war when we can dance.”

[Serial_Apologist]

I hope they only used those bayonets for fish-filleting

[Lateralthinking1]

The problem with insanity is that it focuses on one person. For someone to be declared insane, it usually takes two. When the latter happens, some may disagree with the decision but the decision is unusually authoritative. All the reasons provided are about the thoughts and behaviour of the insane one. It is almost as if in these instances it is taboo to consider the decision maker. Actually, his or her motives are important. Prevention in most "sane" people is the understandable objective. "This must never happen again". Those who feel that this is achieved by a greater understanding of the person may decide that he is insane. Those who feel that punishment is the answer will, to the last man and woman, declare him to be sane beyond all doubt. Both groups have one stunning thing in common. Along with forming completely understandable perspectives with a view to taking action, they seek to distance themselves from the heavily diluted aspects of their own senselessness. In fact, this will be done to such an extent that they will tell themselves, madly, that there is nothing unusual, let alone insane, about them or their procedures at all.

Like everyone, this guy is clearly more than one person. As many of the elites tend to say with a bit of arrogant "aren't-I-wonderful" - "yes, I manage to "compartmentalise" my life". Yet here we have someone whose behaviour suggests schism and we all go looking for a coherence none of the rest of us has. Now, that is crackers. Clearly he was seeking that inner coherence too, to witness the tome that is currently being discussed. If ever there was a symbol of someone needing to work far harder than Joe Average on believing in his own sense, this modern Mein Kampf is surely it. Nail it all down. Very obviously, behind all that detail is a highly unusual level of doubt. This is someone who is normal-ish, abnormal-ish and totally insane. It is someone with no philosophy, a half baked philosophy and a philosophy more intense than we will ever personally experience. It is someone with no mates on one level, everyday mates like you and I have, and connections across the world. The latter are perhaps more in his head and ours than in reality - a virtual comradeship. It may yet though be another thing that wouldn't have happened without the internet.

Because we don't see this, we pour into the pot all of our own individual or community concerns. They could be Islamification or immigration in the broader sense. They could be economic or middle class anxiety. They could be the fear of unemployment and concerns more traditional to the working classes. They could be the rise of far right groups and right-wing Christianity. We also conveniently cling to words. "Cells" was once a word used mainly in terms of blood and prisons. Increasingly, it has been applied in connection with extreme Islamic movements. Now we discover that it is also about groups of bald-headed, jack-booted, pale-faced European youths. Beware of the manner in which language is fashioned overnight to create feelings of new consensus. Also be wary of false linkages. By all accounts, he had plagiarised Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson was widely reported as having been one of the Oxfordshire branch of News International. The chances though of him having been linked to that "cell" are precisely nil.

Remember too some of the facts. For all we know to date, the guy seems to live in a world absent of parentage. Keep some healthy scepticism there about the presentation we have so far been given. He has money - in fact he is a company manager in the second richest economy in the world - so what of all this business about fear of recent economic developments? It is probably bunkum. As for the comments on immigration on this thread, actually 25% of the population of Oslo is of non-Norwegian background. I place this figure here with no spin one way or the other but simply as it is. Finally, be careful too about turning this into angels and devils. It is clear that he has the devil inside him and that many of his victims were innocents. Even the PM sounds like a decent guy. I genuinely feel for their families. It is also the case that governments kill their own people in one way or another every day of every week - on the battlefield, through starvation and homelessness, through hospital waiting times, and much else.

[scottycelt]

Vince Cable thinks those who are holding up an agreement on sorting the US deficit are 'right-wing nutters'

He is hopelessly wrong as always. The people he is referring to are simply laissez-faire dogmatists who despise any state intervention in the economy even to the extent of raising taxes to hopefully rescue it from imminent disaster. (In fact they are just like good old-fashioned 19th Century Classical Liberals!).

The tendency to call some people with whom we don't connect 'mad' rather than 'bad' is most unhelpful to proper, meaningful debate and is almost fascist-like in its obvious contempt for the views (however incomprehensible to ourselves) of others.

Sorry, I digress ever so slightly ...

[Mandryka]

One of the biggest weaknesses of the liberal left is its inability to deal with the concept of evil: according to a liberal-leftist there is 'no such thing' as evil, just a combination of circumstances that give rise to 'unfortunate' or 'unpleasant' events, like the ones that have occurred in Oslo. The fact that some people are just plain evil can never be allowed to occur to them, as it might disturb their comfortable rationalist-existentialist view of life.

Btw, I'm now sick of this story. The focus needs to move back on to the nefarious doings of News International and what WE can do to help destroy that disgusting organisation.

[Lateralthinking1]

The atrocities are those of the devil, if one wants to put it like that, and in fact I did so early on. If you want to place the devil somewhere in these occurrences, there is unlikely to be dispute about location. Having said as much, I am agnostic in the categorizing of such cases. For example, I don't think that I would ever want to answer the question "is he sane or is he insane?". For me, the question is a problem.

Nor would I willingly choose to say that his disturbance was a consequence of significant ills or wrongness in broader society. Societal impacts influence everyone in a myriad of ways as do circumstances. Historically, some mass murderers have a huge catalogue of background events and traits that fit neatly into the profile of "most likely". Others don't. And many who do have those don't become like that anyway. Cause and effect is very individual.

So it is with evil. Evil is a force and no one individual behaving outside a structure has any force. Not, that is, unless things turn out as in Norway. It is almost certainly no coincidence that the individual concerned had an inflated sense of his ability to create a structure. No. Evil for me has to involve more than one person. It has to be really structural, societal, religious or political and the latter two generally amount to the same thing. In the case of an individual of this type, I would prefer to say that something very seriously went wrong, rather like a computer that is corrupted by a virus and where there is no obvious sign of how it ever entered the system.

Of course, I absolutely condemn the actions. They were diabolical and I have no feelings of sympathy with him at all. But, emotionally, do I understand how someone could get into that state? I'd be dishonest if I said anything other than "yes" and the fact that the vast, vast, majority would say "no" makes many into liars. In fact, some though not all, of those who are drawn to professions that work towards the containment of such things, are likely to be among those who are closest to the edge. They have a more acute inner sense than average of its significance to life in the round. Why else would they choose not to be instead a dentist, a poet or indeed a farmer?

[kernelbogey]

One of the biggest weaknesses of the liberal left is its inability to deal with the concept of evil [...]

A bit of sterotyping there, I suggest - do all left liberals believe this? I doubt it.

[...] there is 'no such thing' as evil [...]

I think, rather, that we all have the capacity to act with evil or with good. There is no such thing as a wholly evil person. Hitler, notoriously, could be courteous and charming.

I say this not to condone evil actions. If we think honestly about our own behaviours we can see that we sometimes make a choice for evil.

[eighthobstruction]

>>'The focus needs to move back on to the nefarious doings of News International and what WE can do to help destroy that disgusting organisation.'<< Mandryka

Does 'WE' also include [be a shame to rule some of US out].... the comfortably weak liberal leftist rationalist-existentialists....

[scottycelt]

I think, rather, that we all have the capacity to act with evil or with good. There is no such thing as a wholly evil person. Hitler, notoriously, could be courteous and charming.

I say this not to condone evil actions. If we think honestly about our own behaviours we can see that we sometimes make a choice for evil.

Exactly, and that is precisely why we need laws in order to protect ourselves from ourselves ...

[Serial_Apologist]

What anything is is more often a matter of labelling than inherency, I would say. Evil is a descriptive term - destructive behaviour would do just as well. It's the connotation of evilness, as much used by those seeing it as some kind of force or infection, that I find disturbing, with its mediaeval resonances of goblins and djinns. Specifics are more helpful.

S-A