2011 Oslo/Utoeya Norway attacks

i was saying the other day that the thing that breivik and derb and all these super arch reactionary paleo conservative racists have in common is that they seem to have been beaten up a lot in high school and rejected by girls

by that reasoning I should be a super arch reactionary paleo conservative racist

in my case it was the super arch reactionary paleo conservative racists doing the beating/rejecting

did derb ever talk about getting bullied or beaten up as a kid? idk i'm always a little suspicions of a-to-b stories like that tbh

certainly do feel like there's a connected phenomena of above-avg intelligence and waaay-below-avg ability to understand other people that leads certain dudes to extreme politics & simplistic solutions -- nobody likes me, everyone is so stupid, nobody can see the truth, everything is so corrupt and nobody understands

goole otm, but that kind of alienation can lead people off in all sorts of directions. i mean, i was one of those guys and in many ways still am. i just sought solace in different things.

yeah i'm wary of making that connection too, for reasons goole explained. almost a form of bullying itself

"certainly do feel like there's a connected phenomena of above-avg intelligence and waaay-below-avg ability to understand other people..."

This kind of sounds like Asberger's, though.

He definitely had issues with his sister and mother, iIrc.

it's almost frustrating that on account of his extreme actions it's become so much of an understatement to point out that this guy is such a stupid dick.

observing the banality of evil has become incredibly stale, and yet evil is still banal

leftists all have a certain look about them, apparently

this guy has said a lot of vomitous stuff but this might be the most vomitous yet

“When people say they have lost their most beloved, I also lost my entire family, I lost my friends. It was my choice. I sacrificed them, but I lost my entire family and friends on 22 July. I lost everything. So to a certain extent, I understand.”

feel like this guy exists specifically to test my convictions re: the death penalty

you know the difference asshole? the victims' families didn't have a fucking choice!

certainly do feel like there's a connected phenomena of above-avg intelligence and waaay-below-avg ability to understand other people...

No way is this idiot of above-avg intelligence

There's always a temptation to look at someone who creates an elaborate and internally consistent narrative to explain the world and conclude that this is a sign of high intelligence. The difficulty is that it is easy to create an elaborate narrative, if you're allowed to discard or ignore the majority of reality, substituting fantasy wherever you wish. Children aged five are easily able to do this.

above-avg doesn't mean 'smart' let alone 'right'

feel like this guy exists specifically to test my convictions re: the death penalty

i feel the same way, haven't really felt that way since tim mcveigh blew up all those little kids

also i think there's broad consensus that intelligence in terms of a one-dimensional quantity (like IQ) is an outmoded concept anyway but that's a different thread

id guess he has a reasonably high iq but is evidently a total bawheid who would struggle to hold down a job in a hardware store

the notion that this particular boring psycho deserves execution as opposed to all the other child rapists and serial murderers who don't is pretty specious and self regarding

some ppl jumping on his skull every now and then would probably be deserved

as i understand it he's kept in a 3 room cell with its own gym and "library" just to prevent fellow inmates from maiming him. a shame imo.

id guess over the next fifty years or so, someone who wishes do him harm will get close....

the notion that this particular boring psycho deserves execution as opposed to all the other child rapists and serial murderers who don't is pretty specious and self regarding

not that i'm going to jump on the "execute him" side of the debate here or anything, but given the scale and his total lack of awareness i can 100% understand why this particular case might test people's beliefs, as opposed to just any "other" child rapist or murderer

the 'total lack of awareness' is something of a mitigation, since it suggests a cognitive deficit not present in all of those serial killers who justify their acts as wilful pleasure-seeking

some of the things he says are total challops and it's natural to wish ill on him, but it's facile to pretend he alone deserves to be a recipient of lethal state violence

i don't think he deserves to die at all. i think it would be both just and rich for him to be dealt with in the manner that norwegians have designed without exception

yah it's best that he understand that however much he tries everyone's patience, he deserves no more special consideration than the dude who just beat his wife to death jerking off in the next cell

what about the dude who beat 77 wives to death?

the gaols are probably full of ppl who would murder 76 more wives if they could

I could wish death on him by teh State or by a vengeful relative of one of his victims if I didn't feel like it would legitimize his use of killing. He's a complete and utter fool, imho, and life in a mental hopsital, a high-security mental hospital will do quite nicely.

well kant disagrees w/ you fwiw

(xpost but i guess the point would apply to mw's post too)

i mean that kant disagrees w/ the self-regarding part, not the gaols part

anwyay i've already had a bad experience on this board being an apologist for theories of retributive justice, and since i don't actually support the death penalty i should probably just shut up about it already

yah id guess i would reject kantian precepts cuz the state should never execute as universal law, but i would be quietly pleased if his protection momentarily failed and he was subject to the same fate as jeffrey dahmer

i'm okay with situational ethics

oh sure, you say that NOW...

lol

Part of my not wishing death on him stems actually from my almost utter lack of care for him. I wouldn't care that much if he died though a murder is still a murder, but however monstrous his acts, I don't want the State to compound them by adorning itself with his shrunken post-retributive head and pretending like it means justice has been served or the victims will find 'closure' more easily or it will dissuade future psychotic nutjobs from following in his footsteps. He's beneath contempt and he should be treated as the inhuman monster he's become and locked away until he can see and realize the enormity of his crimes and callousness. Until then, let him rot in an antiseptic nightmare.

^^ I will sign onto that opinion.

i get what you're saying MW but at the same time supposing he rots in the antiseptic nightmare of a scandinavian prison i still won't necessarily feel like "justice has been served".

OTOH the more i think about the more i think "justice" is a fleeting concept anyway.

justice will never be served is the thing

None of those kids he killed is coming back. None of the trauma visited upon his country can be undone. Rertribution is fleetingly fun but it degrades a person and they either want more retribution or they spend delusional lives defending the righteous ways in which they've debased themself.

Whether sane or not, this guy doesn't deserve the attention. He's not all that bright and he has some major flaw in his works, where I don't know, but I don't particulalry care to see him 'martyred' when he can be quietly sequestered surrounded by all the condescension of a hospital and not the big-boy honor of a prison. Venality, wrath, anti-social behaviors - those are all at least typically human. His narcissism is so immense it's like he's a two-year old. That emotional immaturity allied to crank theories about race or ethnicity or saving your country or whatever daft little fantasies glimmer in his dank little psyche make me literally think him a kind of subhuman - not inalterably so, who knows? - but I also don't believe in killing animals w/o a reason so what's the point in a re-instating the death penalty and going through a trial which will invariably lead to his conviction and then leading him out to whatever the most civilized slaughter the Norse can think of?

Conversely, they used to be pretty good at disuassive punishment as I recall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_eagle

if he was killed and eaten would you feel better?

eaten by what...

i dunno, pigs or victim's dogs or w/e, it was a throwaway line tbh- tho we have a (p. good iirc) death penalty thread somewhere and i agree that this guy is v close to the perfect strawman for the argument

Thrown into a snake pit, perhaps

TBH i probably would feel better if he was killed and eaten by pigs

but i think the martyrdom argument - don't let him become a symbol for other right-wing nuts - is a very compelling argument against execution, and is basically why i *don't* think he should be executed.

and who knows, maybe someday he'll recant

what if he just has to sit quietly for the rest of his life and think about what he's done.

re: his possible maryrdom, the worry is that the 'success' of his attack will serve well enough as inspiration to other nuts, what happens to breivik after the fact isn't going to lessen the havoc they've seen one guy cause.