Thursday, July 28, 2011

Anders Behring Breivik: Profile Emerges From 1518-Pages Manifesto

One week after the Oslo drama, Anders Behring Breivik's 1518-page manifesto reveals a detailed portrait of the suspected Norway shooter and of what he himself describes as his "privileged upbringing."

Breivik was born in 1979 in London, where his father Jens Breivik was stationed at the Norwegian embassy. Less than a year after his birth Breivik's father and mother divorced, prompting his mother Wenche Behring to return to Oslo. Breivik's father remarried and remained in Europe, accepting a position in Paris where Breivik used to visit him during school vacations.

According to the Telegraph, Breivik described growing up with his mother in his manifesto, saying: "I do not approve of the super-liberal, matriarchal upbringing as it completely lacked discipline and has contributed to feminise me to a certain degree."

In school Breivik seemed to have been a rather quiet child. Friends told Time magazine that he became a bit of an outsider at the end of sixth grade. "He was getting bullied," a friend told the magazine.

By the age of 15, Breivik lost contact with his father. "I tried to contact him five years ago," theTelegraph quotes him writing in the document. "But he said he was not mentally prepared for a reunion." He did keep in touch with his stepmother, Tove Oevermo, who had divorced his father three years before. In an exclusive interview with the Associated Press, Oevermo said she said she had never seen any violent behavior in her former stepson. She did remember him talking about a book he was writing. In the manifesto , he describes his stepmother as "intelligent" but "obviously a traitor." According to the Daily Mail he said: "Although I care for her a great deal, I wouldn’t hold it against the KT (Knights Templar) if she was executed during an attack."

When he was about 15, Breivik got into graffiti. CNN reports he claimed to be the most active graffiti artist in the Norwegian capital by 15. Of that time he also wrote: "Unless you had Muslim contactsyou could easily be subject to harassment, beatings and robbery," according to CNN. The network also points at some of the more paradoxical paragraphs in the document. Breivik writes: "As all my friends can attest I wouldn't be willing to hurt a fly and I have never used violence against others ... If we wanted to we could have harassed and beaten up dozens of Muslim youth. However, as we didn't share their savage mentality, violence was pointless."

Breivik's right-wing political views seem to have fully developed in his late twenties, childhood friends saying that he had friends of Middle Eastern descent earlier on. A friend told the Guardian that it was only then that Breivik began posting right wing opinions on Facebook.

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