True Norwegians


Utoya island, the day before Breivik’s visit

A few days ago I quoted a CBC interview with Adrian Pracon, a youth leader at the Utoya camp who survived Anders Breivik’s rampage by playing dead. I’ve just come across a further statement by Pracon:

“Some of my friends tried to stop [Breivik] by talking to him. Many people think on the island that it was a test … comparing it to how it is to live in Gaza. So many people went to him and tried to talk to him, but they were shot immediately.”

The man was systematically shooting people dead, so others of his intended victims walked up to him and tried to talk him out of it?

There’s the Norway philosophy for you! All evil can be ended by talking with it. Or, rather, evil doesn’t exist. There are only misunderstandings, which can be resolved by rational dialogue. How appropriate that the country which believes in that philosophy gave the name of its capital to the famous “peace process” in which it was imagined that people whose sadistic god commands the destruction of Israel would be willing to live in peace with Israel.

And how appropriate that the same youth camp members who tried to talk with Breivik, even as he was mass murdering their friends, also believed that Breivik was behaving as Israel does to the Palestinians. These leftists turn reality on its head, seeing mass-murdering jihadists as innocent victims, and the jihadists’ innocent targets as mass murderers.

Pretty, pristine, morally superior Norway: you epitomize the madness of the modern West.

- end of initial entry -

Posted July 30

Kathlene M. writes:

I hope you don’t excoriate me for this (and it’s probably more personal and not fit for publication) but the stories coming out about the 90-minute response to the Norway massacre, the easy prison life in Norway, and the kids who walked up to Breivik to persuade him not to shoot before he shot them are unbelievable and made me recall this.

When I was a kid growing up in Minnesota (Land of 10,000 Lakes and a million Scandinavians), we heard all the Norwegian and Swedish light bulb jokes out there. Those jokes usually involved some characters named Lars and Sven who weren’t all that bright. This horrible story out of Norway tragicomically fits that. “How many Norwegians does it take to fly a helicopter and save someone?” Answer: “None because they’re all on vacation.” “How many Norwegians does it take to get in a boat and help someone?” Answer: “None because there are too many to fit on one boat, dontcha know.” These real-life stories seem like those old dumb jokes we heard about ethnic stereotypes.

I’m not trying to make light of the situation. (I know one of your readers gave you a hard time about your levity recently.) It all just reminded me of the liberal northern/midwestern U.S.A. where a lot of descendants of Norwegian immigrants live.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 28, 2011 10:09 AM | Send