- The already extensive literature on the 22 July attacks has recently been complemented by numerous new accounts in books written by survivors. They provide harrowing and chilling details, and make it clear that many survivors wanted such a reckoning, focused on the politics of rightwing Islamophobia. But in government, the Labour party faced the political and moral conundrum of choosing between an inclusive political rhetoric, casting these terrorist attacks as attacks on all Norwegians, or emphasising the fact that it had been the Norwegian left in particular that had been targeted. The staff at the prime minister’s office and the then PM, Jens Stoltenberg, chose the former.
That choice had a number of consequences. For it meant that any talk of the undeniable links between the conspiratorial and anti-Muslim world views of Breivik and the wider populist right – including the Progress party, of which Breivik had been a member for several years – became taboo. The mainstream media’s sudden shift from the discourse of terrorism to talk of “tragedy” and “catastrophe” once it became known that the perpetrator was a white, Norwegian rightwing extremist, rather than a radicalised Muslim, was telling in this regard.
Knew nothing about these attacks, but the wikipedia page has really sucked me in. I'm halfway done reading it, but I'm thinking that this guy seems like every other moron who's ever decided that their lives would be improved by killing hundreds of other people publicly and in rapid succession. ... Contrary to his expectations, he was unable to get any firearms in the Czech Republic, commenting that it was the "first major setback in [his] operation". In the end, he concluded that Prague was "far from an ideal city to buy guns", nothing like "what the BBC reported", and that he had felt "safer in Prague than in Oslo" What a miserable fucking idiotBreivik spent six days in Prague in late August and early September 2010. Following his Internet inquiry, Breivik noted that "Prague is known for maybe being the most important transit site point for illicit drugs and weapons in Europe". Despite the fact that Prague has one of the lowest crime rates among European capitals, Breivik expressed reservations about his personal safety, writing that (before his trip there) he believed Prague to be a dangerous place with "many brutal and cynical criminals".
The attacks are unique - at least in a Scandinavian context - because of the coldblooded and refined planning and execution, while the attacker and his views are not. He set out to, and partly succeeded in, eliminating a generation of politicians of the Labor party, taking the rhetoric common in the national conservative and counter-jihad circles to its logical conclusion. I lived in Oslo at the time of the attacks, spent the night guarding a store with blown-out windows a block from the Labor party headquarters. I walked in the rose marches, attended the memorial ceremony. It was a national trauma that affected everyone. I now live in Sweden but much of the public discourse remains the same; he was a lone mad man; don't politicize the attacks. But at some point, as a society, we need to face the truth: the attacks were an act of far-right terrorism aimed at young social democrats. The terrorist shared his worldview with one of the largest parties in our parliament. Claiming that you should not make politics of an event is very much to make politics out of an event. To say that a political act isn't political is a political act.