Last Friday one of the most devastating killing sprees was commited on the island of Utoya.
The attack on Utoya was exceptionally well planned and executed. The sheer brilliance of this most savage attack amazes me. If you think of all the detail that went into it, its absolutely brilliant piece of terrorism, from the selection of the target to method of attack.
The outline of the plan was fairly complex and it goes far beyond the typical Modus Operandi of the typical spree killer.
1)Detonate a bomb at an administrative center to create chaos and to distract the police, as well as giving the disguised murderer access to the target area.
2)Inflitrate the target area disguised as a law enforcement officer.
3)Use the uniform to lure the victims into a mass where they are easy to slaughter.
The target area was brilliantly chosen. As an island it is a confined space isolated by water from the rest of the country. This had two effects, firstly it limited the space where the victims could hide or run to, given enough time and ammunition the killer could have easily massacred every person on the island by systematically going through the island. Secondly the water hindered the police response, as they had to wait for a boat to get to the island, this contributed to the high death toll.
Terrorism at is core is about getting a reaction. The success of an act of terror is not measured by the death toll or the level of mayhem caused, its meassured by how well the target society's reaction matches the reaction desired by the terrorist. Therefor the success or failure of an act of terror is in the hands of the victims, not the terrorist.
In this case the objective was to get attention to the killer's political ideology. Therefor the best reaction is convict this man as soon as possible, lock him up into a small cell and forget about him. Remember the victims, but forget him, he is not worth remembering. That's why I don't refer him by name in this text, let his very name be forgotten and that is the worst possible punishment for this man. Let him live the rest of his life alone and forgotten.
It however saddens me that a person has to resort to mass-murder to be heard. This one of the common feature among spree killers and school shooters, they feel that no one is listening to them. By doing this sort of thing they get the attention they crave so much.
The worst possible response to this attack is to start censoring the ideas that he was supporting or the people who might share them. There are already calls in Finland to add to the censorship of anti-immigrant or racist ideas. While I find these ideas repugnant, I still believe that in a free society ideas must be exchanged freely. By limiting the freedom of speech of the far right you make violence more attractive to these people, violence generates media buzz and gets attention to their ideas. I would rather have their ideas presented as a part of the everlasting discourse between ideas that is so fundamental to democracy and let them be judged on their merits. The anti-islamic ideas didn't pull the trigger at Utoya, a man who believed that mass-murder was the best way to promote them did.
Finally I wish to say that we must never surrender to fear, if we do the terrorists will win everytime. Against a man like this, who is intelligent and absolutely commited to commiting acts like this, very free society has limited defenses. The police do their best to prevent these tragedies from happening, we can have systems that control access to firearms or chemicals needed to make bombs, but ultimately they will only slow people like this, not stop them. Unless we have the ability to police peoples minds there is no fool proof way of preventing terrorism and even if we had the ability to do so, I am not at all convinced that we should. We must live free with knowledge that there are vicious people out there who use the freedoms we love so much to harm us and that is the true price freedom.
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