Eric Grove: Manifesto of a sick mind must not change our values

All they succeeded in doing was killing people and destroying things.

There are some similarities with these ideas in the thinking and actions of Anders Behring Breivik in Norway this week. Clearly, he had a political agenda, which the Norwegians have used to justify charges of terrorism rather than just mass murder. That agenda was spelled out in chilling detail in his “European Declaration of Independence” posted just before he set out to commit his outrages.

He has defined himself as a “cultural conservative”, his enemies being “cultural Marxists” and “multiculturalists” who, in his eyes, are betraying Europe to an Islamic takeover. His attack on the young Labour party supporters was a start in his desire to “eventually wipe out every single one” of the “cultural Marxists”, typified to him by the young people on the island.

This explains the chillingly calm way he shot them in such numbers. He sees himself, like the anarchists of old, as the precursor of a popular struggle that by 2083 will have liberated Europe.

Breivik has created a political cocktail for himself that is distinctive. Far from putting himself in the tradition of Quisling and the Norwegian Nazis who ran occupied Norway in the Second World War, he admires both Churchill and the wartime Norwegian resistance, in whose tradition he firmly places himself.

Instead of directly targeting apparently Asian people, like Peter Mangs arrested for multiple shootings late last year in Malmo, Sweden, Breivik has gone straight to the source of the problem as he sees it, the “cultural Marxists” in government and their young supporters.

It is hard to assess if Breivik represents a more general threat from the extreme right, given his grasp of reality. One suspects the two other “cells” that suddenly appeared in his testimony in court are no more genuine than the political career he fabricated in his manifesto.

The problem for security services is how to assess the material that such extremists send to each other on the internet. Rather more attention will be paid to these rantings as sights are shifted from the hitherto dominating Islamist threat.

Yet, to be fair, there have been a number of successful prosecutions of far right potential terrorists. The problem is to find out when their violently expressed prejudices turn to real plans for murder. The foundation of counter-terrorism is intelligence, and if there are, indeed, extreme groups planning terror, they will make themselves vulnerable through their communications.

It is very hard to deal with loners like Breivik who deliberately stay under the radar and make their meticulous plans in solitude.

The only palliatives are measures that stop potential mass murderers getting easy access to weapons and making counter-terror forces more responsive. The response of the Norwegian Delta Force last week was less than impressive. Clearly, their equipment shortages will be dealt with soon.

The weapons used by Breivik, a semi-automatic Ruger carbine firing military-type high-velocity ammunition, and an automatic pistol, are both now banned from licensed use in the UK following the awful events of Hungerford and Dunblane.

Shooting is popular in Norway but bolt-action rifles are less prone to mass murder than weapons that can dispense 20 bullets in seconds. Slower-firing weapons are perfectly adequate for the deer hunting for which Beivik claimed he needed his Ruger.

Something must also be done about ammonium nitrate fertiliser which makes farming a wonderful cover for bomb-making.

It is noteworthy that it has been banned in Afghanistan and the nearby provinces of Pakistan. At the very least, given its lethal power, its sale, especially in bulk, must be monitored.

Although we must beware of short-term copycats, Breivik was, it must be hoped, as much a “one off” as the American Unabomber Ted Kasczynski, whose words the Norwegian plagiarised in his manifesto. He demonstrated that we need to maintain a broad horizon in counter-terrorist surveillance and we must further restrict as far as possible legal access to lethal technology.

Legitimate political outlets must be provided for those who find – hopefully temporarily – globalisation and multiculturalism unsettling, but we should do nothing to change our basic democratic and multiracial values.

Breivik by his deeds may have made us read his manic maunderings but we must see them for what they are, the delusions of a sick mind at war with his own country and culture.

Eric Grove is a history professor at the University of Salford.