A new trial with convicted terrorist Anders Behring Breivik will lead to new publicity that could fuel extreme environments that pay tribute to the killings he committed in 2011.
The trial starts on Tuesday. Breivik wants to be released from the prison sentence he was sentenced to in the Oslo District Court after the terrorist attacks in Oslo and Utøya on 22 July 2011.
- It's good that Breivik has received so little attention in the Norwegian media in recent years - it helps to reduce interest in him while highlighting the underlying societal challenges that revealed on July 22, such as Islamophobia, racism, exclusion and neglect, says Jacob Ravndal to the NTB .
Jacob Ravendal
He is an associate professor at the Police Academy and associated with the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo. He has followed the development of right-wing extremist terrorism over the past ten years and says Breivik has generated fewer followers and inspired fewer right-wing extremist terrorists than other mass murderers.
Breivik's manifesto, over 1500 pages long, was long and not as accessible as, for example, the magazine Brenton Tarrant wrote before killing 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019.
Negative with new photos
Breivik's trial takes place in Skien prison, but will be reported by multiple media outlets.
- The negative with the new process may be that new photos have appeared. Today, this has a completely different effect than the text in written press articles, says Ravndal for NTB.
The published images are immediately captured on the Internet and used to create all kinds of memes used for propaganda purposes.
Perception of a terrorist
Ten years after the 77 people were murdered, Breivik is a controversial person who is both praised and in extreme environments. Some circles also share the view that all of the July 22 terror was a Jewish conspiracy and that Breivik is actually a puppet for these interests. At the same time, hailed as saints by others and praised for being one of the few who did something, and not just sat on the internet and bragged about it.
Among the looser environments in various online discussion forums, and especially the 4chan forum, it also had a higher status, but such environments are more fragmented, and researchers are not sure how much emphasis they should place on anonymous tributes in well-known forums. for his dark humor and ruthless irony.
Followers
- There are many on the Internet who like to pose and form terrorist alliances, but they usually only operate on the Internet and in a few cases they turned out to be young teenagers sitting in the room. Sometimes people who have spent a lot of time in such environments and don't understand the irony and extreme black humor that they frequently exchange can go out and do something. Manshaus was one of them, says Ravndal, a member of the police assessment committee after the Philip Manshaus terrorist attack in 2019.
The researcher explains that Breivik probably did not expect so many far-rightists to distance themselves from his actions. He points out that Breivik is constantly trying to accommodate what he imagines potential sympathizers waiting for him, which he has so far failed.
That Breivik changed his name and moved from so-called counter-Jihadism to National Socialism and now to Odinism, Ravndal believes that it shows that Breivik is looking for the best way to reach others.
Disappointment
- It will be a great disappointment to the extreme Internet communities that have supported him so far if he now distances himself from violence, which indicates that he will do so. And if pictures do come out, they're likely to be quickly turned into memes that are both positive and negative for his new image, says Ravndal.
He also points out that many closed, anonymous environments are deeply conspiratorial and will find Breivik's new image strategic, not the expression of real change.
"Some people will probably refuse to take it away from violence and think it's just a way out of prison," the researcher says.
At the same time, he points out that the threshold for external support for Breivik has fallen in some right-wing extremist circles ten years after the massacres that changed Norway forever.
Distance in both time and space appears to influence the propensity to support Breivik's extreme actions. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Breivik's support in some right-wing extremist circles will increase in the future.
Source: NTB
Photo: Lise Åserud / NTB
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