Murderer Turns Norway Against Xenophobia
Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg
Ramin Talie/Bloomberg
The Labor Party of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, seen here, which Breivik targeted in the attacks, won 32 percent of the election, its best result in 24 years.
The Labor Party of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, seen here, which Breivik targeted in the attacks, won 32 percent of the election, its best result in 24 years. Photographer: Ramin Talie/Bloomberg
Anders Behring Breivik may have helped silence xenophobia in Norway as voters shun the anti- immigration party he was a member of before he committed the July massacre that left 77 people dead.
Popular support for the Progress Party, the second biggest in Norway’s national parliament, fell by 6.1 percentage points to 11.4 percent in a Sept. 12 municipal vote, the political group’s worst result in 16 years. The Labor Party of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, which Breivik targeted in the attacks, won 32 percent of the election, its best result in 24 years.
“The Progress Party largely built their base on spreading suspicion, especially against Islam and Muslims,” said Thomas Hylland Eriksen, an anthropologist at the University of Oslo, in an interview. The attacks have “been very damaging for them and that will have a civilizing effect on the debate,” he said.
Norwegians have spent the past two months working through their horror over the killings and reaffirming Scandinavian principles of tolerance and equality. That may help reverse a pan-Nordic trend that had seen a surge in the popularity of parties seeking to stem the inflow of immigrants from mostly Muslim countries as voters balked at the prospect of sharing their welfare benefits.
In neighboring Denmark, voters toppled a Liberal- Conservative government this month that ruled with the support of the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party. Backing for the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration party in the largest Nordic country, fell to 5.5 percent this month from 6.8 percent in June, according a poll by TNS-Sifo.
Posted Manifesto
Breivik, who will remain in solitary confinement for at least four more weeks as police continue their investigation, went on a shooting rampage on July 22 at a Labor Party youth camp that killed 69, including some as young as 14. A few hours earlier, he detonated a car bomb in Oslo’s government district, killing eight. The attacks were part of a crusade against “cultural Marxism” and the “Islamization” of Europe, according to a 1,500-page manifesto Breivik posted online hours before the killings.
While Breivik’s attacks triggered a backlash against anti- immigration policies, they also unleashed calls for better police protection.
“It’s made us all a little bit more paranoid, a little more insecure, a little less trusting,” Eriksen said. “And that will remain, this loss of trust because we know that it could happen again.”
‘Terror Industry’
The Norwegian government proposed last week to increase this year’s budget by as much as 723 million kroner ($127 million) to cover costs related to the attacks. Of that, 195 million kroner will go to the Justice Ministry to beef up police and civil defense services.
“The counter terrorism strategy in Norway will change as a result of this act and this of course will cost money,” Joakim Hammerlin, author of the book “The Terror Industry,” said in a Sept. 19 interview.
The Defense Ministry will next year get the biggest cash boost of all state departments, according to a government document obtained by Oslo-based newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv.
Norway’s government has appointed an independent commission to probe why it took police 1 1/2 hours to get to the island where Breivik shot members of the Labor Party’s youth faction, himself disguised as a law enforcement officer. The police blamed inadequate transportation and a shortage of staff.
Maximum Sentence
The Norwegian Police Security Service is under scrutiny for failing to include Breivik on a watch list of suspected terrorists, even after his name appeared on an Interpol list of individuals buying dangerous chemicals over the internet.
“In European countries, as in the U.S., there has been a tendency to introduce all these counter terrorism measures such as profiling,” Hammerlin said. In Norway “the immediate response has been less aggressive. We haven’t had these broad surveillance measures.”
Breivik will be charged with acts of terror and may be the first person in Norway to be indicted for committing crimes against humanity. The offence carries a maximum sentence of 30 years. That’s nine years longer than Norway’s current maximum prison term.
Breivik is in solitary confinement term at Ila Landsfengsel outside Oslo, a prison built in the late 1930s and used by the Nazis to incarcerate Norwegian prisoners of war.
Inmates in the Nordic country face prison sentences designed to rehabilitate rather than just punish them, according to the Justice Ministry.
Flat-Screen TVs
Norway’s newest maximum-security prison in Halden offers cells with flat-screen TVs, unbarred windows, private bathrooms, and access to work-out rooms and a music studio. The prison came second in a competition for best Norwegian interior design this month, an award won in 2009 by the Oslo opera house.
“I strongly believe Norwegian law is too soft on criminals,” said Nina Myhre, a 37-year-old event planner from Oslo. “When we’ve been subjected to such terrible, inhuman acts by just one man, it’s obvious that Norway needs to change its rules and laws.”
Someone like Breivik “shouldn’t be let out among normal people again,” she said.
At the same time, the Progress Party is trying to reinvent itself and pull off a comeback in Norwegian politics. Carl I. Hagen, a former Progress Party leader and a candidate for Oslo mayor in this month’s elections, said his party is toning down its rhetoric, while sticking to its basic policies.
Asylum Seekers
That may help the party persuade voters to reconsider its agenda on immigrants once the shock of the July 22 attacks wears off, according to Hanne Marthe Narud, a political scientist at the University of Oslo.
Norway received the second-highest number of new asylum- seekers per inhabitant after Sweden last year, according to a survey of 44 industrialized nations by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Non-western immigrants and their children accounted for 9.4 percent of Norway’s population last year. In Germany, non-western immigrants made up 6 percent, data from the national statistics offices of each country show.
Stoltenberg’s Labor Party has argued in favor of “balanced, controlled” immigration, which it calls “fundamentally positive” on its website.
“Quite a few people are still skeptical about the policies the government has had on immigration,” Narud said. “Maybe they don’t want to say that right now. That might change in a year or two when things get back to normal.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Marianne Stigset in Oslo at mstigset@bloomberg.net; Josiane Kremer in Oslo at jkremer4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tasneem Brogger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net
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