I've been following the news from the trial of Anders Breivik with a deep disgust--I know that I am not in a position to judge the sanity or stability of another person, but the more I learn from this trial of the events that Breivik orchestrated, the more it seems to me that Breivik was operating under a certain logic--a horrible and misanthropic logic. He does not seem to me to have been deranged, only very full of hate for his fellow human beings. That said, I'm proud of the response by the people in the above video--about 40,000 people gathered just blocks from where Breivik is being held to sing a song that the killer despised as "Marxist propaganda".
OSLO — Up to 40,000 Norwegians staged an emotionally-charged sing-along in Oslo on Thursday near the court house where Anders Behring Breivik is on trial for the murder of 77 people in a protest organizers said showed he had not broken their tolerant society.
“It’s we who win,” said guitar-strumming folk singer Lillebjoern Nilsen as he led the mass sing-along and watched the crowd sway gently in the rain. Many held roses above their heads, and some wept.
The protest followed several days of defiant testimony from Breivik who has admitted he killed his victims in a blood soaked attack on Norway’s multicultural society, but denied criminal guilt, saying he did so in self-defense.
Breivik himself has said that considering him insane is a calumny intended to delegitimize his intelligence and his message. I am inclined to take him seriously--his beliefs are shared by others; he only differs from the garden variety nationalist racist fuckwit in putting his ammo where his mouth was. He probably is too dull to realize, however, that in trying to demonstrate that multiculturalism is dangerous because people who are different are a threat, he showed that the neighborhood Nordic numbskull living in Mommy's basement can be as bad or worse. Sadly, people who write gunmetal poetry are often irony deficient. This musical opposition, which I'm sure he must have heard, however, should have informed him that he is the outsider. He was the one who did not belong, and his thoughts and actions don't have a place in a peaceful and decent society.
Good on them for expressing it in just this moving, beautiful way.
1 comment:
It's a humane response to a monster. I don't think there would ever be such a response here in the States... there's too much of a tradition of blood vengeance with us.
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