Remembering the Utøya Massacre: What “Religious” Ideas Motivated Breivik?

 A look at the false accusations that Anders Breivik, the pro-abort white supremacist was a 'Christian fundamentalist'. He was neither Christian nor fundamentalist!

From Bitter Winter

By Massimo Introvigne

After ten years, the perpetrator is still called by some a “Christian fundamentalist.” The label is misleading.

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Anders Behring Breivik perpetrated the worst terrorist attack in the history of Norway ten years ago, in Oslo and the island of Utøya on July 22, 2011. He killed 77 innocent victims. Events are still continuing in Norway to commemorate them.

Respect and prayer are certainly due to all victims. Those who ask to reflect on the vigilance measures that even societies, such as those in Scandinavia, which value their “open” character, should adopt to protect themselves against multiple forms of terrorism are not wrong. It is normal that the roots of terrorism are also investigated, and that a discussion on what ideology motivated Breivik continues. We know what Breivik was against, Islam. His was a vicious, deadly form of Islamophobia. But was he in favor of any religion? He is often called a “fundamentalist,” or a “Christian fundamentalist,” but are these labels correct?

“Fundamentalist” is often used in a generic and imprecise way to indicate anyone with extremist ideas, or generically “right-wing,” with a vague reference or even no reference at all to religion. The Vienna-based Observatory of Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe has repeatedly denounced  the dangers of a cavalier use of the term “fundamentalism” as an instrument of anti-religious and anti-Christian discrimination.

The expression “fundamentalist Christian,” of course, has a precise meaning. It dates back to the publication in the United States between 1910 and 1915 of the pamphlets The Fundamentals, a militant critique of liberal Protestant theologies, of the historical-critical method in the interpretation of the Bible, and of biological evolutionism. A fundamentalist is a Protestant who insists on the literal and traditional interpretation of the Bible, rejecting any hermeneutical approach that relies on modern social sciences, and from this interpretation deduces ultra-conservative theological and moral principles.

While initially applied to Protestants only, the term has been used analogically, although not uncontroversially, for members of other religions who interpret their sacred scriptures in a conservative, literal, and moralistic ways. Since Breivik was formally a member of the Lutheran Church, however, it is his relationship with Protestant fundamentalism that should be investigated.

We know Breivik’s ideas from the Facebook profile he kept before the terrorist attacks, and then deleted, but not before someone had saved it and put it online, from over sixty pages of interventions on the Norwegian anti-Islamic website document.no, and especially from his 1,500-page book 2083: A Declaration of European Independence, signed “Andrew Berwick,” sent to a number of friends and newspapers on July 22, a few hours after the massacre, and first posted on the Internet on July 23 by Kevin Slaughter, an ordained minister in the Church of Satan (who did not agree with its content).

A main interest of Breivik was Freemasonry. Those who visited Breivik’s Facebook profile were struck by a photograph that depicted him in a Masonic apron as a member of a lodge of St. John, one of the lodges that administer the first three degrees in the Norwegian Order of Freemasons, the regular Freemasonry of Norway. Breivik was a member of the Søilene, one of the lodges of St. John in Oslo of this Order. Breivik posted the photograph in 2011, the year of the bombings, and in 2009 on document.no Breivik advertised a fundraiser “in my lodge.”

Of course, Freemasonry had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks, and Breivik’s ideas do not in any way represent these of the Norwegian Order of Freemasons. The St. John lodges of the Order practice the so-called Swedish Rite, which requires members to be of the Christian faith. But no Protestant fundamentalist would ever spread photographs of himself in Masonic garb: fundamentalism is normally hostile to Freemasonry.

Breivik’s passion for the online role-playing game World of Warcraft and the vampire TV series “Blood Ties,” as well as his avowed friendship with the operator of Norway’s leading site promoting casual sexual encounters, are again not crimes, but at the same time are traits one would not find in the average fundamentalist Christian.

If one part of his book seemed to appreciate traditional family values, elsewhere Breivik declared that he was in favor of aborting babies with “mental or physical disabilities,” and had “set aside two thousand euros that I intend to spend on a high-quality escort, a real model, a week before the execution of my [terrorist] mission.” He wrote that “screwing around outside of marriage is after all a relatively small sin.” Definitely, he was not your typical Christian fundamentalist. But did he have a religion? We will try to answer this question in the next articles of this series.