The price of intolerance

Anders Behring Breivik, the man behind the bestial violence in Norway, which claimed more than 90 innocent lives, is apparently no psychopath in the ordinary sense of the term, although his mind is undoubtedly diseased, in that he was driven by the basest human instincts. Nevertheless, he seems to have been in complete control of his senses and, going by reports, was coldly calculating and rational at the time he carried out the atrocity.

Norwegian authorities quoted Breivik as saying that his violence was ‘cruel’ but that he ‘had to go through these acts.’ He was also quoted as saying that his orgy of violence was planned over several years and that it was a ‘martyrdom operation.’ If not for these aspects of the case very many observers are likely to have dismissed this outburst of terror as yet another manifestation of ‘civilization and its discontents.’

The latter line of thinking would have been dictated by the fact that the unsettling tragedy occurred in an affluent Western country which has been noteworthy for its law and order and liberal ethos but where peace within the human personality is difficult to come by easily. This is the stock, stereotypical description of the ‘wealthy West’ where the more psychologically unstable human’s inner restlessness purportedly reaches crisis proportions and more than occasionally leads to orgies of violence. On these premises, the violence in Norway would have been superficially viewed and glossed over as an abnormality typical of the ‘spiritually dead’ sections of the West.

But it is plain to see that standard interpretations are way off the mark here. Breivik is apparently no raving psychopath with overpowering criminal instincts. On the contrary, his comments disclose that he is a rigidly rational, meticulous operator who has a strong ideological orientation. The latter is borne out by his description of his actions as involving ‘martyrdom’ of some kind. This is the language of the fanatical suicide bomber of volatile Asian countries and we see here that there is no dividing line between the extremists of both the Western and Eastern hemispheres. The sensibility of the coldly calculating ideologue could be completely dulled to the point to which brute force would come naturally to him, whether he hails from East or West.

However, the world is wrong in characterizing such brute insensitivity as a typically Asian political phenomenon. For instance, did not the world witness monumental inhumanity in Hitlerian Germany during World War Two, when unspeakable bestiality was visited on the Jews of the world by Hitler and his hated Nazi regime?

However, suicide bombers were yet to erupt on the Western political landscape at the time and what we are seeing now in the form of the likes of Breivik, is the further degeneration of the Western extremist into a senseless brute of the kind which not so long ago stalked our land in the form of the LTTE leader and his ghoulish associates.

Rigid commitment to ideologies can render the human personality completely conscienceless and this is the inference to be drawn from the terrifying brutality in Oslo. A self-righteous and unyielding attachment to ideological beliefs could completely and irrevocably brutalize the human and this is the lesson to be learnt.

Intolerance and hatred are the accompanying malaises of ideological rigidity. Did not Sri Lanka witness this over 30 years when LTTE brutality made short work of innocent humans in the hundreds in one go? It is clear that such brutality could be expected of anyone or any group or collectivity which is committed to ideological rigidity and purism.

These are the reasons why, whatever its flaws, democracy is still the best form of government and way of life. The atrocities born of intolerance and hatred remind us that we need to continuously cherish democracy and keep its institutions vibrantly alive.