Man kan fly en galning men kan inte gömma sig för ett samhälle review

Blogger/journalist/politician (he was until recently a member of the Swedish parliament) Esbati writes harrowingly about his vivid memories of hearing gunshots and hiding from Breivik with groups of predominately young people, some of whom were injured. At one stage he spots Breivik, describing him as a big man dressed in black. His partner at the time, journalist and author Marte Michelet, would have been in grave danger had she herself been present that day, as Breivik hated her and named her as one of the most extreme communists in Norway. Esbati manages to escape by reaching the sea and lying in the water until he is rescued by the police. When found, Breivik is arrested without a struggle. At his trial the following year, he is sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum sentence the Norwegian judicial system can mete out.

There had been terror attacks (some Islamophobic) in the Nordic countries before, but nothing of this magnitude. Furthermore, as the book’s back cover mentions, Breivik didn’t operate in a vacuum. Ever since, and maybe even before the 9/11 attacks in the United States, anti-Islamic feeling was rife. Incidentally, in the hours following the massacre, many sources immediately assumed that it was perpetrated by Islamic extremists. Esbati himself is Muslim, and since he came to Sweden has witnessed quite a lot of racism and islamophobia himself. In his book he also writes about the rise of the far-right in the Nordic countries and elsewhere, and mentions several high-profile media and political figures in Scandinavia who are blatantly Islamophobic, and who have fuelled the fire of islamophobia in articles and political utterances, as well as being anti-socialist and anti-feminist. Some of them influenced Breivik, who was a member of the far-right Progress Party for a time. To reflect public opinion, many ‘mainstream’ political parties, and not just those in Scandinavia (many European countries have swung to the right politically in the 21^st century) have discreetly or indiscreetly borrowed anti-immigrant policies from their far-right adversaries to prevent them from eating away at their support. Indeed, in some countries such as Italy and Hungary (and maybe soon, Germany?), far-right parties currently hold the levers of power either by themselves or together with other parties in uneasy coalitions.

This is a very important and, unfortunately, topical book, and I would recommend it to anyone who has even a slight interest in contemporary politics; but more importantly than that, it is a reminder of what extremely misguided, brainwashed and dangerous people can be capable of, for Breivik was a product of nefarious sections of Norwegian society and, as already noted, didn’t operate in a vacuum.