Ten years after Anders Behring Breivik tried to kill her in Utøya, Astrid Hoem returned to the Norwegian island to tell a group of teenagers how she was saved while other people died around her. “He shot a girl in the back who was standing next to me and begged me to tell her parents she loved him because she thought she was going to die,” 26-year-old Hoem tells high school students. The girl he talks about survived.
Students participate in a three-day workshop on conflict management and the fight against racism. They listen in silence as Hoem unearths his memories and relates that for two hours he stood motionless under a rock. He did not call his friends for fear that the ringing of the phone would allow Breivik to locate them. She was convinced that Norway was at war.
On 22 July 2011, Breivik detonated a car bomb outside the prime minister’s office in Oslo, killing eight people, before driving to Utøya and shooting 69 people attending a Labor Party youth organization summer camp. The survivors, many of whom were teenagers at the time, are determined to confront the far-right ideology behind the attack. “It’s important to talk about it, because I don’t want it to happen again,” Hoem explains.
Emulate and prevention
In fact, it has already happened. In March 2019, in New Zealand, white supremacist Brenton Tarrant, who was inspired by Breivik for his manifesto, killed 51 people in two mosques.
A few months later the Norwegian Philip Manshaus killed his adoptive sister of Chinese origin and tried to shoot the faithful in a mosque. According to a report from court psychiatrists, Manshaus cited Tarrant as an inspiration.
“Those opinions, those conspiracy theories, that hatred… are stronger today than they were ten years ago,” Hoem told Reuters.
In April, on the occasion of the congress, the Labor Party decided that in case of victory in the September elections it will create a commission to investigate the life of Breivik and Manshaus, to understand and prevent radicalization. The commission will also consider the cases of Norwegians who became Islamist fighters in Syria.
“What can we do to prevent boys, especially white males, from developing ideas that are so extreme that they think they can kill just because they disagree with someone? We need to figure out how to avert these tragedies in schools, on the internet, in our communities, ”explains Hoem.
The role of politics
The survivors would like to publicly discuss some political trends which they believe provide an ideological justification for extremist violence. Breivik thought that the Labor Party had betrayed Norway because it allowed Muslims to live in the country, as part of what he considered a global plot to make Islam the dominant religion in Europe, supplanting Christianity.
Survivors believe some right-wing politicians are legitimizing this view by attacking Muslims and calling them a threat to Norwegian society.
In the last decade, the Progress Party, a radical right-wing formation, has repeatedly sounded the alarm about an alleged “creeping Islamization” contrary to the traditional way of life in Norway. The party, which has repeatedly condemned Breivik’s actions, denies that its positions fuel right-wing extremism. However, leader Sylvi Listhaug reiterated that he intends to call for a tougher political approach on immigration and integration.
The survivors’ behavior contrasts with the response offered at the time by Norway, which emphasized unity and consensus. In the months following the bombing, the debate had focused on the mistakes of the authorities, such as the police’s belated response to Utoeya, rather than on Breivik’s worldview.
“The tenth anniversary of July 22 offers us the opportunity to look back and recalibrate the debate”, underlines Hallvard Notaker, author of the book Labor Party and July 22nd
(The Labor Party and July 22).
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)
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