One of Us

One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (2015), a work of non-fiction by Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad, recounts the 2011 terrorist attack by Norwegian neo-Nazi Anders Behring Breivik, in which 77 people were killed and more than 300 injured. Drawing heavily on Breivik’s own writings, as well as the psychological reports prepared for his trial, Seierstad focuses on Breivik’s emotional life, portraying the killer as a sad, defeated fantasist, who constructed an imaginary universe as a flight from a social reality which persistently excluded him. Seierstad also tells the stories of some of Breivik’s victims, particularly the 18-year-old Muslim Norwegian Bano Rashid.

Anders Behring Breivik grew up in a well-to-do neighborhood in Norway’s capital, Oslo, but his childhood was far from content. His father—a career diplomat—abandoned him entirely while he was still a baby, and his depressed mother toyed with the idea of sending him to an orphanage.

She didn’t, but Breivik was scarcely happier at home than he might have been in care. From an early age, he took his suffering out on those weaker than himself, tormenting his sister and the family’s pets.

Above all, Breivik was a failure in his social life. Unable to make friends at school, he attached himself to a gang of Oslo graffiti artists. In this context, he first began to compensate for his failures with fantasy: he claimed that he was Oslo’s top “tagger,” which quickly resulted in his rejection by the graffiti gang.

Also, while still a teenager, Breivik acquired an admiration for Muslim immigrants (he would later see Muslim immigration as a dangerous but respectable enemy). He befriended a Pakistani-Norwegian boy named Ahmed and learned to ape Muslim kids’ “street” way of dressing and speaking. Breivik’s Norwegian peers made fun of him, and when Ahmed moved away, Breivik was once again alone.

After high school, Breivik tried his hand at a series of casual sales jobs but failed in each. He enjoyed some brief success selling fake college degrees online but was almost caught and had to quit.

After a brief flirtation with Freemasonry, Breivik’s attention turned to fringe politics. He tried to secure selection as a city-council candidate for the far-right Progress party, whose agenda was to stir up popular resentment against immigrants, and Muslim immigrants in particular. Seierstad argues that Breivik projected his own sense of failure and helplessness onto Norway (or “Christian” Europe), which he increasingly saw as helpless in the face of “Islamization.” At around this time, he began researching weaponry and bomb-making techniques. However, his ambition was curtailed when the Progress Party decided that Breivik was too weird, and he was not selected to run for office.

Around this time, he acquired a Belarusian mail-order bride, who, it seemed, left him. Seierstad quotes people who knew Breivik and believe he was probably gay (although their reasons seem to amount to his fastidious way of dressing). She also quotes Breivik’s boasting about his regular visits to brothels.

For a while, Breivik retreated to the virtual world of online gaming. In World of Warcraft, he played a bejeweled knight called Andersnordic. Even here, he struggled and failed to achieve social acceptance.

From around 2006, Breivik retreated almost entirely from the real world. Instead, he began to construct a world of dark political fantasies, centered on the belief that Islam and the West were locked in a life or death struggle. This belief was fed by neo-Nazi websites like Jihad Watch and Stormfront, the rhetoric of Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders, the books of American cultural critic Bruce Bawer, and various far-right bloggers, including Norway’s own “Fjordman.”

Soon, Breivik began to create his own online presence, under the name “Andrew Berwick.” His “2083: A European Declaration of Independence” cobbled together his reading and a large helping of fantasy to picture a Europe on the brink of capitulation to Islam, and himself as the “Justicious Knight Commander” of the Knights Templar, dedicated to saving Western civilization.

His main enemies, however, were not Muslim immigrants or even radical Islamists (in fact, he admired the “fighting spirit” of al Qaeda). Rather it was the “cultural Marxists” and “cultural elites” who had “surrendered” the West to Islam.

This online ranting was a pre-amble to action. By now, Breivik had amassed considerable expertise in weaponry and bomb-making. He rented a remote piece of land, where he constructed a large bomb. Through lengthy endeavor, he stockpiled an arsenal of assault weapons. On July 22, 2011, he attacked, detonating his bomb in the center of Oslo and traveling by ferry to the island of Utøya, where he opened fire on the teenage attendees of a summer camp held by the Norwegian Labor Party’s youth division.

Almost an hour of shooting followed. Seierstad describes the fates of Breivik’s victims in heartbreaking detail, in particular, those of 18-year-old Bano Rashid, Simon Sæbø, and Viljar Hanssen, whose short lives—full of optimism and worthy contributions—Seierstad also narrates, by way of contrast with Breivik’s.

Seierstad closes her account with Breivik’s trial and the national grieving process which followed the attacks—and which continues to this day. One in four Norwegians knows someone who was affected by the attack. Seierstad calls for recognition that Breivik, too, was “one of us,” a person who fell through the cracks in Norwegian society.