A 10-week trial of Anders Breivik afforded him publicity, and underground infamy, but the openness benefited the victims too
Terror wouldn’t work if no one wrote about it. Terrorists crave our attention, our anger and our tears. Norway and New Zealand have both been struck by attacks from violent extremists inspired by ideas from the same root – white supremacy and Islamophobia – but the two countries have chosen different paths in how to deal with it. Norway chose openness and full exposure, while the case around the Christchurch shooter seems dimly lit.
In 2011, the then Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, sat in his home office to work on a speech he was going to give the following day at the summer camp of the Labour party youth when a loud bang sounded. Anders Breivik had dressed as a police officer and detonated the bomb outside the prime minister’s office in downtown Oslo, killing eight. He then travelled to the island of Utøya where the camp would be held and shot and killed 69 people, mostly teenagers.
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