2083: A European Declaration of Independence by Anders Behring Breivik is the culmination of many copy and pasted extremist far right texts that details Breivik’s planning for the two attacks that together claimed 77 lives. At over a thousand pages long, the manifesto is lengthy and unorganized. The use of acronyms and emoticons, in addition to the pictures of himself he added at the end, gave the manifesto an absurd, eerie feeling. Breivik is fortunate he lives in Norway, which has a humane, reform-focused prison system. I am against mass-incarceration and the death penalty, but if anyone deserves poor treatment, it is Breivik. Since a lot of what Breivik did in the preparation process was legal, I am curious about whether any laws or regulations were added or changed.
I think I had heard of the attacks in passing, but I did not know much about them, so it was interesting to learn about them in more detail. I am very curious about how, if at all, the Syrian refugee crisis, which happened a few years after Breivik’s attacks, was influenced by 2083: A European Declaration of Independence. For instance, did the attacks make Norway more inclined to accept refugees? And if so, has that made right-wing Norwegians angrier? I know that there has been some racist, xenophobic backlash in Europe after the refugee crisis, and that Denmark, a fellow Scandinavian country, did not handle the situation well.
Immigrants and refugees being misconstrued as invaders is a disgusting concept that has been pushed throughout the decade. I struggle to understand how anyone could see immigrants and refugees as invaders looking to take over a country, unless Europeans and Americans are now fearing that they will undergo what they once perpetrated. After all, it is European countries and the United States that have invaded other lands to colonize and pillage for resources with significant effects that still persist today.