Violence results once the deviant personality and a radical idea become united.

Like halved ripe melons on a roadside stand, the titillating topic of the Oslo Massacre is attracting swarms of flies. For quite some time, the swirling crowd of commentators will keep busy by the emissions and the opportunities to spin good tales. In spite of the genuinely felt revulsion and the political exploitation of the matter, numerous central issues remain obscured.

Breivik has become a negative good that smears and sticks like honey and smells like long-dead fish. These traits make commentary-slingers to attribute the butcher to their favorite enemies. One of the transparent attempts that illustrate the point made is that he is depicted as a member of Norway’s Progress Party. Regardless of whether you like the grouping or not, it is revealing regarding the murderer as well as his self-serving analysts that his membership is mentioned without telling up front that it had been brief. Now then, if you are manipulative, you can spin this. One line of the spins would be to argue that such a party’s credentials are upgraded because a killer looking for support has abandoned them. Obviously, Breivik had quit because he felt that his theories and the platform of the “Progressives” were more than not compatible. Even for a Breivik, these components were found to be incompatible. 

In a free country, anyone can join any group. Democratic parties do not have a membership committee that, after the recommendation of two members that guarantee the applicant’s purity, investigates candidates and their background. It fits the pattern that democratic parties do not know “party purges” that are completed before a firing squad. Therefore, it is likely that scores of criminals have once been members of organizations that remain innocent regardless of what their deviants might have done. What about animal rights activists?  They destroy the work of others and risk killing bystanders. Does this make the retriever that the writer would like to have, share the guilt? Stalin has been honed in a seminary for priests. Once Hitler prepared earnestly for his first communion. Does this make the Orthodox or the Catholic Church a partner in crime? Finally, Islamists are continually the source of violence. Even if most victims are fellow Muslims, become thereby their co-religionists guilty? Calling criminals impostors even if they are Muslims does not confirm the charge of discriminative accusation. Yet we have plenty of individuals in our midst that pretend, regardless of the evidence that even the perpetrators fess up to, that these are without guilt. Those who in the latter case deny empathically any connection between Islamism and terror while they condemn as extremists all parties that are to the right of Lenin, have a problem with logic, or, even worse, fairness. Coming elections in the USA and in Europe will be enriched by salvoes of firecrackers propelled by attributed guilt.

Breivik has been a renegade regarding the values of his country and the culture he pretended to defend. In doing so, he relied on means of “advocacy” that civilization rejects. Indubitably, his state of mental sanity will be central in his trial and for his sentencing. For the purposes of this argument, the use of the out-of-context pleas and the raising of unhinged arguments weaken the claims of guilt by association with the lone wolf. At any rate, Breivik has not been a conservative but a radical. This radicalism gave him the impression that any action on his part is legitimate. Indeed, by the moral authority of his own doctrines, Breivik shared something with James Bond. It is the “license to kill.”

Looking ahead, it will be revealing to observe the reactions to an anticipated new Ft. Hood style massacre. Or to how interpretations will be changed once a Hamas rocket gets lucky and hits something like a full shopping center in Israel. 

Predictably, the main consequence of Breivik will be a smear that will influence the politically unobservant. In the short term this will be to the detriment of parties that express concerns regarding the illegal immigration of elements that are at war with their host society and therefore violence prone. In the next round of elections, the growth of right-of-center parties will probably be arrested. 

Admittedly, the now echoing outcry would be louder had Breivik chosen to wipe out the worshippers in a mosque and not other Norwegians. Rationally approached, his deed helps to remind the world that –probably to the regret of El Qaida- terrorism is not Islamist monopoly. Additionally, an insight gains support. It is that all ideas, if made into a belief that becomes converted into a dogma and therefore ceases to be an object of rational examination, attracts fanatics. Here the question arises, whether dogmas make fanatics or whether extremists are in search of supportive doctrines. Violence results once the “idea” and the deviant radical’s search for one are matched. The drive behind carnage finds its justifying rationality in the ideal state that is to save mankind without the beneficiary’s mandate. This was in Breivik’s case a “revolution”. Note that this demolishes the assertion that he was a “conservative”. 

A blinded terrorist’s isolated action in favor of kidnapped causes in whose name he claims to have acted do not invalidate automatically those causes. Consequently, Hitler, even if he claimed to save European Civilization, does not invalidate Western values. Similarly, his intermittent opposition to Bolshevism does not validate that creed. Stalin’s 20 -60 million-high mountain of cadavers does not make the “working class” or Unions criminal. What needs to be fought is not the distorted original idea from which mass murderers depart. It is rather the phenomena of radical misuse that should be combated. Besides uniting behind the victims, it is advisable to confront the persons and the concept that advocates violence as a means for saving the blind and deaf masses. This is easier said than done. 

Sadly, in a moderate form, the idea promoted by violent ideologies and their representatives are likely to be popular. Assertive and well-organized minorities might advocate a radical application. Furthermore, a slightly intimidated conflict-shy and “lazy” silent majority can give tacit acceptance to extremism. In this case, it will excuse its own paralysis by alleging, “They do have a point”. Additionally, the advocates of compulsion for a “good cause” –which is ultimately their own grab of power-, can achieve iconic status. Universally exhibited Che Gueavara T-shirts make the point. Bikers wearing “Stahlhelms” also demonstrate that violence might cause revulsion in some and intimidate others. Nevertheless, it will also recruit many (ignorant) contemporaries. If this suggests that, the movements that have aggression as the core of their program are not only a sign of their derangement but also imply that there is something wrong with us.

Properly put, Breivik is a “True Believer”. This moral mutation is personally not insane. Their pursued goals are. We talk of insanity because while they do well calculated things these actions are beyond our imagination. True Believers wish to save mankind. Mainly from its original sin, that is traits with which history has endowed us and that the saviors despise. The resulting killing is the political equivalent of medical interventions to remove tumors. As such, they are an inevitable consequence once fanatics gain control of the means and power of government.