Utøya - Blog Posts
King Harald V of Norway speaking at the national memorial ceremony at Oslo Spektrum on 22 July 2021 for the 10th anniversary of the far-right terrorist attack that killed 77 people – 8 at the government quarters in Oslo, and 69, primarily young people, on the island of Utøya.
Still, I have a lot of faith in the Norwegian people, for we have proven time and again, in so many difficult situations, how much we can achieve when we stand united in protecting our fundamental values. Which is why I repeat today what I said 10 years ago: I firmly believe that freedom is stronger than fear. I firmly believe in an open Norwegian democracy and society. I firmly believe that we will uphold our ability to live freely and securely in our own country. And today – 10 years on, I would like to add the following: I know that time does not heal all wounds. I mourn all the lives that were lost, and I grieve alongside all those who were injured. At the same time we should truly be thankful for the many people who are working to build an inclusive society for us all. Even as we mark the 10th anniversary of one of the darkest days in our history, all the people bringing back the light fill us with hope.
Today, July 22nd 2021, marks ten years since the domestic terrorist attacks in Norway that made not only the whole country stand still, but sent shock waves all over Europe. Eight people died as a result of a bombing in central Oslo, and 69 people were murdered on Utøya, an island west of the capital. The attacks have been considered the most terrible in modern Scandinavian history.
Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian right-wing extremist fuelled by the anti-immigration and white supremacist conspiracy theories he had read online, decided to take matters into his own hands and put a stop to what he saw as an Islamic takeover of European society (“Eurabia”) and the promotion of “Cultural Marxism”. The enemy in his eyes were the ruling party, who he believed were enabling this change through immigration and multiculturalism as well as the disestablishment of a strong patriarchy. Before carrying out his deeds he had compiled a manifesto, spanning over a thousand pages, of mostly stuff he’d found online but also by well-established right-wing authors. This was e-mailed to many people in power some hour before the bomb, hidden inside a car parked near government buildings in Oslo, went off, alarming many citizens and injuring hundreds.
Photo credit: Morten Holm
A bit after five in the afternoon, Breivik arrived at Utøya disguised as a police officer. Utøya is a small island owned and utilised by AUF, the youth offshoot of the Social Democratic Worker’s Party, who were holding their yearly summer camp at the time. Armed with a rifle, Breivik went on a massacre for over an hour before real policemen arrived to arrest him (delayed due to a lack of ways to get to the island), forcing all the summer camp participants to run and hide as their comrades were injured and killed. At least a hundred were physically injured, far more were mentally traumatised by the event. Many of those who died were young, the majority still in their teens.
Discarded clothes after victims having entered the water to escape. Photo credit: Niclas Hammarström
It’s easy to paint Breivik as a lone madman, an unstable individual who is now safely behind bars at a maximum sentence. But through his manifesto we see his many connections to people and movements all over the world. He describes himself as a conservative nationalist, a fascist and a “counter-jihadist”, and cites authors Bat Ye’or (Gisèle Littman) and Robert B. Spencer, the American Tea Party movement, and blogger Fjordman among others as inspirations. He approves of the Hindu nationalist efforts to expel muslims from India, Geert Wilders of the Dutch right-wing Party for Freedom, and Israel waging war on Palestine. How can he be a sole extremist when are many people sharing his views? How can his massacre be an incident, an anomaly, when he himself claims to have been inspired and radicalised by the writing of others? The attacks cannot be separated from the politics that created them. At the time, the Norwegian political discourse was very centred around immigration, with far-right parties gaining more sympathy and other parties pandering to this by also starting to discuss immigration as a “problem”. When nationalism, xenophobia and islamophobia become ever more widespread and legitimised as a “point of view” in society, the more rampant the extreme utterances become. Many right-wing conspiracy theorists speak of genocide as a last step, where government takeovers in order to stop immigration and deporting those of unwanted ethnicities are first on the agenda. Breivik intended to help this cause by murdering members of the ruling party who he believed were bringing on the downfall of Western society. This should have been a warning, but ten years later fascism is still on the rise all over Europe (and the world!). Some places are close to, if not already at the last, horrific step. One terrorist being locked up does not put an end to this development. But it might not be too late to learn from it.