ABSTRACT
On 22 July 2011, 69 people were massacred on the Norwegian island of Utøya and a further eight were killed in a car bomb that exploded in the city of Oslo. It was the worst terrorist attack ever carried out on Norwegian soil. According to the perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik, his actions that day were ‘preventative attacks to defend the indigenous Norwegian people’ (The Guardian, 22 June 2012). In Breivik’s mind Norwegian identity had been under assault from a combination of Muslim immigration and rampant multiculturalism and his actions were merely a way of preventing Norway from destroying itself from within. Wider social discourse has, of course, been quick to condemn Breivik’s actions and the ideas that underpin these, labelling him an extremist; an individual whose beliefs, values and ideology are outside and beyond the norm.
