‘“We do what we like with our women, so keep out of this or you’ll be sorry”,’ she had been warned when being critical of Islam, she had told Anders. ‘It must be awful to be a woman in that culture,’ she said to him one evening when they were on their own.
* * *
The Progress Party was a young party. Its forerunner had been set up in 1973 by Anders Lange, a forestry technician and anti-communist, under the name Anders Lange’s Party for a Major Reduction in Taxes, Duties and Public Intervention. The role of the state was to be minimal, in direct contrast to Labour’s welfare state. The party received support from the apartheid regime in South Africa for their 1973 election campaign. Lange said of Idi Amin’s regime in Uganda that ‘blacks needed white people to be in charge’.
He was critical of the fight for women’s liberation and of welfare provision such as maternity leave. ‘No one who has a good time with her husband in bed deserves financial help as a result,’ he said in one of his speeches.
But the year after founding his party, the colourful racist died and the young, ambitious Carl Ivar Hagen succeeded him as party chairman. In 1977 the name was changed to the Progress Party, and in the early years the party hovered at around 3 or 4 per cent in the polls. What had started out in the 1970s as a movement among individual members of the public against taxes and other duties developed a wider populist appeal in the yuppie era of the 1980s, when the country was caught up in the liberal spirit of the age. Even so, the People’s Party was not exactly mainstream and failed to attract the mass of voters.
Then the letter from Mustafa arrived:
You are fighting in vain Mr Hagen! Islam, the one true faith, will be victorious here in Norway, too.
It was 1987. The number of asylum seekers and refugees coming to Norway had shot up. From around a hundred per annum, the figure had risen: almost nine thousand had sought refuge in the last year. The Labour government planned a campaign to explain to people why Norway would have to take more refugees.
At an open election meeting in Trøndelag Hagen started reading out parts of the letter. ‘“Allah is Allah and Muhammed is his prophet,”’ he read. ‘“One day mosques will be as common in Norway as churches are today. My great-grandchildren will see this. I know, all Muslims in Norway know, that the Norwegian population will find its way to the faith one day, and this land will become Muslim! We are having more children than you, and a considerable number of true Muslim believers come to Norway every year, men of a fertile age. One day the infidel cross will be wiped from your flag!”’
This threat shocked the audience. The letter from Mustafa proved to be a turning point in the immigration debate, which came to dominate the election campaign that year. It later turned out that the letter was bogus. It was clearly a gaffe, but Hagen protested his innocence. He had done nothing but read from a letter he had received.
In any case, the party’s support tripled in comparison with the general election two years before, gaining 12 per cent of the vote. In the big cities, where immigration was at the highest levels, the party polled between 15 and 20 per cent.
‘A political earthquake,’ declared the party chairman. The Progress Party was here to stay.
Hagen was an absolute master at setting groups against each other. He particularly favoured referring to the elderly on one hand and the immigrants on the other as examples of worthy and unworthy recipients of state subsidies. Through the 1990s the party demanded that some kind of migration accounting system be set up to establish the cost and calculate the long-term consequences of the growing number of immigrants from foreign cultures. The party spokesman on immigration policy, Øystein Hedstrøm, took the line that the influx of refugees was eroding people’s morality as taxpayers because they were unwilling to make contributions that went to finance immigration. Many asylum seekers were not prepared to work because they could live well on financial support from the state, he said. What was more, the foreigners provoked in the Norwegians feelings such as ‘frustration, indignation, bitterness, fear and anxiety that could lead to psychosomatic illnesses causing absence from work and instability at home’. He claimed that hygienic standards in the shops, restaurants and stalls run by foreigners were so poor that they could make customers ill, which again would have an economic impact on society.
Hedstrøm foresaw that the rising levels of immigration would lead to violence perpetrated by Norwegians. ‘There is a great risk that these negative emotions will find an outlet in violent reactions in the not so distant future,’ he predicted in 1995, at about the same time as Anders Behring Breivik gave up tagging and weeded the immigrant slang out of his vocabulary.
Before the election that year it emerged that Hedstrøm had close contact with racist organisations such as the Fatherland Party and the White Electoral Alliance. The party leadership muzzled him, but the links did not appear to damage the party, which in Oslo had its best-ever election and gained 21 per cent of the vote.
In 1996, the year before Breivik joined the Progress Party, it had turned its rhetoric against immigrants in the direction of a critique of Islam. In his speech to the party conference that year, Hagen launched an attack on the imams. The state ought not to be supporting fundamentalism. ‘The imams are against integration and interpret the Qur’an in a way that is dangerous to the Muslims and the new generation. They should not gain any power in this country. It is a kind of racism that gives the imams in Norway power over others. The imams require education in Norwegian practices and customs and training in how to behave here,’ he claimed. In his opinion, the Muslims had taken no decisive steps towards integration and the growth of fundamentalism had frightened Norwegians. He cited the demand for Muslim schools, segregated swimming lessons and protests against religious education lessons based on Christianity, as well as the demonstrations against The Satanic Verses, and the attack in 1993 on the book’s Norwegian publisher William Nygaard, who was shot several times in the chest and shoulder, but survived.
‘Gangs are prowling the streets, stealing, going to discos in a group, fighting and committing rape in Oslo. The immigrant associations are fully aware of the situation but don’t want to cooperate with the police for fear of being called informers. They have to protect their own. These bullies are not seen as criminals but as brave, bold heroes in this section of immigrant culture. If no one speaks out against this macho culture now, it could become a time-honoured tradition in our country.’ This was the way Hagen sounded in the 1990s. ‘When the imams preach that the Norwegians are infidels, there are automatic consequences. It means among other things that it is the duty of the Muslims not to pay taxes, that they can steal from the shops with no moral scruples and that they can tell lies.’
* * *
After al-Qaida’s terrorist attacks in America on 11 September 2001 the Progress Party stepped up its rhetoric, in line with world opinion. Muslims were ruthless and dangerous. The Progress Party saw the world as George W. Bush did: us and them.
The party was flying high in the opinion polls. With the upturn in public support, the party wanted to expand its organisation. To reach out to more people, the party had to be visible at the local level and particularly among young people. That was when it decided to set up local branches, the ones that had appealed to Anders as party fortunes prospered.
He seldom spoke in plenary sessions. The few times he did address the floor, he gabbled nervously. He had written anything he said down in advance and read it in a monotone, without emotion.
He was not at home at the lectern. The internet was to be his territory.
The summer of 2002 was approaching. After an almost snowless winter and a glorious spring, the meteorologists said Norway could expect its hottest year in over a century.
As people sweated away in their offices, the parties’ nomination battles were in full swing. There was vicious jostling for places on the lists for the city council elections the following year. Anders was staking everything on a political career, so he
simply had to get nominated. He made himself as visible as possible and was an active contributor to the Progress Party Youth’s new online debate forum.
‘We needn’t be ashamed of being ambitious!’ he wrote one light night in May, in one of his first posts. ‘We needn’t be ashamed of setting goals and then reaching them! We needn’t be ashamed of breaking with established norms to achieve something better!’ Norway had such a loser mentality, he argued. A Norwegian would just stand there waiting, cap in hand. He would never put himself forward, but would follow the example set by our unassuming forefathers. This had to change, wrote Anders, using the new members of the royal family to illustrate his argument. In one of his first posts he expressed his support for Crown Prince Haakon’s marriage to Mette-Marit, a single mother with a four-year-old son, and for Princess Märtha Louise’s fiancé Ari Behn, an author whose books were steeped in drugs and dark, wild lifestyles. He praised the two new spouses for being individualists. Had they been rich, dull, conservative figures, no one would have criticised them, he wrote. No, Norway should learn from the US, where the key to success was: 1. You’re the best. 2. You can make all your dreams come true. 3. The only limits are those you set yourself. ‘Meanwhile, the wise goblins will sit on the hill and say something completely different: 1. Don’t think you’re anybody. 2. Don’t imagine you can achieve anything. 3. Don’t imagine anybody cares about you.’
* * *
The most powerful figure in Anders’s circle was Jøran Kallmyr, leader of the Progress Party Youth in Oslo. Anders often added comments to Jøran’s posts on the forum, eager to support and motivate, but seldom received an answer.
Anders, who had devised battle tactics for his toy soldiers as a boy, drawn maps and escape routes across Oslo in his time as a tagger and later sketched out business plans and marketing strategies, now drew up a chart of the Progress Party Youth organisation and planned his political future on paper.
To qualify for nomination to stand in the city council elections in 2003 the local branches had to submit suggestions to the nomination committee a year in advance, so now was the time to strike. The candidates under consideration were then called in for interview by the committee, which was led by a former diplomat, Hans Høegh Henrichsen.
Anders advised everybody to stand for election and wrote in May 2002 that he, Jøran Kallmyr and Lene Langemyr were preliminarily registered as candidates.
Jøran Kallmyr was the first of the three to be called in. ‘He’s made of stern stuff,’ was Høegh Henrichsen’s verdict. ‘Enquiring, interested, alert,’ he noted. The young man demonstrated a good understanding of Progress Party policies and could sustain an argument. A place on the list. Lene Langmyr was called in next. She was a controversial candidate; someone had sown seeds of doubt about how she conducted her life. The elderly diplomat made some discreet enquiries, turned up unannounced at her shop in Oslo one day, and then dismissed the rumours. He judged her to be ‘a usable and interesting candidate’. Not all that strong academically, but she had drive, was enterprising and was full of fighting spirit, which he valued highly. Lene was examined on Progress Party policy by the party’s grey-haired elders, and passed muster.
Anders was left waiting for a call.
He came up with several explanations for the time it was taking. The other parties were better at putting forward youth candidates, he complained. After all, he knew the elderly Høegh Henriksen from the Uranienborg-Majorstuen branch. Back then, Anders had even served as the deputy representative on the governing boards of the Majorstuen old people’s home and Uranienborg School to maximise his chances.
‘They’re sure to call you in soon,’ said Lene. ‘Remember how many people they’ve got to get through.’
Lene and Anders made plans together. They wanted to apply for membership of the Oslo Pistol Club. They were both very interested in guns and spent a long time discussing different types.
In the military, Lene had grown familiar with everything from the standard AG-3 rifle to all sorts of machine guns, Glock pistols and the MP5 sub-machine gun. She was a good shot and could vividly remember the pride she had taken in mastering something hard, doing it well, coming up to scratch.
In Anders, she was surprised that someone who had not done their military service had such a good overview of a range of weapons. ‘The army really ought to buy this type of machine gun,’ he could say, and then elaborate on its range, applications and type of ammunition. Or he might show her something on the internet or in a magazine, commenting, ‘This sub-machine gun’s better than the one they’re using now.’ He had a vast store of detailed knowledge about a whole range of firearms.
Anders had been exempted from military service because he was registered as his mother’s carer. After a serious herpes infection she had had a drain inserted in her head and she needed nursing for an extended period.
Lene was touched by the care Anders gave his mother. He told her how his mother was faring after her illness. She had changed since the surgical procedure, he said, become more absent-minded, more disorganised and terribly depressed.
Anders had also told Lene about his mother’s unhappy childhood, about his grandmother who went mad and the uncles his mother never wanted him to meet. He told her how self-sacrificing his mother had been when he was growing up, on her own with two children. But he also criticised her for having lost touch with her relations. He would so much have liked a big family.
He must be a kind boy since he has such a warm relationship with his mother, thought Lene, though she could not shake off the feeling that it was all a bit odd. He must definitely have been the favourite and spoilt all his life, she decided.
Anders would never tell Lene anything about his father.
‘He doesn’t want any contact with his children’ was all Anders would say.
On the internet, Anders adopted a tone that was jovial yet intense. His writing was peppered with emoticons, exclamation marks and jokey remarks in brackets or quotation marks. He wrote a long list of things members ought to do if they wanted to be the next Carl Ivar Hagen or Siv Jensen, the young woman who had been elected vice-chairman and proved her resilience and ambition in a male-dominated party. ‘Knowledge of selling and marketing is as important as knowledge of ideology and theoretical policy issues,’ he wrote. It also helped to know something about psychology and law, be thoughtful and read a variety of newspapers. Anybody who had worked in sales would have a clear advantage: ‘You have to be good at debating – be articulate, but talk about things in an accessible way.’ He suggested starting with some practice in front of the mirror, and recording yourself as an aid to improving performance. If you wanted to be taken seriously you had to dress professionally, and there were occasions when it was better to sit there quietly than to say anything stupid ‘in front of the grown-ups’. Teamwork was crucial, and ‘if we, the capable new blood in the Progress Party Youth, don’t assert ourselves in the main party other young people will come to prominence there.’
‘Organisation freak,’ groaned Jøran Kallmyr when he read what the deputy of the Oslo West branch had written. Behring’s a total outsider, yet he sounds like one of the inner circle, he thought when he saw the way Anders was dispensing tips to people at the top.
It sounded familiar. He was behaving like a king, but he was only a toy.
* * *
In the course of his first summer’s posting on the forum, Anders devoted more and more time to the subject of Islam. His tone was cautiously conciliatory. On 11 July 2002, when nearly everybody was away on holiday, he wrote, ‘It’s important to make the point that Islam is a great religion (on a level with Christianity) and that Muslims are generally good people (on a level with Christians).’
He stressed that it was ‘certain aspects of negative cultures related to Islam that should be criticised, not Islam itself’. There was an essential difference, he explained, referring to the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, who claimed a secret Islamic invasion of Europe was
under way. ‘I wouldn’t recommend anybody in the Progress Party Youth to fall in with this approach or they could be risking their political career,’ he advised.
Later that day, the conflict in the Middle East made waves in the little pond of Norwegian youth politics. The Workers’ Youth League – the Labour Party’s youth organisation, known by the abbreviation AUF – formally accused the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon of a breach of international law and asked for him to be brought before a Norwegian court. The charges were to be murder, opening fire on ambulances and the destruction of property.
When Hans Høegh Henrichsen heard about the allegation, he immediately rang the Israeli embassy and asked for an audience for the leader of the Oslo Progress Party Youth, Jøran Kallmyr. The audience was granted. ‘Now we’ll be able to gather the material for a counter-attack!’ Høegh Henrichsen told the young politician. The youth leader had the Israeli point of view explained to him, and adopted it as his own.
That afternoon, Jøran Kallmyr came down hard on the AUF, on the allegation and on Yasser Arafat in a post he called ‘The anti-Semites of the AUF’.
Anders Behring did not let the opportunity of a discussion with Kallmyr pass him by.
‘They’re a pack of idiots! And they certainly haven’t got a clue about the law,’ he wrote of the AUF, adding that the police should fine them for making a false allegation. It was Jøran who mobilised the heavy artillery, Anders just agreed with what he wrote, and joked that the Progress Party Youth should make an allegation against Yasser Arafat.