On 22 July 2011, Anders Breivik killed 77 and injured hundreds of others during an ideologically motivated attack in Norway. Breivik targeted the ruling Labour Party and planted a car bomb next to the office of then-Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, killing eight. The rest of his victims were murdered at the summer camp of the Party’s youth wing on the island of Utøya, in the largest mass shooting conducted by an individual. Breivik was arrested on Utøya and later convicted to 21 years in prison with the possibility of indefinite extension, the longest sentence allowed in Norway.
Breivik left an immense online footprint, with years of forum discussions, posts, and videos. But the most prominent exposition of Breivik’s motivations is the one that he himself prepared for the attacks: a 1,500-page manifesto titled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.” In it, Breivik details his enemies: the pernicious influence of “cultural Marxism” and “political correctness.” Islam and the perceived “Arabization” of Europe through both open jihad and cultural infiltration. Women’s outsize influence in society and the decline of the patriarchy.
The manifesto is less a sprawling work of a single author and more a pastiche of websites, books, and documents. Breivik quotes and discusses a multitude of far-right movements and symbols, from Nazism to the English Defence League to medieval anti-Muslim warriors to Hindu nationalists. The document is the work of a one-man impersonation of a global far-right network and imaginary, and in turn it has since become embedded in this network. Most famously, the Christchurch mosque shooter referred to Breivik as a model in his own manifesto.
At his trial, Breivik gladly admitted that he had conducted a mass murder, but pleaded not guilty. Instead, he appealed to the “necessity” of his actions to prevent a greater harm to society. Fifteen years later, his grievances and defense sound neither new nor fringe. The motives that Breivik gave for murdering 77 people are now common talking points. The far-right, the “center” and even parts of the left all claim that European or Western civilization needs to be protected from its enemies and contaminants: feminists, Islam, communists. And they are ready to engage in whatever violence is necessary to achieve their goals.
