Breivik: Product of the Internet?
Educated by Wikipedia and World of Warcraft, the Norway mass murderer developed his dangerous philosophy online
OSLO, Norway — Anders Breivik, the Norwegian extremist behind the country’s worst-ever peacetime massacre, spent an entire year immersed in World of Warcraft, an online multi-player fantasy game.
He claims to have used the Internet for 70 percent of what he said was 15,000 hours of self-study. And, on the second day of his trial, he admitted that the Knights Templar National and pan-European Patriotic Resistance Movement he claims to represent was “merely a few individuals,” a likely reference to like-minded people he met on Internet forums.
The deaths of the 77 people Breivik massacred in Norway are sadly all too real. But the killer himself looks more and more like a product of the Internet. As prosecutors skillfully drew out details of Breivik’s failed life in the run-up to the attacks, it seemed that from 2006 — when he wound up his business selling fake diplomas and moved in with his mother — Breivik had retreated into an online world.
In the Internet network of anti-Islamic “ultra-nationalists,” he became the vanguard of the resistance, a martyr and patriotic hero. In World of Warcraft, meanwhile, he was a Justicar Knight, one of the highest levels a web warrior can attain.
“I think this case is resting on unexplored areas,” Randi Rosenqvist, a prominent Norwegian psychiatrist, argued before the trial, suggesting Breivik had succumbed to an Internet version of the group thinking which had, for example, convinced members of post-World War II Germany’s Baader Meinhof gang that it was right to murder political opponents.
“We know about different religious sects, and we know about different political associations, but what about a single man thinking the same things as an organization thinks?” Rosenqvist asked.
“These Internet groups, they are groups in the same way, but previously you had to be in the same place. There is very little academic psychiatry on these types of questions.”
When Breivik engaged in off-line politics, the court heard, he quickly found others recoiling at his extreme views.
“My proposals were slaughtered, so to speak,” he said, of his unsuccessful involvement Norway’s anti-immigration Progress Party, for which he came a lowly 37th in the list of nominees for a seat on Oslo City Council.
“They sold out on so many principles in order to get into power, that I thought they had thrown out the baby with the bathwater.”
But online, he could follow the writings of anti-Islamic extremists with the exact same ideas, developing an extreme doctrine which perhaps more face-to-face meetings would have moderated.
Breivik’s strange view of European history since World War II, which sees a liberal, Marxist elite taking control and secretly allowing a Muslim incursion, similarly bears the hallmarks of an Internet autodidact.
**Asked by the judge what the main source was for his worldview? His answer was simple: “Wikipedia.”
“I have used Wikipedia the most. The English articles are incredibly rich in information,” he said.**
Breivik, a high-school dropout, said the Internet had allowed him to make up for his lack of formal higher education. The Internet, he argued, had opened access to knowledge, so people no longer needed libraries or universities. He added, with unintentionally comic earnestness, that this had yet to be properly “recognized,” forcing him to cite the 15,000 hours of self-study to underline his credentials.