The Opening Statement of Anders Breivik (Day 3 of trial)

Breivik testifying on day 3 of his 2012 trial

Judge Arntzen: You must lower the microphone a little for the transmission to the other courts to work properly.

Anders Breivik: I stand here today as a representative of the Norwegian and European resistance movement. I speak on behalf of Norwegians who do not want our rights as an indigenous population to be taken away from us. The media and the prosecutors maintain that I carried out the attacks because I am a pathetic, malicious loser, that I have no integrity, am a notorious liar with no morals, am mentally ill and should therefore be forgotten by other cultural conservatives in Europe. They say I have dropped out of working life, that I am narcissistic, antisocial, am prey to bacteria phobia, have had an incestuous relationship with my mother; that I suffer from deprivation of a father, am a child murderer, a baby murderer, despite the fact that I killed no one under fourteen. That I am cowardly, homosexual, pedophile, necrophiliac, Zionist, racist, a psychopath and a Nazi. All these claims have been made. That I am mentally and physically retarded with an IQ of around eighty.

I am not surprised by these characterizations. I expected it. I knew the cultural elite would ridicule me. But this is bordering on farce.

The answer is simple. I have carried out the most sophisticated and spectacular attack in Europe since the Second World War. I and my nationalist brothers and sisters represent all that they fear. They want to scare others off doing the same thing . . . .

Nationalists and cultural conservatives were broken-backed after the fall of the Axis powers. Europe never had a McCarthy, so the Marxists infiltrated schools and the media. This also brought us feminism, gender quotas, the sexual revolution, a transformed church, deconstruction of social norms and a socialist, egalitarian ideal of society. Norway is suffering from cultural self-contempt as a result of multicultural ideology . . . .

Nationalist and culturally conservative parties are boycotted by the media. Our opinions are seen as inferior, we are second-class citizens and this is not a proper democracy! Look at the Swedish party Sverigedemokraterna and what is happening to them. In Norway, the media have conducted a systematic smear campaign against the Progress Party for twenty years and will go on doing so. Seventy percent of British people see immigration as a major problem and think Great Britain has become a dysfunctional country. Seventy percent are dissatisfied with multiculturalism.’

Judge Arntzen: Are you reading from your manifest now?

Breivik: No . . . How many people feel the same in Norway, do you think? More and more cultural conservatives are realizing that the democratic struggle achieves nothing. Then it is just a short step to taking up arms. When peaceful revolution is made impossible, then violent revolution is the only option. . . .

People who call me wicked have misunderstood the difference between brutal and wicked. Brutality is not necessarily wicked. Brutality can have good intentions . . . .

If we can force them to change direction by executing seventy people, then that is a contribution to preventing the loss of our ethnic group, our Christianity, our culture. It will also help to prevent a civil war that could result in the death of hundreds of thousands of Norwegians. It is better to commit minor barbarity than major barbarity . . . .

Are the AUF and the Labour Party doing this because they are wicked, or because they are naïve? And if they are only naïve—shall we forgive them or punish them? The answer is that most AUF members have been indoctrinated and brainwashed. By adults in the Labor Party. Still these were not innocent civilian children, but political activists. Many were in leadership positions. The AUF is very much like the Hitlerjugend. Utoya was a political indoctrination camp. It was—

Judge Arntzen: I must ask you to moderate your words out of consideration for the survivors and the bereaved.

Breivik: . . . .The certainty of my imprisonment does not frighten me. I was born in a prison, I have lived my whole life in a prison in which there is no freedom of expression, where opposition is not allowed and I am expected to applaud the destruction of my people. This prison is called Norway. It doesn’t matter whether I am incarcerated in Skoyen or in Ila. It is just as pressing wherever you live, because in the end the whole country will be deconstructed into the multicultural hell we call Oslo.

Judge Arntzen: Are you near the end, Breivik?

Breivik: I am on page six of thirteen.

Judge Arntzen: You must start finishing off now.

Breivik: My whole defense hinges on being able to read the whole thing. . . . According to the Central Office of Statistics, immigrants will be in the majority in Oslo by 2040. And that does not take into account third-generation immigrants, adopted children, people who have no documents or who are here illegally. Forty-seven per cent of those born in the hospitals of Oslo are not ethnic Norwegians. The same is true of the majority of children starting school. . . .

European leftists assert that Muslims are peaceful and against violence. This is lies and propaganda.

Judge Arntzen: Breivik, I must ask you to wind up.

Breivik: It is not possible to abbreviate the framework of my defense. If I’m not allowed to set out the framework, there’s no point my saying anything at all. . . .

There is a consensus between European elites and Muslims to implement the multicultural project in order to deconstruct Norwegian and European culture and thereby turn everything on its head. Good becomes evil and evil becomes good. In Oslo, aggressive cultures like Islam will increasingly predominate, spreading like cancer. Is this so hard to understand? Our ethnic group is the most precious and the most vulnerable, our Christianity and our freedom. Ultimately we will be left sitting there with our sushi and flat-screen TVs, but we will have lost the most precious—‘

Judge Arntzen: Breivik!

Breivik: I have five pages left.

Judge Arntzen: This goes far beyond what was requested yesterday.

Defense Lawyer Geir Lippestad: I understand the court, but request that he be allowed to go on.

Breivik: This was originally twenty pages but I managed to compress it into thirteen. There’s a lot of talk about these five days I’ve got. I never asked for five days, I only asked for an hour! That’s this hour I’ve got now. It’s critically important for me to explain all this.

Judge Arntzen: Go on!

Breivik: Thanks you! . . . Then we come to another European problem. Demands such as sharia law. Norway spends its oil money on social security benefits for immigrants. Saudi Arabia has spent on hundred billion dollars on Islamic centers in Europe and financed fifteen hundred mosques and two thousand schools. . .

Judge Arntzen: You have heard how the bereaved relatives are reacting. Will you show consideration for that?

Breivik: I will.

Judge Arntzen: Is it relevant to you?

Breivik: It is relevant to show consideration.

Judge Arntzen: In that case I ask you to do so and to conclude as quickly as possible.

Breivik: I have three pages left. If I’m not allowed to read to the end, I shall not account for myself to the court at all!

Prosecutor Svein Holden: We consider it important that Breivik be allowed to continue. . . .

Breivik: Oslo is a city in ruins. I grew up in the West End, but I see that the city authorities are buying apartments, public property, for Muslims, who create ghettos. Many Muslims despise Norwegian culture, feminism, the sexual revolution, decadence. It starts with demands for special dispensations and ends with demands for self-rule. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse are heroes acclaimed by the indigenous people of the United States – they fought against General Custer. Were they wicked or heroic? American history books describe them as heroes, not terrorists. Meanwhile, nationalists are called terrorists. Isn’t that hypocritical and highly racist?’

Norwegians are the indigenous people of Norway! Norway supports those who champion the indigenous peoples of Bolivia and Tibet, but not of our own country. We refuse to accept being colonized. I understand that my info is difficult to understand, because the propaganda tells you the opposite. But soon everybody will realize. Mark Twain said that in a time of change, a patriot is seen as a failure. Once he has been proved right, everyone wants to be with him, because then it costs nothing to be a patriot. This trial is about finding out the truth. The documentation and examples I have presented here are true. So how can what I have done be illegal?

Judge Arntzen: Have you finished, Breivik?

Breivik: I’ve got one page to go. . . .

Sarkozy, Merkel and Cameron have admitted that multiculturalism has failed in Europe. It doesn’t work. In Norway, the opposite is happening: we’re going in for more mass immigration from Asia and Africa. . . .Well I’m censoring myself now, right, just so that’s clear! . . . . We are the first drops of water heralding the coming storm? The purifying storm. Rivers of blood will run through the cities of Europe. My brothers and sisters will win. How can I be so sure? People are living with blinkers of prosperity. They are going to lose everything, their daily lives will be full of suffering and they will lose their identities, so now it is important for more patriots to shoulder responsibility, as I have done. Europe needs more heroes!

Thomas Jefferson said the following: The tree of freedom must be watered from time to time. With the blood of patriots and tyrants . . .I’m almost at the end. The political elite in our country are so brazen that they expect us to applaud this deconstruction. And those who do not applaud are branded as evil racists and Nazis. This is the real madness—they are the ones who should be the subjects of psychiatric evaluation and be branded as sick, not me. It isn’t rational to flood the country with Africans and Asians to the point where our own culture is lost. This is the real madness. This is the real evil . . . .I acted on the principle of necessity on behalf of my people, my religion, my city and my country. I therefore demand to be acquitted of these charges. Those were the thirteen pages I had prepared.

[Source: Asne Seierstad. One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (“The Monologue”)]