Norway’s cold-blooded mass killer Anders Behring Breivik claimed in a closed court hearing that he was a member of two cells in a far-right organisation committed to bringing about a cultural revolution in Europe.
The claim by the 32-year-old son of a diplomat implies that he had accomplices in carrying out his deadly mission in which at least 76 people were killed in a twin bomb and gun attack in and around the Norwegian capital, Oslo, last Friday.
Some observers have pointed to the possible involvement of far-right or neofascist groups that have seen a resurgence in recent years in Western and Northern Europe.
More sinisterly, others have speculated, without supporting evidence, on the shadowy hand of government and supragovernmental agencies in the atrocity. Did Israel’s Mossad find a willing killer in Breivik to hit back at the pro-Palestinian voices within Norway’s ruling Labour Party? Was the CIA trying to send a grotesque message over Norway’s planned withdrawal from NATO operations in Libya? Were the global banksters trying to subvert the policies of the left-leaning government in Oslo?
It would seem natural to raise questions given the scale of horror apparently inflicted by one individual.
First, a six-tonne car bomb rips through downtown Oslo late Friday afternoon killing seven people working in government buildings. Within an hour, the alleged perpetrator of that atrocity, Breivik, is on his way by car ferry to an island resort 20 miles from Oslo where the Labour Party youth wing is holding an annual summer camp for over 600 members.
The six-foot, blond-haired Breivik is dressed as a policeman and armed with a Ruger assault rifle and pistol. He calmly tells the assembled youth on Utoeya island that he has arrived to assist in a security check in connection with the earlier bomb blast. Lured into a false sense of security, the killer then opens fire on his young victims.
With security forces preoccupied by the bomb devastation in Oslo, Breivik had 90 minutes to carry out his cold-blooded mission to wipe out a generation of new politicians belonging to the Labour Party he despised for its perceived liberal policies on immigration and foreign affairs.
Breivik did not get excited or lose control, according to the survivors. “He followed those trying to escape by walking, not running, saying, ‘I am going to kill you… This is your last day’,” recalled one young man lucky to have been spared.
Another told how Breivik’s demeanour was that of “a perfect Nazi stormtrooper”. He went about his killing coldly, methodically, shooting people a second time as they fell on the ground – just to make sure. It is thought that the assassin used dum-dum bullets to maximise the lethal carnage; bullets that have the effect of exploding inside the victims’ bodies.
Survivor 18-year-old Erin Kursetgierde said: “People were begging him for their lives and he just ignored their pleas. His face looked so emotionless – it was like he was out mowing the lawn.”
At one point, Breivik – a hunting enthusiast – stood on top of rocks along the shore of the island picking off people who were desperately trying to escape by swimming through the freezing waters back to the mainland. The full death toll remains unaccounted for because police divers are still searching the waters for corpses.
Some survivors spoke of seeing “two gunmen” on the island amid the rampage. Other observers point out that Norwegian police carried out security checks a day before in the district where the bomb went off. Questions are being asked about the 60-minute delay between police hearing of reports of the shooting spree on Utoeya and the arrival of Norwegian special forces on the island and the arrest of Breivik. Apparently, he gave himself up to officers without a struggle while still possessing ammunition.
But in hindsight these apparent anomalies can be explained by the chaos of the moment. Breivik could have easily used a timing device to give himself as much time as possible between attacks. On the island, if he was switching between using an assault rifle and a pistol for his shootings then that could appear to be the work of two individuals. As for the delay in security forces arriving, Utoeya is about an hour’s drive and ferry crossing from Oslo where police were grappling with the deadly mayhem of a six-tonne fertiliser-fuel bomb. Admittedly, questions remain about the police’s earlier security check in the vicinity.
But the available evidence points to one man driven by psychopathic calculation who had planned his murderous assault for at least two years. Breivik may claim that he belongs to a cell of a neoNazi movement, but his description seems to be more delusional that factual. After all, he wrote on the internet that he wanted his act of savagery to spark a revolution. This implies that Breivik was hoping for copycat atrocities from among his “virtual cells” rather than actually being party to an organised campaign of terror.
Yes, Breivik appears to have had association and communication with like-minded ultra rightwing individuals and groups across Europe. He claimed to have attended a far-right “summit” in London in 2002 and at one time he expressed admiration for the English Defence League (EDL). At a later stage, Breivik appears to have become disenchanted with the EDL, dismissing the ultra nationalist organisation because of its professed non-violent methods.
In his manifesto, 2083 A European Declaration of Independence, posted hours before the massacre on Friday 22 July, Breivik reveals his single-minded purpose to free Europe from “multiculturalism”. Among his many influences and causes, it is clear that above all else, the killer was driven by an intense “Islamophobia”.
Drawing on medieval Christian crusades, Breivik writes: “As a knight, you are operating as a jury, judge and executor on behalf of all free Europeans. There are situations in which cruelty is necessary, and refusing to apply necessary cruelty is a betrayal of the people whom you wish to protect.”
As for governmental accomplices in Breivik’s horrific onslaught, there are culprits. But to invoke Mossad, the CIA and banksters, does not stand up on grounds of evidence or motive. These agencies are well capable and willing to carry out such atrocities, but on this occasion that doesn’t make sense.
Besides, to engage in such theorising is to miss the most obvious relation between the massacre in Norway and the role of Western governments.
Of all the toxic pathological ideas against his mother, his father, Marxists, feminists, multiculturalists, Breivik is indisputably a creation from the “war on terror” mindset that has been fomented by the governments and media of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and other Western countries over the past ten years. These governments include even that of Norway, which has been a significant military player in Afghanistan.
In the 10th anniversary year of the September 11 terror attacks in New York, we need to see the Norway massacre in that context. For 10 years, Western governments under Bush, Obama, Blair and Cameron, have waged criminal wars all over the globe allegedly to defend democracy from Islamic terrorists (terrorists that either do not exist, or where they do exist there is a murky history of Western governments creating them in the first place.)
This phony war on terror – a cover for neoimperialist wars by capitalist governments – has been given uncritical full vent by the mainstream media over the past decade. Despite obvious fraudulent rationale, despite bankrupting economies, despite lawlessness at home and abroad, the Western mainstream media continue to cover the war on terror as if it is some necessary, noble crusading cause.
When Breivik went on this murderous rampage, the media followed the Western politicians, including Obama and Cameron, in automatically assuming the action was that of “Islamic terrorists”. Well, that’s par for the course. After 10 years of relentless, unswerving propaganda, the response of political leaders and Western media is the product of brain washing.
Breivik, and many like him, are of the view that Europe is under some kind of cultural or security assault from dark-skinned Muslims. This Islamophobia did not conjure out of thin air. It is the logical conclusion from an ideological mental slide created by Western governments and their dutiful media.
From Bush’s “you are either with us or against us” to Cameron’s speech in Munich earlier this year in which the British leader reiterated the views of German Chancellor Angela Merkel when he deliberately used the toxic words “state multiculturalism is a failure”. How much would Breivik and his neoNazi ilk got off on that?
This was Cameron effectively saying to Islamophobes: you are right to target Muslims as the cause of terrorism. And why wouldn’t he? After all this is the ineluctable logic of the West’s phony war on terror.
In this system of mind control, each and every heinous act is and must be attributed to “Islamic jihadis”. Even when the perpetrator of the Norway massacre was clearly a white, ultraright Scandinavian who detested Muslims, the Western media still persisted in somehow linking Islamists to the event.
This is not to say Islamic extremists do not exist or operate. The weekend of the Norway horror, five Afghan children were wounded by a British Apache helicopter “firing on militants” in Helmand Province. So long as Western governments continue criminal wars of aggression, continue denying Palestinians their long-overdue rights or continue sponsoring unelected tyrants in places like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, then there will always be the danger of backlash. But it is the West and its imperialist screwing of the planet and other people’s right that is the lash.
In the aftermath of the Norway killings, a BBC reporter asked incredulously: “Where could such hatred come from?”
The answer is quite simple: from the toxic climate of hate that Western governments and their media have spent 10 years fostering to cover for criminal wars of aggression.
Finian Cunningham is a Global Research Correspondent based in Belfast, Ireland.
