Analysis: Gunman and bomber cannot be allowed to kill off country's ideals

Published on Wednesday 27 July 2011 18:50

WHILE Anders Behring Breivik's actions have shocked all of Norwegian society, his attacks on Oslo and Utoya last Friday seem to have been aimed squarely at the Labour Party.

The dominant party in Norwegian post-war politics, Labour is recognised as having built Norway's modern welfare state, especially under the leadership of the country's longest-serving prime minister, Einar Gerhardsen, a former road worker and survivor of Nazi concentration camps.

The Oslo square dedicated to Mr Gerhardsen was ground zero for last Friday's bomb.

Despite the overtly political and calculated nature of these attacks, domestic reaction to last week's terrible events has been calm and resolutely democratic.

How can this be when the attacks apparently came from out of the blue, and how can Breivik possibly have developed his intolerant beliefs living in such a tolerant society?

The generation of Norwegians born in the first few post-war decades has occasionally been referred to as the "dessert generation".

The generation before that had striven to provide the hearty staples of an egalitarian social democratic "diet", and now their children could enjoy the good stuff.

Some have called the latest generation the "washing-up generation", having to deal with their parents' dirty dishes.

Erlend Loe wrote in his 1999 novel L - as yet sadly untranslated into English - of the sense of inadequacy younger Norwegians can feel.

However, a lot of young Norwegians do remain very politically aware and recognise the importance of working to maintain the social democracy their grandparents built.

This is demonstrated most poignantly by the stories of the young Labour activists from Utya.

Nevertheless, the minority opposition in 1970s Norway to high-taxation and big-state solutions gave birth to what would become the Progress Party, the right-wing, populist, anti-immigration party of which Breivik was once a member.

As an individual, it is of course Breivik who must be primarily answerable for his own actions, but the at times inflammatory rhetoric of the Progress Party - like that of others like it around Europe and of many international media outlets - no doubt contributed to the climate in which Breivik's ideas developed.

Perhaps too much attention is being paid to politics, however, as Breivik is most concerned with broader cultural trends.

Is Norway naive not to have picked up on Breivik earlier and naive not to push for more stringent security now?

I think not - this could have happened anywhere in Europe.

Most Norwegians are not prepared to "let fear change the way we build our society".

If it is naive to strive for a better world like this, then I agree with the title of a book by Erlend Loe: Naive. Super.

• Guy Puzey is a researcher in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Edinburgh.