Saturday, 23 July 2011

Thoughts on Norway

It's all a bit numb, isn't it? Norway, where is that, somewhere near Sweden, right? And there was a bomb, but there didn't seem to be too many casualties and everybody immediately assumed it was bearded darkies and it all seemed to fit into the Al Qaeda narrative.

I certainly sighed heavily and expected the security forces to ratchet things up a notch in response to another vague threat of "Muslim extremism". (Indeed, the "Helpers of the Global Jihad" were said to have claimed responsibility via some secret squirrel jihadist website. Which then turned out not to be the case.)

And then came some reports of shootings near a youth camp. It turns out that the youth camp is where the Norwegian "Labour youth" hold training camps.

Now, leaving aside the dubious idea of a "Labour youth training camp" for the moment, what happened here was actually the more disturbing of the events. Apparently, this bloke coldly went round a youth camp shooting kids, basically. Numbers are unconfirmed, but it sounds like more than seventy young people were systematically shot in cold blood.

That leaves even me a bit stunned. It's one thing to plant a bomb and walk away and maybe some people will die (although I couldn't do that) but to walk around an island and shoot more than seventy people? That's not mad. That is something else.

At some point you might imagine Raoul Moat shooting a couple of people before it all got too much. You could imagine a couple of mad, hormone-warped kids shooting at seventy people, missing some, hurting some and killing some. But to shoot, in a single sitting, more than seventy young people to death, hurting God knows how many others and missing how many others ... that takes a level of dissociation from reality that is just beyond anything I can imagine.

Inevitably, people have rushed to analyse his motives, with the usual tired old bollocks about his religion, his politics, his interest in freemasonry, his TV habits and his gaming habits coming to the fore.

But this is all bollocks. There is nothing in his interests that justified what he did. I know dozens of ultra-fundamentalist Christians and not a single one of them would dream of planting a bomb, let alone shooting dozens of kids in cold blood. I have never met anyone further to the right in politics than me, and I wouldn't dream of doing what this guy did. All the freemasons I've met have been beacons of caring humanity. My daughter watches Dexter, it bores me shitless. And no gamer I've ever come across has ever even hurt another person.

None of these influences offer any kind of justification for what he did.

There is no point trying to ascertain his motives. Motives are for rational people. And there is no kind of rational thought involved in methodically chasing down more than seventy young people and shooting them to death. Since he was caught, he may well even profess motives and who knows, he may even believe them. They may even make a kind of "sense".

But the truth of the matter is that nothing this man can say can make any sense. You cannot ever explain or rationalise what he has done. Sometimes people just flip a mental switch and terrible things happen as a consequence. You can never predict something like this and you can never prevent it happening.

That is why I am so heartened by the response of Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian Prime Minister, who has called for more democracy and more openness, rather than immediately calling for borders to be closed and a police state. Sometimes shit just happens and you need to keep an eye out for it, but calling for pogroms of people and raising suspicion and divisiveness helps no-one.

Quite unlike the increasingly despicable cunt Obama, who immediately leapt in with

"It's a reminder that the entire community has a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring."


You can't, you fucking twat. Not without creating a grey, drab, miserable existence for everyone, where we all walk around naked and eat beige pablum porridge provided by someone who could still kill us all by poisoning our oats.

So, you stick to your guns* Jens. Shit has happened and it was fucking terrible. But don't try and do something about it "for the children". Because if you do, this madman will have won and everybody else in Norway will lose.

(And can I just say that "lefties" really made me want to punch them yesterday when the news broke. Seriously, what kind of utter fucking cuntstain wishes the victims of this kind of bloodbath "solidarity" when commenting on it.

Solidarity? That's what you offer someone on strike. You don't fucking say "solidarity" to survivors and the families of the victims, you insensitive fucking unspeakable fucking mongs!)


*I realise this might not be the best choice of phrase, but shit happens.

3 comments:

gildas said...

Brilliant stuff

JuliaM said...

"...and everybody immediately assumed it was bearded darkies ..."

Well, you hear hoofbeats, you think 'horses'. Not 'zebras'.

"None of these influences offer any kind of justification for what he did."

No, but people have their hobby horses, and they are going to ride them, no matter what.

Jill said...

I have relatives (with teenaged children) in Oslo, so I shit a brick. No, you can't stop isolated madmen and you ruin quality of life by trying. I would take issue with what you say about 'Labour training camps' - I thought it was rather good that Norwegian kids are actually interested in politics, regardless of what end of the spectrum.