Norway Killer Targeted Writers & Lit Professors in Manifesto

By Jason Boog 

Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian man accused of killing 76 people in a coordinated attack, wrote a 1,500 page manifesto. Entitled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, the manuscript outlined plans for attacking writers, journalists and literature professors.

These plans are especially frightening as the attacker now claims he was part of a larger organization. The New York Times has more: “The 32-year-old man accused of devastating twin attacks in Norway now maintains that two cells of extremists collaborated with him, court officials said here Monday as they ordered solitary confinement for the suspect.”

In his horrific manuscript (some lifted from the Unabomber manifesto), Breivik wrote about different classifications of “traitors,” or individuals he felt could be killed during his imagined revolution.  In his handbook, he suggested that revolutionaries consider attacking both “literature conferences and festivals” and “annual gatherings for journalists.”

We’ve included multiple excerpts from his manuscript below–follow this link if you want to find the text.

Breivik had this chilling note about targeting journalists in his manifesto: “in Norway, there is an annual gathering for critical and investigative press where the most notable journalists/editors from all the nations  media/news companies attend … The conference lasts for 2 days and is usually organized at a larger hotel/conference center. Security is light or non-existent making the conference a perfect target. ”

Here is the section where he wrote about literary festivals: “This is where many cultural Marxist/PC authors (the disgusting cultural Marxist and  traitorous bourgeois elite – the Marxist-Leninists’ of the 68 generation (or sympathisers of this group) meet and socialise. Prioritised target groups make out the bulk of the participants who attend certain  literature conferences and festivals: Writers (90%+ of these individuals support multiculturalism and usually portray their world view through their works),  editors and journalists in cultural Marxist/multiculturalist publications, [and] a majority of individuals related to various “cultural Marxist/politically correct” cultural settings and organisations.”

Elsewhere in his manifesto, Breivik criticized the connection between academia in a section entitled “Political Correctness: Deconstruction and Literature.” His manifesto spent pages attacking a number of “Cultural Marxist” intellectuals, including Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno.

He blamed these two groups for spreading political correctness and multiculturalism: “The thing is that many of our political and cultural elites, including politicians, NGO leaders, university professors/lecturers, writers, journalists and editors – the individuals making up the majority of the so called category A and B traitors, knows exactly what they are doing. They know that they are contributing to a process of indirect cultural and demographical genocide and they need to be held accountable for their actions.”

At one point, Breivik railed against college reading lists: “Unfortunately, that has not stopped the cultural critics from indoctrinating this new generation in feminist interpretation, Marxist philosophy and so-called ‘queer theory.’ Requirements for reading Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, and other dead white males are disappearing, to be replaced by options to take studies in ‘The Roles of Women in the Renaissance’ (an excuse to lament the sexism of the past) or ‘The Bible as Literature’ (a course designed to denigrate the Bible as cleverly crafted fiction instead of God’s truth). The reliable saviour of the intelligentsia is the common man and his common sense.”

Later in the essay, the author included a reading list for studying revolution. He explained: “The people who have done most thinking about revolutions, of course, have been revolutionaries, and this handout draws strongly on ‘primary sources’ – the words of  practicing revolutionaries.”

Breivik recommended this book first: “John Foran (ed.), Theorizing revolutions (London: Routledge, 1997). This is a collection of  essays on the sociology of revolution, covering some of the most important theoretical approaches and a range of specific examples.”

Followed by this book: “Willie Thompson, The left in history. Revolution and reform in twentieth-century politics (London: Pluto, 1997). This is a very good overview of the history of revolutionary politics in the last 100 years.”

The manifesto also included a lengthy section about how to spread the manuscript around the world. Breivik urged readers to publish the book through print-on-demand companies, digital book companies, and file-sharing networks. One blogger asked the question: Is the media completing the Utøya killer’s mission?

Editor’s note: This post has been updated as the story evolved.