Breivik, Norway's shame: 3 months jail time per victim
Il Giornale, August 25th, 2012
Anders Behring Breivik was sentenced by an Oslo Court to 21 years in prison. Now, if we do the maths we will deduce that having killed 77 youth youths one by one, chasing and terrorizing them before butchering them, he will only serve 3 months approximately of jail time per victim. And what a jail! As a matter of fact, Norwegian jails, unlike Italian ones, all have a nice view of the forests, air conditioning, a TV set in each cell; inmates even enjoy the possibility to work and regenerate.
The goal is rehabilitation, that we embrace. We also rejoice in the conditions of these jails, considering ours are beyond all possible assessment, as we also welcome that capital punishment is banned.
It is also praiseworthy that a criminal like Breivik has been given a fair trial, as everybody else, where two professional judges were flanked by three jurors. Hopefully after serving such a short jail time the sentence will be renewed if the criminal is deemed dangerous, if that part of law that so disposes is enforced.
Fine. But we are just good sensed people and not quite angels, what perhaps Norwegians and other European peoples think they are, by aiming at the creation of not fair but rather perfect societies. Therefore we truly regret that this revolting murderer only got 21 years. We truly regret that jurors shook his hand as the trial began, as we are also ashamed that he was allowed the Nazi salute when he entered the court hall, that he was permitted to hold an ideological speech for longer than the allowed half hour. He explained that he carried out a mass massacre out of “necessity” - so he called it - in order to react to the multiculturalism of the ruling party, which was holding its youth festival on the premises where the youths were shot dead that nefarious July 22nd .
Norwegian society, that only counts 5 million members, with all due respect, tried to overcome itself, the parents' grief, and common sense by envisaging the crazy idea that in 2033 a redeemed Breivik might be set loose, maybe safeguarding his Nazi beliefs, smirking in the same guise as he did when he warned “I am mentally fit, if you judge me mentally insane I will appeal this decision”.
It is the risk to stick the knife again in a too sore wound for the country, so confident, so little available to question itself, that probably induced the court to judge Breivik sane. Of course also his detailed political disquisitions as well as his factual testimony helped. But there are also lucid madmen; Norway perhaps ought to have admitted that this was the case and put subsequently its monster away in a madhouse and throw away the keys. 77 means 77. Or else, it should have taken the courage to change a law in order to have real justice, not this cartoons-like one that hides the truth of the pain, of the exaggeration, of scorn. Norway, overall a strange country, beautiful, apparently a paradise, being delusional about itself and about human nature, will evidently not admit that a great disaster like this one Breivik caused has shaken it to its core. It is of course a rich country, but only thanks to its GNP given by the earth that spills out oil; it has little criminality also because, where there is low density population you don't push people, you just skim them. It takes great care of its education and health-care systems, of social organization tout court, but is has a growing youth suicide rate. One girl out of 7 there has already attempted suicide, boys do it a bit less. Organized prostitution is forbidden, but prostitution is legal. Out of 100 thousand people 74 are involved in drug trafficking crimes, whereas 57 are in Italy. Norway depicts itself as an advocate of the poor and the oppressed, but it did not protect its Jews from the Nazis, unlike neighboring Denmark; on the contrary, it always had a bad rejection relationship with Jews, enhanced by a high immigration rate. Its elites had then been sympathetic towards communism and anti-NATO. Its laws and institutions reflect a third world purity dream that in the end of the day envisages human rights as an idea they think they can better understand than other. So Breivik's right to a fair trial, and to a punishment that enables the redemption of the human being, occurs today at the cost of unutterable pain of families whose lives were destroyed for good and with satisfaction of the mass murderer. In short, dreams of perfection often disregard the composition of human nature, which hosts not only good but also evil.