One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (19 page)

Braxynglet despised newcomers who bragged. His way of putting this could sound like racism – a hatred of others,
of outsiders. Anders took a liking to the Swede, never seeming to understand that
he
himself was the intruder, the foreigner, the immigrant. He spoke and acted on the forums as if he were one of the best, and sucked up to those at the top.

For a while, Braxynglet adopted the motto
Mohamed is gay.
Anders responded warmly, telling the Swede he was so cool, but still Anders was given the cold shoulder.

He was rejected by those who mattered.

He did not fit in. He was patient and persistent, but he never made it to the top of
World of Warcraft
. He was never among the Top 500 on the servers that mattered, and thus was never ranked.

He acted like a king, when he was only a toy.

*   *   *

Everything else was going to the dogs. When the 2006 accounts for E-Commerce Group were due with the auditor
in 2007, board chairman Breivik was not contactable and the auditor resigned. The year after that, E-Commerce Group was compulsorily wound up. According to the bankruptcy report, the company had broken tax laws, share-trading laws and accounting laws.

Outside his room, life was unravelling.

But inside, the game went on.

Because the game had no end.

One night after a raid he stayed chatting
to a player in his guild who was considering whether to pull out. He needed to get to grips with real life again, he said. Anders admitted he had thought the same. He was going to stop soon, he said.

But he didn’t.

He stayed in his room.

It’s only temporary, he had said. But he stayed in there for five years.

Five years in front of the screen.

A tonic to his depression.

Three Comrades

Give me the pure and the straight,

the men who are steady and strong

Those who have patience and will

never in life to go wrong …

Yes, give me the best amongst you,

and I shall give you all.

No one can know till victory is mine

how much to us shall fall.

It may be it means we shall save our earth.

To the best goes out my call.

Rudolf Nilsen, ‘Revolusjonens røst’
(The Voice of the Revolution), 1926

‘Mum, can I join the AUF?’

Tone stood there, receiver in hand. Simon had rung home at last.

‘Mum, can you hear me? It only costs ten kroner!’

‘So good to hear from you, Simon. I mean that’s why we gave you the phone, right, so you could ring home!’

It was the winter of 2006 and Simon was thirteen and away on a trip, staying overnight in Tromsø for the first
time. In Year 7 he had been elected to the student council at the secondary school in Salangen. This year the county council organised a youth conference for northern Norway, and Simon was asked to represent his school. At the conference they discussed what improvements could be made to young people’s lives in the north.

A teenage boy called Stian Johansen had talked about the AUF, the youth
organisation of the Labour Party.

In the break, Simon went up to him. He introduced himself politely and carefully.

Baby face, thought the speaker

‘I’d like to join the AUF,’ said Simon.

Stian whipped out his membership pad and asked Simon to fill in his name and address. Recruiting new members was important. More members meant more influence and, crucially, more money in the party kitty.
For every member in a political youth organisation, the state paid a contribution. Recruiting lots of people enhanced your status in the apparatus.

When Stian saw Simon’s date of birth, he smiled. ‘I can’t sign you up – you’ve got to be fifteen. But if you get your parents’ permission it’s all right.’

Tone stood there in the kitchen, listening to the cheerful voice of her elder son. ‘It’s so
much fun here, there’ve been lots of exciting discussions and debates, and the ones I agree with most are the lot from the AUF. Can I join? It only costs ten kroner!’

‘Of course you can join the AUF, love,’ laughed Tone.

‘Okay, I’ll fill in the form now and then bring it home with me, so you and Dad can sign it. I’ve met so many cool people, Mum! But I’ve got to hang up now.’

It wasn’t exactly
an expression of youthful rebellion on Simon’s part for him to join the AUF. He had grown up in the labour movement: his father sat as a local councillor for the Labour Party.

Discussions round the dinner table were political, whether they were about the war in Afghanistan or drilling for oil in the sea around the Lofoten Islands. Simon was against both. The conversation also revolved round more
domestic issues, such as whether it was fair for Håvard to have to do penalty rounds the same length as Simon when they had throw-snowball-at-log competitions in the garden. They had to run extra rounds when they missed the target, just like in biathlon. Simon and Håvard had inherited their father’s competitive spirit. In athletics, Simon came high on the list of results in the high jump championships,
and Håvard became the Norwegian champion in the boys’ 1500 metres. To enlist the boys’ help at home, Tone would often come up with competitions like ‘Who can get to the bin with a rubbish sack first?’ When they got to the skip at the top of the slope they opened the hatch and took aim from a distance.

But politics was even more exciting than sport. As a result of centralisation in Troms county
and the falling numbers of children per year group in the north, each time there was a new budget to balance the politicians weighed up whether to close the upper secondary school in Salangen. Every year it fought for its life, and won. When Simon was in Year 8, he attended a county council meeting for the first time, to speak about why there should be no cuts to the school provision in the area.

Before long he was elected leader of the Salangen youth council. He devoted his energies there to campaigning for facilities for young people. In small towns and villages, sport often provided the only social life, and those who weren’t sporty could find themselves left out. The central issue for him was trying to reopen the youth club that had closed down years before. The local council pledged
to fund it as long as Simon could guarantee that the young people undertook the voluntary work of renovating and maintaining it. He gave his promise. The youngsters were given basement premises with a music room, dance floor, pool table and a little café they would run themselves. It would be a place to meet, for everybody. It just needed a bit of redecoration first.

‘But Mum, how can I get people
to come and help?’ Simon asked.

‘You need something to lure them in,’ Tone suggested.

‘Like what?’

‘I could make pizza,’ she offered.

Simon put up posters to advertise the working party, and by the time he got home from Velve, as the club was called, he was elated and splashed all over with red and cobalt blue paint.

‘Loads of people volunteered, Mum! We ran out of paintbrushes!’

*   *   *

On his sixteenth birthday, 25 July 2008, Simon was old enough to become a member of the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees. He joined that same day. His friends thought it was odd that he wanted union membership before he had a job.

‘Everybody ought to join a union,’ he argued. ‘Even school pupils. The stronger we make the trade unions now, the better working life will be by the
time we finish our education!’ If they had a large enough pool of members, the unions could stamp down harder on shady practices in the world of work, because young people were often exploited, not paid the going rate for the job, or forced to accept poor working conditions. Employers broke laws on health and safety in the workplace and younger job applicants didn’t always know their rights. That
was why it was important for the trade union’s summer patrol to go round the country checking up on conditions for young people.

The nicest surprise about membership was that it included several months’ subscription to the left-wing newspaper
Klassekampen
– ‘Class Struggle’. Simon read about the way the financial crisis was hitting the poorest people in developing countries, about social dumping
and the unemployment explosion in Europe. Critical of those in power, the paper debated all the topics that interested him.

‘Dad, you must read it!’ he said. ‘This paper’s great! It tells you about stuff in a totally different way from anywhere else.’

*   *   *

When the summer holidays were over and he started in his first year at Sjøvegan Upper Secondary, a school under threat of closure,
he wanted to do more than subscribe to
Klassekampe
n. It wasn’t enough to think about socialist answers to society’s problems on your own. He rang the party office in Tromsø and asked how he could start a branch of the AUF in Salangen.

‘Give notice of a founding meeting and then we can come and help you recruit members,’ came the answer.

Simon put up notices all round the school:

INAUGURAL MEETING
FOR
SALANGEN WORKERS’ YOUTH LEAGUE.

In the Cultural Centre.

One evening in mid-September, three boys drove over from Tromsø. One was the leader of the Troms AUF, Brage Sollund, whom Simon had talked to on the phone. The second was the best recruiter in the county, named Geir Kåre Nilssen. With them they had a skinny Year 10 boy with glasses and a brace on his teeth. His name was Viljar Hanssen.

Over Tone’s tacos they drew up their plan of action.

‘Right Simon, this is what we’ll do tomorrow,’ said Geir Kåre. ‘You go straight up to the prettiest girl in the school. It’s vital we get her on board, because in most schools she’s the one who decides what’s cool or not. Then we’ll sign up her friends, and once that’s done we’ll move on to the boys. Okay?’

Simon nodded.

‘We’ll start with
the tough guys. They’re always the hardest to reach, so if we can get them, this could be really big. Then it’s all easy because the rest will follow.’

Simon nodded again.

‘I’ve got a formula for you,’ Brage said. ‘AUF = 90% social + 10% politics.’

Brage had brought along a book to help Simon prepare for the meeting, a history of the AUF called
The Salt of the Party
. Brage read out a passage
about when the legendary Einar Gerhardsen was leader of the Workers’ Youth League: ‘In spring 1921, Gerhardsen made it a condition of standing for re-election as chairman that there be no more dances. Study activities were to be intensified “to make every member of the group a conscious communist”. His condition was accepted, but the outcome indicate that revolutionary consciousness remained lacking
at grass-roots level. At the general meeting six months later, only thirty-six members remained of the original 322, a slump of almost ninety per cent!’

The boys laughed.

No, Simon wouldn’t forget the social side.

They rang the local paper, which promised to come to the inaugural meeting, they planned which issues Salangen AUF would focus on, and they ended up on mattresses under warm quilts
in the basement sitting room, joking the night away.

*   *   *

The recruiting session was timed for the lunch break.

‘Okay Simon, the floor is yours,’ said Geir Kåre, giving his new friend a pat on the shoulder.

A few seconds’ hesitation, and Simon strode up to the prettiest girl at Sjøvegan.

‘AUF?’ she queried. ‘For ten kroner?’

Then she smiled. ‘Go on then,’ and wrote her name on his pad.

Viljar came with him, and the boys went from one group of pretty girls to the next.

The membership pad was filling up. Soon they had asked everyone in the school playground and the canteen. Viljar was impressed.

‘He’s got a way with words, that Simon! Everybody joins,’ he said to Brage and Geir Kåre.

The things Simon focused on when he spoke to each new group were: no to closure of Sjøvegan
School, and yes to hot school lunches. Cheaper bus fares for young people. Things that most students agreed on. But to achieve them, they needed the AUF, Simon said, and the AUF needed them. It was as simple as that.

‘You’re very persuasive!’ Viljar said to his fellow party member, one year his senior, when the lunch break was over. ‘Salangen’s golden boy. The local prince,’ declared the lad
from Tromsø with a laugh. ‘They would have joined anything, as long as it was with you,’ he teased.

Viljar was right, because everyone liked Simon. Whatever he suggested, you wanted to be a part of it. He was cheerful, he was cool, he had style. The girls in the school canteen were always aware of it when
that Simon
walked in.

In the course of the day eighty new members were signed up. Geir
Kåre and Brage had never seen anything like it. Simon basked in the glory of his success.

‘But I did talk to them beforehand, you know,’ he admitted. He had made the most of the time at break, before football matches or at athletics training, on the way to school or in the canteen queue. They had all known they had to bring ten kroner to school with them that day. Simon had wanted to be as well
prepared as possible when the townies from Tromsø turned up with their membership pads.

‘Ha ha,’ said Viljar. ‘So you’d warmed them up in advance, eh?’

He in turn had been recruited by Brage, who came up to him at a youth conference when Viljar was thirteen and asked: ‘Hi, have you heard of the AUF?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good, I’m its leader.’

The local paper,
Salangen News
, had already announced the
same morning that ‘Friday the 19th of September 2008 will be a historic day in the community of Salangen. A local branch of the Workers’ Youth League is to be set up. Simon Sæbø is heading the initiative.’