Making sense of the senseless

by liberal japonicus

It might be better to have put this as a comment, especially since this is a growing theme in the comments, but I think this is sufficiently different from what Dr Science has posted to call for a separate post and I've put it below the fold

Making sense of the senseless is a human preoccupation and Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, can be a part that stands for the whole when he tries to make sense of what was/is going on in the mind of Ander Breivik. 

My friends, there is no easy way of saying this: a lot of what this evil nutcase says could be drawn from the blog-post threads that you will find in the media, especially the “conservative” media, in Britain. Some people will read his dismal expectorations and conclude that this inflammatory guff is what really drove him on. They will say that his barbarism was spurred by fury at the EUSSR and immigration, just as the murders of 9/11 were triggered by the various tenets of Islamic extremism.

It is certainly true that on the face of it he has much in common with some recent Islamic suicide bombers. He is disturbed by female emancipation, and thinks women would be better off in the home. He seems to be pretty down on homosexuality. Above all – and in this he strongly resembles an Islamist – he believes that his own religious leaders are deeply decadent and have deviated from orthodoxy. He is repelled, like so many Muslim terrorists, by anything that resembles the mingling of cultures.

Yet, after sighting the beast, he averts his eyes.

People will say that we are looking at the mirror image, in fact, of an Islamic terrorist – a man driven by an identical but opposite ideological mania. There is certainly a symmetry here, and yet in both cases, Breivik and the Muslim bomber, I don’t think that ideology is really at the heart of the problem. Yesterday the television reporters found an acquaintance of his from Norway, a fellow called Ulav Andersson, who said that he had known Breivik pretty well. He was surprised by all the Knights of Templar stuff, because he had never really been religious, and he wasn’t aware that he had been interested in politics.

“He didn’t seem opinionated at all,” he said. He just became chippy and irritable, said Ulav Andersson, when some girl he had a crush on jilted him in favour of a man of Pakistani origin.

It wasn’t about immigration, or Eurabia, or the hadith, or the Eurocrats’ plot against the people. It wasn’t really about ideology or religion. It was all about him, and his feeling of inadequacy in relation to the female sex. The same point can be made (and has been made) about so many of the young Muslim terrorists. The fundamental reasons for their callous behaviour lie deep in their own sense of rejection and alienation. It is the ideology that gives them the ostensible cause, that potentiates the poison in their bloodstream, that gives them an excuse to dramatise the resentment that they feel in the most powerful way – and to kill.

Unlucky in love, lucky in mass murder seems to be Johnson's conclusion. I wish that I shared the good mayor's certainty. Before I leave BoJo behind (because, looking at him from a distance, he seems more like a caricature than an actual person with a coherent set of beliefs) I'd note that he argues that Breivik is no different from Michael Ryan, who shot 16 in Hungerford, or Thomas Hamilton, who shot 17 at Dunblane. There are further examples to think about, including Derrick Bird in Cumbria, Martin Bryant at Port Arthur, Wade Frankum at Strathfield, Sueng-hui Cho at Virginia Tech and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine.

Yet to me, there is a disturbing difference between the list above and Breivik, in that all of the above, when they reached the end of their spree, turned their weapons on themselves. Asking why they would commit suicide after doing what they did might seem like a stupid question, as one would hope that, at some point, each of them realized that they had gone along a path from which return was impossible. Yet Breivik apparently calmly surrendered to police, and apparently "has confessed to the mass shooting and a bombing in Oslo, but denies criminal responsibility". His lawyer relays the following:

"He thought it was gruesome having to commit these acts, but in his head they were necessary," Breivik's lawyer, Geir Lippestad, told the Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

One possible explanation is some sort of cultural difference. All the previous examples were based in an Anglo-American cultures (though the Va Tech may be an exception). I have no idea how this would play out, but I'd be interested if someone with a better knowledge of Norwegian and Scandanavian culture could say something to that. 

Another, more disturbing explanation, is that Breivik's behavior suggests a incipient belief that once explained, what he did would be understandable, or, as his lawyer says he claims 'gruesome, but necessary'. Donald, in the comments, links to a pdf on the motivations of suicide terrorists. I don't disagree with this, but in this case Breivik is not a suicide terrorist. Perhaps this is a distinction without a difference, but in this case, I think it is.

With a handle like mine, it is probably obvious that I would agree with Charlie Brooker's Guardian take on much of the coverage and that I would sympathize with Thomas Hylland Eriksen's suggestion of what is feeding this. But I want to state that in order to set it aside, because it seems to me that Breivik's apparent confidence in the rightness of his cause, even after shooting teenagers at close range, makes this a difference of kind rather than degree. 

Some may object and say that I have cherry picked, and there are any number of examples of the perpertrator showing Breivik's assurance of the need and necessity of the act. The obvious counter-example would be Timothy McVeigh, who was arrested after the Oklahoma city bombing. The wikipedia article notes that

Later, speaking about the military mindset with which he went about the preparations, he [McVeigh] said, "You learn how to handle killing in the military. I face the consequences, but you learn to accept it." He compared his actions to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rather than the attack on Pearl Harbor, reasoning it was necessary to prevent more lives from being lost.

and goes on to note that McVeigh wanted his defense counsel to "present a "necessity defense"—which would argue that he was in "imminent danger" from the government (that his bombing was intended to prevent future crimes by the government, such as the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents)" 

A possible exception as well is the case Ted Kaczynski, whose manifesto  some sources say Breivik copied, and who was apprehended. Still, it seems to me that both men didn't entertain thoughts that there were like-minded folks who were going to take up the cause, and both of them behaved as if they knew that they had little chance of being supported, hence Kaczynski's isolated cabin and McVeigh's arrest while fleeing.

There is another event that this brings to mind, which is the Ikeda school killings in Osaka, which occurred 10 years ago. In that incident, a former janitor entered the school, which was a elite private school, armed with a knife, and killed 8 children. Yet in that as well, the murderer Mamoru Takuma claimed that he chose to kill children so as to ensure a swift death sentence. The Osaka stabbings were followed 7 years later by a stabbing spree in Akihabara, Tokyo and the murderer had a similarly varied collection of problems and troubles that seemed to lead him to where he wanted the police to stop him.

Perhaps it is just a trick of photography that Breivik's picture would not look out of place on someone's mantle, whereas the pictures of others have slowly been filtered out to give us a picture that best synchs up with our image of the crime. This may be why wikipedia articles are illustrated with a picture of a sullen McVeigh, or a grainy picture of Michael Ryan, but the picture of Thomas Hamilton smiling for a portrait is skipped in favor of this. Still, beyond the pictures, it does seem different. In a sense, I hope that Breivik is revealed to have multiple motivations, all piled up until the weight of them channeled and focussed his rage, a rage that was expressed by specific acts against what he felt was the liberal establishment. At least to me, it would make a lot more sense.

Comments

[Countme-In]

Good post lj.

More to read:

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/07/25/%E2%80%9Cthis-rhetoric%E2%80%9D-he-added-%E2%80%9Cis-not-cost-free-%E2%80%9D/

[geographylady]

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"
We can observe their actions and read their writings, but we'll never understand their motivations.
I get angry, I don't like some people with different political ideas, but I would never seek to kill them. A minute portion of the population feels differently about the killing part. Only the Shadow knows why.

[somotherdude]

Perhaps it is just a trick of photography that Breivik's picture would not look out of place on someone's mantle

I immediately thought the same thing. Wow, what beautiful looking man.

[Nell]

I don't find Breivik's not killing himself remarkable. He believes, literally, that he is at war with liberal and left-wing Europeans. He has accomplished quite a bit of his "mission".

Right wing political terrorists don't have a real pattern of killing themselves.

The effort to seal off Breivik as non-political, to wedge him into our rich history of "lone nut" killer white men, is of a piece with the studious ignoring of escalating right-wing terrorism in the US.

[Nell]

I posted above before revisiting the earlier thread. Having made my final comment on that one, I think I should say that I also won't be returning to this post, to read comments or respond. I don't wish to give further offense.

[somotherdude]

Even if this dude is crazy. It doesn’t change the fact that he chose a political language to frame his crazy. Or, why did he use political violence as a form of his pathology? Or, I think being “crazy” should not erase the fact that political action was the way his crazy manifest itself.
I think most of us, around these parts, could agree that “rape” is a sexist power act. But there are a lot of sexist who would not use rape as a means to express it. And yet, there are conditions that make rape and violence meaningful ways of expression, ie, war, desperation, prison lead to very sexist and gendered pathologies.

I don’t know, I’m still trying to get a handle on this. I really feel for Norway, right now.

Just saw a mother crying for her adult child.

[McKinneyTexas]

Good post, very helpful. I am afraid, however, that most will interpret this horror through pre-set prisms. When another commits a similar act, perhaps from a different angle, the lens will refocus.

[liberal japonicus]

sod, I dip my toe in here hesitantly. It seems rather fraught.

It seems that there are two operant definitions of 'crazy'. One is having no reason for doing something and if someone has some reason, we should hesitate to classify them crazy. The second is the act itself defines it as crazy. Both of those seem to raise problems, because the first one requires us define problems of assimilation and multiculturalism as ones that are black and white. The second has us identify a whole range of acts that we find ourselves complicit with, like drone warfare and collateral damage, and find ourselves guilty.

Eric Loomis, over at LGM, has this post up that I think is related. He writes about how some in the environmentalist movement "demonize the poor for causing environmental problems". I'm not taking a side on that (I suspect that some here may disagree with Loomis, and I don't know enough about the history of environmental movements to have my own take on it) but the dynamic looks similar.

My own take on all this is to assume that if someone is causing pain and realizes it, and then makes no effort to stop, there's a problem. I also, naively perhaps, assume that most people don't actually want to cause people pain, though blog comment threads sometimes leave me doubting that. I'd like to believe that the biggest problem is that people don't realize they are causing pain, hence SOD's observation that being sexist is not being a rapist.

I've often suggested that it is important that we change society in a way that does not leave people behind, regardless how retrograde their views may appear. Remaining quiet when a problematic observation is made, not wanting to make someone feel uncomfortable when they have gone out of bounds seems to be part of that reflex. It seems to echo a quote that I can't find right now and am probably screwing up totally, where someone, in Norway I think, was asked how can we make things more secure and he replied that it is not security that we need, it is trust.

[russell]

it is not security that we need, it is trust.

There you have it.

[Countme-In]

When do liberal as*holes get their own shows?

"And then there was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth or whatever. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing," - Glenn Beck.

[Countme-In]

No shooting yet, so no one panic:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/at_allen_west-sponsored_event_group_paints_thousands_of_muslims_as_terrorists.php?ref=fpb

[lsn]

Martin Bryant at least is alive, well and living in prison in Tasmania. I'd also argue that Bryant had no political motivations - to me Breivik has more in common with McVeigh in that both of them were believers in a cause, and both of them were taking effectively political steps to further that cause.

Bryant, the Columbine killers, Seng-hui Cho, Julian Knight, Frank Vitkovic and Huan Yun "Allen" Xiang (to name the ones I'm most familiar with) had their own reasons for their actions, but I wouldn't have said any of them had any wider political motivations.

[liberal japonicus]

in a sense, lsn, that sort of is my point. If we have reached a point where wider political motivations provide a reason for committing these acts, will we see these acts occurring on an increasingly frequency?

[Hartmut]

I was a bit surprised to read that the worst Breivik could get for this is 21 years.
I know that 'for life' in many places means 20-25 years but usually there is a cop-out for that in extreme cases.
I am not an expert on Norwegian law (or any other country's for that matter), so I can't say, whether there is an option for 'real' for-life hidden somewhere.
Breivik would not be an old man in 2032 and Norwegian prisons are clearly preferable to e.g. Texan (or some Californian) ones from an inmate's POV.

[Hartmut]

I just read a comment by a Norwegian at another place that says that there are indeed ways to get to real for-life, so ignore my previous comment apart form the part about better prisons.

[Donald Johnson]

Here are some Israeli rightwingers who approved the massacre. There's a certain personality type here that seems to transcend all ethnic and religious divisions--

ynet

[Donald Johnson]

Sorry, that was from the Forward, not ynet.

[Donald Johnson]

Roger Cohen on Islamophobia and the crazed loner excuse

link

[Donald Johnson]

I should have done more websurfing yesterday--all these people said things better than I did. Andrew Sullivan--

link">http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/07/bawer-vs-bawer.html">link

His concluding paragraphs--

"In fact, this "madman" was, by Bruce's own judgment, "both highly intelligent and very well read in European history and the history of modern ideas." It is precisely this blind spot by the anti-Islamist right that made me and others get off the train. They have every right to point out supine government capitulation to restrictions on free speech, and the worst forms of Islamist violence and rhetoric. I second every one of them. Where they went over the top was in the demonization of an entire religion, and in fomenting the Steynian specter that Muslim aliens were bent on destroying Christian Europe by demographic numbers, and that all this was aided and abetted by every European leader in a multicultural, left-wing conspiracy to destroy Christendom.

If you buy those very arguments, as expressed by Berwick (and Geller and Spencer), what option do you really have but the fascist solutions he recommends and the neo-fascist violence he unleashed? When an entire population in your midst is the enemy within and your government is acquiescing to it and your entire civilization is thereby doomed, what does Bruce think a blue-eyed patriot like Berwick should do? Is the leap to violence so obviously insane? Or is it actually the only logical conclusion to the tyranny Berwick believed he faced?"

[geographylady]

I think people are confusing 2 entirely different things: one is a person so outside the bounds of normalcy that they willing (gleefully?) kill other human beings, maybe or not including themselves, and two - people who believe all the c**p they hear, and need a scapegoat to blame because their life is miserable.
the first case will find any reason kill, and the second won't, even though they are true believers. The leap to that kind of violence - especially as a loner - is quite obviously nuts.

[Countme-In]

I don't know these people. How upset do you want me to be?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/26/999200/-Glenn-BeckConsider-yourself-on-notice?via=spotlight