Florida State University Libraries Honors Theses The Division of Undergraduate Studies 2013 Breivik's Sanity: Historical and Contemporary Right-Wing Political Violence in Norway Colin Jacobsen Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF CRIMINOLOGY & CRIMINAL JUSTICE BREIVIK’S SANITY: HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY RIGHT-WING POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN NORWAY By COLIN JACOBSEN A Thesis submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major Degree Awarded: Spring, 2013 The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Colin Jacobsen defended on April 18, 2013. ______________________________ Daniel Maier-Katkin Thesis Director ______________________________ Sumner B. Twiss Outside Committee Member ______________________________ Terry Coonan Committee Member ______________________________ Nathan Stoltzfus Committee Member ii Acknowledgements I am sincerely grateful and humble for the help, insight, guidance and support I have been fortunate to receive through a challenging, memorable, and rewarding research journey, for without this I could not have established a final piece which has been greatly invigorated and transcended by the many I worked with. I wish to express my sincerest gratitude to my mentor and Thesis Director Professor Daniel Maier-Katkin, who has through exceptional guidance and pedagogy revealed to me new avenues of learning, fascinating advice on the life of the mind, and inspired me to aspire towards excellent writing and articulation; his expertise and guidance has undeniably steered me on to path of academic success that already carries an impact on to my future career prospects. My appreciation also goes out to the Honors in the Major Program and to my thesis committee members Professor Terry Coonan and Professor Sumner B. Twiss—who, respectively, as Executive Director and Distinguished Professor of The Center for the Advancement of Human Rights offered kindly to cooperate and contribute with knowledge and guidance with my thesis—and Professor Nathan Stoltzfus for their critic and discussion of my Honors thesis at its final stage. I wish to acknowledge and thank Professor Pamela Mertens for her always high-spirited support and guidance through my undergraduate years and, especially in the circumstances of my theses, for her part, along with Professor Maier-Katkin, in recommending me for the Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Award (URCAA) which has undoubtedly proliferated the contribution and knowledge of my research. Consequently, I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to the Office of National Fellowship at the Florida State University who awarded me the URCAA. With this I was able to travel to iii Norway in the summer of 2012 to undertake research in museums and archives containing materials related to continuities and discontinuities in the history of right-wing extremism and violence in Norway, and conduct extensive interviews with political leaders at the highest levels of government, psychiatrists, prominent academics, and officials of the justice system involved in the Breivik trial. To those interviewees: Terje Emberland (Religious Historian and Researcher), Øystein Sørensen (Professor of History), Robert Ferguson (Author), Erik Skuggevik (Lecturer in Translation and Culture), Lars Gule (Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the HiOA), Terje Øiesvold (Psychiatrist), Hans Fredrik Dahl (Professor of History), Tore Bjørgo (Professor of Police Science), Kjell Lars Berge (Professor of Norwegian Language and Literature), Einar Kringlen (Psychiatrist), Vigdis Hjorth (Author), Thomas Hylland Eriksen (Professor of Social Anthropology), Lars Frode Larsen (Author), Leif Hamsun (Knut Hamsun's Grandson), Anders Ravik Jupskås (Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science at UiO) and others who chose respectfully to remain anonymous, I am immensely thankful for their willingness to participate in an interview and to share their knowledge, insight and thought provoking questions related to my theses. Without their help, my project would not have been as successful. Lastly, I am grateful for the help, support and perseverance encouragement I have received from my family and my girlfriend, for this love has been uplifting through hard work, with a challenging but invaluable rewarding Honors theses. iv Table of Contents Introduction...…………………………………………………….…………………….………....1 The Massacre in Norway: July, 22, 2011………………………………………………………....2 A History of Right-Wing Political Violence in Norway: The Nazi Years……………………......6 A History of Right-Wing Political Violence in Norway: The De-Nazification Era…………......10 A History of Right-Wing Political Violence in Norway: The Era between Hamsun and Breivik…………………………………………………………………………………………....15 A History of Right-Wing Political Violence in Norway: Contemporary Right-Wing Violent Extremism……………………………………………………………………………….……....18 Breivik’s Ideology: Prelude to Mass Murder……………………………...………………….....22 Breivik’s Sanity: The Psychiatric Reports……………………………………………….…....…25 Breivik’s Sanity: The Judgment of the Court……………………………………………………29 Breivik’s Sanity in the Context of Rightwing Terrorism……………………………...…….…..38 v Abstract On July 22, 2011 Anders Behring Breivik bombed a government building in Oslo, resulting in the deaths of eight people. A few hours later he attacked a youth camp associated with the dominant liberal Labor Party of Norway killing 69 people, mostly teenagers. His act of mass murder captured world attention, as did his electronic distribution of an infamous document entitled 2083 – A European Declaration of Independence, which proclaims a right- wing world view with unyielding hostility towards multiculturalism and the alleged "Islamization of Europe. While right-wing extremist groups in Norway has been weak and insignificant over the past decades, the large populist right wing party, the Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet), has sustained a central role in the liberal democracy with a critical position on immigrant issues. My research focuses on the underlying ideology of historical and contemporary right wing extremism in Norway. This includes, among others, the Norwegian Nobel Laureate and Nazi sympathizer Knut Hamsun, the Norwegian fascist party (Nasjonal Samling) and the contemporary presence of xenophobic, anti-immigration and anti-Islamic right wing in Norway, including the larger context of the ideology and behavior of the mass-murderer Breivik. My research, drawing on archival research on the extreme right in Scandinavia and Europe and interviews with several prominent psychiatrists, politicians, authors on Knut Hamsun and experts on radical-right in Norway, suggest that close parallels can be noted between the rhetoric of Nazi anti-Semitism and modern Islamophobia, with incidental differences of group identities and the basis for perceiving a threat. Within the various forms of right wing extremism there are strikingly similar ideological structures used to justify political violence, and Breivik is vi a textbook example of how the growing presence of the right-wing extremist activity online can only be ignored at our peril. vii Introduction After World War Two, the high-water mark of rightwing political violence in the twentieth century, right-wing extremism was mostly thought of as unreconstructed fascists or neo-Nazis. But since the 1970s scholarly literature has reflected concern about a new threat of extremism and violence arising in conjunction with growing electoral support for xenophobic radical right parties rooted in a modern generation with new concerns and passions.1 Experts disagree on the conceptualization of right-wing extremism, and there is a blurry relationship between the xenophobic violence of right-wing extremists and the broader range of radical right parties.2 The distinction between right-wing extremism and rightwing attitudes within the mainstream hinges on willingness to work toward political goals within the framework of democracy. Extreme right parties endorse resentment of left and centrist political regimes, advocate aggressive nationalism, endorse anti-immigration sentiments and emphasize particularistic conceptualizations of citizenship.3 Hans-Georg Betz argues that they are “radical in their rejection of the established sociocultural and sociopolitical system and in their advocacy of individual achievement, a free marketplace, and a drastic reduction of the role of the state,” and that they are “right-wing in their rejection of individual and social equality, in their opposition to the social integration of marginalized groups, and in their appeal to xenophobia and overt racism.4 1 Cas Mudde. "Right-Wing Extremism Analyzed. A Comparative Analysis of the Ideologies of Three Alleged Right-Wing Extremist Parties (NPD, NDP, CP'86)." SelectedWorks, 1995: 205. 2 Dr. Matthew Goodwin and Vidhya Ramalingam. "The New Radical Right: Violent and Non-Violent Movements in Europe." Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2012:4 3 Pia Knigge. "The ecological correlates of right-wing extremism in Western Europe." European Journal of Political Research, 1998: 250-251. 4 Hanz-George Betz. "The New Politics of Resentment: Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties in Western Europe." Comparative Politics, Vol. 25, No. 4, 1993: 413. 1 In political science the definition of right-wing extremism may permit study of individuals, parties or organizations