May 21, 2015

"If it were theoretically possible to develop rheumatism, I am convinced that this rubber pen would be capable of causing it."

"It is a nightmare of an instrument and I am frustrated by its use... The fact that I must, therefore, envision a future with nothing more than a dysfunctional rubber pen, appears, therefore, as an almost indescribable manifestation of sadism."

Wrote Anders Behring Breivik, complaining about conditions in the Norwegian prison where he is serving a 21-year term for murdering 77 human beings. He sees himself as an author, so the problems with the pen, from his perspective, are momentous. Also, from his perspective, on the day of the murders —  on July 22, 2011 — he was very concerned about a 5mm-long cut on his finger:
“Look, I’m hurt,” he said... “I can’t afford to lose too much blood”...

While the plasters were being applied, Breivik wondered why he was bleeding. He remembered hitting his finger when he shot a victim in the head at close range. Something had flown into his finger and then popped out again. It must have been a bit of skull, he told the officers in the room.

37 comments:

steve uhr said...

Speechless

Wally Kalbacken said...

This guy needs Dahmerization.

n.n said...

A nameless human life has selective value from conception to a natural, accidental, or premeditated death. I'm surprised by The New Yorker's manufactured surprise.

Lewis Wetzel said...

G.K. Chesterton wrote that most forms of insanity manifested themselves as excessive belief in the importance of the self. Only you can hear the voices. You are the focus of terrible secret plots. Only you are subject to these indignities. Only you understand the peril the world is in.

Witness said...

"serving a 21-year term for murdering 77 human beings"

... not even one year per victim?

Paul said...

@Terry:

You can contrast that with most forms of depression. Depressed people are actually better at estimating their own competence and ability than the psychologically healthy, who consistently maintain a higher opinion of themselves than is actually warranted.

MadisonMan said...

I'm not feeling much sympathy for him. I'm probably not alone in that.

Is it worth pointing out to him that had he not murdered all those people, he could freely choose any writing implements he wanted? Doubt it.

richard mcenroe said...

Hey, Norway, you left him alive, you get to listen to his whining.

Michael Fitzgerald said...

21 years for murdering 77 kids and Althouse frets that Americans are taking murder/death too lightly.

Big Mike said...

@Witness, just a bit more than 3 months per victim.

traditionalguy said...

He was easily and systematically executing young teens because guns were not permitted around them. It was a killing zone all set up by superior Norwegian intelligentsia who look down on stupid Americans who allow guns to stop men like him and impose a death penalty for men like him.

But remember they are superior. In fact Brevick believed that too.

David said...


The best argument in favor of the death penalty remains vengeance. This is a proper case for its application.

J2 said...

Well written sentence tho IMHO

Original Mike said...

Rheumatism? Someone should shove that rubber pen up his ass. Every morning.

Just sayin'.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Why is everyone mad at Breivik? It was a good shoot. Lots of them in fact. I'm not even sure why he's in jail. Probably because he shot leftists. I wish I could send him a fruit basket or a decent pen.

Steven said...

"serving a 21-year term for murdering 77 human beings"

... not even one year per victim?


Well, of course not, that would be pure retributive justice to take things like the number of victims into account, something that no good member of the Workers' Youth League could support. It would be an insult to his victims not to let him free to kill again.

Lydia said...

From the linked New Yorker article: He was given a twenty-one-year term that can be extended indefinitely.

So maybe there's hope Norway will do the right thing, eventually.

cubanbob said...

Unknown said...

Why is everyone mad at Breivik? It was a good shoot. Lots of them in fact. I'm not even sure why he's in jail. Probably because he shot leftists. I wish I could send him a fruit basket or a decent pen.
5/21/15, 6:08 PM

Even with the presumed sarcasm tag yours is a very asshole comment.

etbass said...

The article itself is inexplicable; not the subject of the article so much. Blather on and on about an evil being who should have been executed to exact some small measure of justice for his victims....

I have not the slightest patience with the blinded who can't see that execution is required by justice.

Quaestor said...

"serving a 21-year term for murdering 77 human beings"

... not even one year per victim?


Ask an average Norwegian (i.e. a socialist reactionary) about this and you'll some spiel about how they value human life too much to countenance the death penalty or even life in prison without parole. What they really value is there own good opinion of themselves.

Horseball said...

All commentary about Norway seem to ignore the fact that the 100 most prominent Norwegians are Death Metal musicians / church burners. here is Varg Vikernes on the Freeman Zionist Breivik:http://www.burzum.org/eng/library/war_in_europe05.shtml

Quaestor said...

Horsetail wrote: All commentary about Norway seem to ignore the fact that the 100 most prominent Norwegians are Death Metal musicians / church burners.

Thanks for your attempted link to that jejune piece of neo-Nazi drivel. It's important to know that semi-educated head-bangers are influential members of Norwegian society, or you think they are. Either way it's informative.

etbass said...

"some spiel about how they value human life too much to countenance the death penalty or even life in prison without parole."

What foolishness. The death penalty is a statement by the law that we so value human life that if you take it from someone else, you must pay with your own.

How do liberals not see this?

Quaestor said...

I wrote: What they really value is there own good opinion of themselves.

Stupid me. I should have written What they really value is their own good opinion of themselves. It takes me 20 minutes or more to proofread my own writing. Before that I'm blind to simple errors of spelling or syntax.

Quaestor said...

How do liberals not see this?

Modern liberalism, and to an even greater extent socialism, functions much like a religion. Hence the cognitive dissonance that so characterizes their politics.

Etienne said...

The only fair thing to do with him, is to put him in a cell with five Muslims.

JCC said...

Some significant segment of Scandanavian thought re: penology seems to be whether incarceration improves the offender's state of mind, the likelihood of recidivism of the individual, and pretty much ignores the benefit (to society) of removing the offending individual from the remainder of society.

So, the risk to the individual by imprisonment is more important than the risk to society by the removal of same.

Weird.

I would think this sociopath would be a poster child for the DP, as there really is zero chance of his ever being anything but a deadly risk to anyone else around him. He really does see us as so many ruminants in his meat-diet world.

JCC said...

And, emotions aside, there's no reason to make his life miserable. But he should be put down, like a vicious dog and for all the same reasons. He can't be fixed, he's not safe to be around, and he's really not human. He looks like us, but there's something missing upstairs. He's a shark with the power of speech, and about the same level of empathy and emotion.

Time to go. But, of course, that would be uncivilized. Or something.

cubanbob said...

Like Sirhah B Sirhan in California, this bastard will never be let free.The Norwegian equivalent of a parole board will always find a reason this guy just isn't ready to be set free.

clint said...

You need a World's Smallest Fiddle tag.

Paul said...

I say give the nutjob another gun and let him do Norway again.. and again.. and again till either these nitwit Norwegians either open their eyes or die with 'em shut.

Damn, ISIS should have a field day in Scandinavian countries.

Lewis Wetzel said...

"An initial court-ordered psychiatric review concluded that Breivik suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, but a second review diagnosed only “dissocial personality disorder” and “narcissistic traits.” The court ruled that he was not psychotic."
Oh. Okay. I guess that Breivik was just "acting out." A little time out and he should be okay.
Is it possible to intentionally kill 70 people and not be psychotic? McVeigh was a psychotic, whatever the courts said. Bill Ayres was psychotic, maybe he still is.

Smilin' Jack said...

"It is a nightmare of an instrument and I am frustrated by its use... The fact that I must, therefore, envision a future with nothing more than a dysfunctional rubber pen, appears, therefore, as an almost indescribable manifestation of sadism."

Someone should tell him that all Shakespeare had was a goose quill. Might give him some perspective on things.

Laslo Spatula said...

I once unknowingly went on a date with a Neo-Nazi in college.

She had close-cropped blonde hair and amazing blue eyes; I asked her out for some Thai food, and she agreed to go out to dinner with me, but didn't like Thai food. She also disliked Chinese food, Mexican food, Italian food, and anything that swam in the ocean because Japan was in the ocean; I took that as quirky at the time. I don't know, I think I had a thing for quirky girls at the time, not yet realizing that quirky was often just a bus stop away from crazy.

So we ended up at a Denny's and she had pancakes and discussed the problems of white civilization in today's society. Frankly, I thought she was just really commited to playing Devil's Advocate. And I have to admit: I had never heard anyone take the position that James Earl Ray was black before.

We then finished dinner and drank coffee when she hinted that I might get to see her 'special' tattoos; what guy wouldn't want to see a girl's 'special' tattoos?

Anyway, we get to my place, the clothes come off, and there, indeed, are her 'special' tattoos: she had a swastika on her pubic area and what appeared to be "Heil Hitler" in Gothic lettering across the small of her back. My penis didn't know what to think.

Upon closer inspection I realized that the latter tattoo read "Heil Hilter," so I asked her why she had "Heil Hilter" tattooed on her back.

"It says "Heil Hitler," silly," she said, heading towards the bedroom.

"Uh, no it doesn't," I replied. "H - I - L - T - E - R: it says Heil Hilter. I think they crossed the 'L' instead of the 'T'."

"Damn!" she said, hands on her hips, fruitlessly trying to look back over her shoulder. "I THOUGHT that tattoo guy looked Jewish."

Coincidentally, this is probably the moment when I first made the quirky/crazy connection.

"I don't think this is going to happen," I said, to which she replied "Don't be that way," and that she would pretend to be Jewish if I wanted to play WWII German Camp Commander in the shower.

"That doesn't sound like a good idea," I said.

"You probably think I hate all Jews, don't you?"

"I haven't had much time to process that particular thought."

"I don't hate ALL Jews, just the real Jewish-y ones."

"Good to know."

"Like my Dad: he's a Jewish-y Jew. But he pays my tuition, so I wouldn't have my friends beat him or anything."

NOW I realized that "quirky" was often synonymous with "Daddy Issues."

Needless to say, I couldn't have sex with a woman with a swastika tattooed above her vagina, so I accepted a blow-job and drove her home.

Our second date didn't go any better.


I am Laslo.

DanTheMan said...

>>murdering 77 human beings

Redundant, Ann. You can't murder non-humans.
You'd think a law prof would know that. :)

dreams said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Roughcoat said...

Is it possible to intentionally kill 70 people and not be psychotic?

Yes. Psychosis is a specific condition entailing a detachment from reality. Brevik was not detached from reality: he was no psychotic. He was/is evil. He may be mentally ill but then again maybe not. Psychosis is not a cause of evil. To say or even imply otherwise is to diminish evil and its consequences. Most killers including serial killers and mass murderers are not in the leastways psychotic. If anything they are coldly rational, at least in the planning and carrying of their acts. They know what they are doing. They understand that what they are doing is wrong by society's norms and they understand the consequences of their acts. They are not crazy. They are evil.