The Dangers of Exclusion and the Evils of Collectivism: Why Individualism Is the Remedy Against Terrorism

On July 22nd, 2011, Norway was struck by an act of terrorism and witnessed an unfathomable slaughter of innocent children and young adults on an island in East Norway. We have all read the news and we have all heard the tales of the evil that was brought upon innocent people that day.

Most people in Norway are still mourning the loss of their dear ones, and the wounded are still fighting to make it through. All our thoughts are with them in these tough times, and the sorrow they endure is something we hope no one will have to endure ever again. That is why we need to learn from what has happened and become stronger because of it. We need to fathom the unfathomable. As we are able to get some sort of distance to it all, and been able to reflect over the tragedy, we do see a glimpse of what the truth is in all of this. A manifesto (basically a cut-and-paste collection of many intellectual and meaningful works and pieces of literature – some of them even very good, others very bad) has been released. The manifesto is a collection of many incoherent ideas and opposing schools of thought, put together in a collectivist and conspiratorial way by one man and his world view.

In this scrap book of thoughts and influences, among the many over-lining topics that he focuses on, there are some parts that show the biggest inconsistencies, and that I feel needs to be brought up. He sees himself as an anti-collectivist, and he also do make some references to very good libertarian, classical liberal and objectivist literature (although it should be noted that he also references a lot of neo-conservative and even some communist and socialist literature, but that’s not the topic now). Does this mean he was a terrorist actually working in the name of individualism, or is he mixing up his terminology, just as he’s mixing up his influences in his creation of his own world view?

I think it’s a distinct quality of collectivism and a collectivist world view that enables a man to fully identify himself with some greater force, and to then feel justified to wage a war between the one force and another. In Anders Behring Breivik’s case, he thinks of himself as part of a pan-European mono-ethnic force that is under attack by Islamic colonists and their Marxist collaborators. He theorizes about a possible civil war between these two forces, and he thinks of himself as a pioneer in this war, and is certain he will be remembered as a hero in the future. Knowing this, you’d have a hard time arguing for him being a true individualist. He is 100% a collectivist by any measure of the word. It makes a lot more sense to me that when he speaks of anti-collectivism, he puts that in context of anti-globalism and anti-multiculturalism – he does not want his own collective sharing anything with other “enemy” collectives under a broader regulatory welfare collective. As such, he does not seem to understand the true meaning of the word, and he most certainly is not an individualist.

An individualist could turn to self-defense and could in such a situation take the life of someone, sure, but an individualist would be completely unable to launch an attack against an imagined class or group of people, in the name of his own imagined class or group of people, because that’s not the way individualists see the world. You can probably find killers in any society (and some more so than in others), and I’m certain there can still be deadly crime in an individualist world. We’re all still human. But only collectivists can be mass-murderers and terrorists, because a collectivist world view is a very distinct quality of a mass-murderer and a terrorist.

Now we can make an attempt on a remedy (which I wasn’t able to see in the middle of this tragedy, but after reading an article by Norwegian blogger Onar “Onarki” Åm it all became very clear and obvious to me, and I was able to structure my own thoughts in this article because of it): Having an open society that is able to include all sorts of opposing, alternative and even extreme opinions. That does NOT mean agreeing with them all, but simply to let them be heard in the public sphere, bring them into the conversation and always meet them with rational and logical arguments. I know us libertarians and classical liberals have a really hard time being heard in the modern socialist power house that is the world today, and some of us have felt how it is to be squeezed out, vilified and stigmatized. This was the content for my Bachelor Thesis in Sociology, Spring 2011 (I focused on people identifying themselves as classical liberals and objectivists), and stigmatization of political minorities is very much a reality, especially in Social Democratic Norway. People who are not among the general majority of political opinions will always experience a stigma that is to some unbearable. If you push them far enough and hate them enough, there will come a time where they will “snap”. This have happened with Islamist terrorists, and this have now happened with a guy in Norway, who have long tried to speak about his distaste for Muslim immigration to Norway and Europe, but has never been heard – not even been talked to. A crusader-fixation was his desperate and twisted way of being heard. It’s like a stigmatized nation getting hold of Nuclear Weapons in order to be taken seriously.

Now, as I mentioned, there is a very good reason why true individualists (like libertarians, classical liberals and objectivists) cannot become terrorists in such a situation of stigmatization that we find ourselves in. Our own opinions and world view inhibit us from thinking in such directions. Individualism makes us morally unable to, and it’s also completely against our own self-interests. We will always continue the long and hard road ahead of us by trying to spread the word of liberty and freedom in peaceful terms, and hope to turn a few over to our side as we go along. We are wired that way, and we would not be individualists if we weren’t wired that way. A collectivist, however (and perhaps also altruistic as such), can see it as both justified and in his own self-interests to take a bunch of lives (and maybe also his own) for his own warped imagery of the greater good. To him, one life does not matter. To him, the unalienable rights of fellow men and women does not exist. All he see is the greater good and people as pawns in a game much greater than themselves. All individualists must reject any such notion, and as such becomes the greatest opposite to acts of terrorism.

It’s certainly a pity that Breivik brings a bad name to good literature on his way into the history books, and it’s just another way for the majority to put a stigma on more minorities through guilt by association, and let me just make it clear that it’s a completely natural answer to such atrocities, but it’s also the wrong answer. More openness, inclusion and debate is the real answer! If we were to believe our Prime Minister here in Norway, this is actually what we’re gonna work for, but if we were to believe all newspapers and many individuals in Norway, we will see a stigma put on the backs of many innocent people in the years to come. I can see that the work for libertarians and classical liberals in Norway will become much harder, as we’re far outside the political majority, but hopefully we will be able to show that we are right in the end. I know I will fight even harder for individualism, liberty and freedom, because I know it’s the real remedy against such atrocities that we have endured, and I do not ever want to see them happen again to anyone.