Atrocious

On any index comparing quality of life and general happiness of citizens, Norway always ranks near the top.

Protected by its own remoteness, supported by large revenues from North Sea oil, unburdened by unsustainable population growth and benevolently governed for so many decades, Norway nurtured a liberal culture and an open society. The country has one of the lowest crime rates in the world and eradicated poverty long ago, at the onset of the welfare state.

Diplomatically, Norway has been one of the most active catalysts for peace. They are quick to offer good offices for any effort to bring warring factions to the table — as they have done for us in hosting the talks between government and the CPP-NPA. The Nobel Peace Prize (which our government shamelessly boycotted last year) honors the icons of our collective civility, amplifies voices of the repressed and sets the benchmarks for democratic practice worldwide.

When famine breaks out anywhere in the world, Norway is always among the first to respond. When calamities strike, the Norwegian Red Cross is always ready to rush aid. Norwegians are among the most generous per capita contributors to global charity.

In Oslo, the police go about their duties without firearms. The army is never called out of their garrisons. Norwegians are proud of the peace with which they conduct their lives. They are proud of their progressive social institutions. Every Norwegian I have become friends with (and there are quite a few) seem to have an oversupply of good will.

When a car bomb went off in Oslo Friday afternoon, the reaction was, not surprisingly, disbelief instead of panic. It took more time than usual for the Norwegians on the streets of Oslo to comprehend an act of massive and random violence that had just happened.

That car bomb was not set off by the usual suspects. It was set off by a solitary, right-wing Christian fundamentalist zealot. The same solitary sociopath later drove over to a summer camp in a placid island and shot teenagers with wild abandon, killing over 84 of them.

The bomb blast in Oslo is not comparable to the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York. It is akin to the Oklahoma bombing earlier, inflicted by a solitary conservative sociopath with dubious sanity.

32 year-old Anders Behring Breivik, who was arrested on Utoya island after he had gunned down scores of terrified kids, admitted the both the bombing and the massacre. From all indications, he acted alone — making it difficult for the police to have anticipated the wholesale violence he committed.

Breivik admitted to the police what he did was atrocious but says it was necessary. He was not a member of any cult or movement. He had no doctrine except hate for those who were not like him. He received no training for the act of terror he did, gaining knowledge about how to fashion a large explosive from commercially available fertilizers mainly from information available from the web. It is said he enjoyed watching television programs about serial killers.

There is, to be sure, a fundamentalist conservative stream of opinion in Norwegian society. Those in this stream of opinion disagree with the liberal immigrations policy that has produced a significant minority of Norwegian citizens who are not ethnic Norwegians. A small subset of this conservative stream disagrees with the government policy of putting much of Norway’s oil income in a large sovereign investment fund rather than spilling all the revenues on social spending.

The early indications are that Breivik disagreed with the liberal immigrations policy that has made Islam the (far) second religion in Norway. In incoherent blogs found by the police, this sociopath warned of a forthcoming civil war in Norway along culture lines. It seems he wanted to precipitate what he thought was inevitable.

There is nothing in what is now known about Breivik’s background that will explain the emergence of a violent criminal. Like most Norwegians, he was adequately educated, properly middle class, and somehow economically productive. Like many Norwegians, he was appropriately religious and sufficiently informed of the realities around him. He was not a fanatical, semi-literate terrorist charging out of a medieval culture cave.

This is the most disturbing thing about Breivik: he is about as normal as they come.

Norway invests a lot in building a comprehensive culture rooted in liberal values. The media is open and all minority opinions are entertained. Dissent is encouraged — and respected. Only a few views — such as the public advocacy of pedophilia or racism — are circumscribed.

No citizen is allowed to be distressed. Norway, thanks to its oil revenues, is among the last surviving welfare states in the world. It has universal literacy, a robust health care system and excellent educational institutions. This country probably has the biggest proportion of citizens working for non-government organizations doing good things like helping poor nations fight malnutrition, supporting efforts to combat global warming, fighting illiteracy and supporting peace.

How could one of the most civil, most humanistic societies produce a murderous misfit like Breivik? Where might Norwegian institutions have gone wrong here?

Every public effort was exerted precisely to prevent the creation of a monster like this one. Yet this monster comes packaged as a Norwegian Everyman, a fairly ordinary citizen possessed by a few bizarre ideas.

These are frightful questions Norwegians grapple with as they grieve the loss and pull together their hopes in the wake of tragedy.

They are frightful questions societies less benign than Norway’s must also think about — societies with less enlightenment, with large amounts of social distress and, as in our case today, a politics that thrives on disseminating hate.