Attack in Kongsberg ǀ Rift through the ideal world – Friday

by time news

A new era was about to begin, instead an abyss opened up for Norway on the morning of October 14th. On the evening before the swearing-in of a new, social democratic-led government with two survivors of the Utǿya attack as ministers in Oslo, the assassin Espen B. hunted people in a supermarket in the small town of Kongsberg with bows and arrows. He was just as merciless as Anders Behring Breivik a little more than ten years earlier.

For decades, Norwegians have been convinced that they are a special country. One speaks of “Scandinavian exceptionalism”, of the belief to act and live more morally than the rest of the world. Anders Behring Breivik hated these models.

It is not yet clear what drove Espen B. The PST secret service quickly voiced the suspicion that B. had carried out an Islamist attack. There are now increasing indications of a mental illness. But this does not prevent a discussion about authorities who have overlooked a dangerous drift again.

The last social democratic prime minister in Norway was Jens Stoltenberg. He also lost his post after the 2011 attacks because he was unable to protect the Norwegians from Breivik. A commission uncovered an agenda of unsuspecting security authorities in 2012. They were based on the mistake that a Norwegian could not be up to anything bad. But the country is not an island, it is part of Europe. A social media-fueled debate about immigrants and Islam gripped the country before 2011 and has not stopped since, even if there is no significant right-wing extremist scene.

The virtual state of restlessness in Norwegian society offers mentally unstable loners with a toxic male profile projection surfaces for attempts to draw attention to themselves through frenzy. Perhaps, after Kongsberg, the Norwegians will recognize that their mutual trust-based society is great, but not an impenetrably ideal world. Perhaps they are beginning to pay more attention to those who cannot or do not want to meet the expectations of their society. Anders Behring Breivik or Espen B. can be found anywhere. In Norway too.

.

You may also like

Leave a Comment