Breivik was a lone wolf, but not an exception

Years have passed since Norway's worst terror attack and the ideology that motivated it remains a potent threat, writes Faisal Al Yafai

Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik makes a salute during his trial. Too often the focus is on the inner life of terrorists, argues Faisal Al Yafai (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

‘I do not believe that Breivik himself has anything to teach us.” This is the conclusion of the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard, who, in the four years since Anders Breivik carried out his terrorist attacks, has written extensively about the act and the man behind it.

In his most recent essay about Breivik in The New Yorker, Knausgaard explores the inner life of Breivik, asking what could have prompted a young misfit to grow into a mass murderer.

“I believe,” he writes, “that his life is a coincidence of unfortunate circumstances, and what he did was such an anomaly that it makes no sense even to guard ourselves against it.”

In the wake of brutal and senseless attacks – whether in Oslo, London or Iraq – there is an urge to look for answers to such crimes in the inner life of their perpetrators.

Yet there is also an external world that affects them. The complete answer to Breivik's terrorism, as with the terrorism of so many people in recent years, cannot merely come from within.

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Knausgaard acknowledges this, pointing out: “The world is full of difficult childhoods – some people succumb, while others prevail, but no one murders 69 people, one after another, single-handedly.”

Yet he does not seek out the external reasons for Breivik’s killings. To see terrorists like Breivik only in terms of their own inner lives is to buy into their narcissism – to imagine that, just as nothing mattered to them beyond the small sphere of their own emotions, so nothing in their social or political experiences could have affected them.

This is, at best, to focus narrowly on the man and not on his self-proclaimed mission. At worst, it is an abdication of responsibility to prevent future crimes.

All politics is local and even political violence is rooted in specific concerns, even if appealing to a bigger ideal.

But that violence also finds its inspiration and justification in a bigger narrative, a story that tells lone wolves like Breivik who is a permissible target, and why. In that sense, lone wolves aren’t really sole actors; they run with a pack of accomplices, even if they alone bare their teeth.

In Breivik’s case, the stories he believed are well known, because he wrote a long, rambling manifesto documenting the conspiracy theories he believed.

Far from only being motivated by his own personal grievances, Breivik bought into an entire political vision. It may have been his childhood experiences that sparked his anger, but it was his readings as an adult that directed it.

That matters because the swamp of ideas, theories and conspiracies in which Breivik swam still exist. The words and ideas that he expressed in his manifesto were given to him by others.

And by not interrogating those ideas, by believing that only in the realm of Breivik's emotions can an answer be found, we allow the possibility that others with inner turmoil will swim in the same swamp, and perhaps take the same path.

Look at some of Breivik's beliefs: the belief that Norway – and Europe – is being “swamped” by immigration. The excessive focus on one religion – Islam – as the source of this tidal wave. The belief that Muslims in Europe not only believe the same things in the same ways, but also, somehow, have a plan together to “Islamise” or overthrow Europe – all of these are standard tropes of Islamophobic writings. (Just as they were, many decades ago, the tropes Europeans believed about Jews.)

Not only do those beliefs predate Breivik's attack, but they also find their expression in public discussion in Europe today. Breivik’s views on immigration and Islam can be heard today from the mouths of politicians and pundits. They may not advocate the violence he used, but the messages of “removing” the threat within have clear parallels.

This is the Islamophobic monster in the midst of Europe's politics. And it has wider applicability because Islamophobic violence like Breivik's, or Islamist violence of various stripes, come with a set of ideas about politics and society. They are two sides of the same coin, born in domestic politics but appealing to higher aims. Both see themselves as soldiers in a greater crusade.

Knausgaard’s answer, then, is not sufficient. We do not have to wait, unguarded, on the shores of this intellectual swamp, waiting to be surprised by whatever monster crawls out. There are answers to be found in politics and law. Far from Breivik being an anomaly, he is in fact an expected result of warped political ideas; he is not the first terrorist to emerge from a swamp of ­ideas.

Who becomes a terrorist cannot easily be predicted. But that does not mean that terrorism is unpredictable.

On Twitter: @FaisalAlYafai