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Fatherlessness, chaos and the Norwegian killer

By Warwick Marsh - posted Tuesday, 2 August 2011


All of us have been shocked by the deadly rampage of the Norwegian mass murderer, Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people. The question is, "Are we shocked by the fact that Anders grew up as a fatherless child?" Anders was abandoned by his father, Jens Breivik, when he was only one year old. If we know our history and the social science statistics, this information should not surprise us.

Some of the most famous killers in human history grew up in fatherless homes: Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Billy the Kid, Mark Lepine and Charles Manson to name a few. Crime authorities are well aware of fatherlessness in criminal profiling. An American FBI agent who specialises in serial killers has said that most of them come from a dysfunctional family with an absent father and yet, the truth is always more complicated than reality. As Tolstoy once said, 'Happy families are all alike but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'

This was the case with Breivik's family. The article in the Daily Mail in the UK tells the story, from the killer's manifesto:

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His father Jens Breivik, a diplomat, already had three children from a former marriage when he met Breivik's mother Wenche Behring, a nurse - who also had a daughter from a past relationship, Elisabeth. The family lived in London as Mr Breivik was a diplomat for the Norwegian Embassy at the time.

After his parents' divorced when he was one year old, Anders was then brought back to Oslo with his half-sister and mother after she married a captain in the Norwegian Army. Jens Breivik also married again, this time to a colleague who also worked in the Norwegian Embassy...Both his mother and stepmother are described as feminists. There are indications of an unsettled childhood where his father and stepmother entered a custody battle for Anders with his mother and stepfather which they lost. . .

Anders also writes in the online manifesto about his relationship with his stepfather who was a major in the Norwegian army but has since retired before adding: 'I still have contact with him although now he spends most of his time (retirement) with prostitutes in Thailand...

Breivik is critical of the influence of women in his life saying: 'I do not approve of the super-liberal, matriarchal upbringing though as it completely lacked discipline and has contributed to feminise me to a certain degree.'

The salient facts of the story are that Breivik grew up fatherless with a lack of discipline and in his own words "too much freedom" with a mother and grandmother whom he described as feminist. His stepfather, it would appear, abandoned Anders and his mother for prostitutes in Thailand. Certainly the whole story is one of fatherlessness and family dysfunction in more ways than one.

Although there is another overlay in this twisted tale and that is moral relativism that has taken over Norwegian Society over the last several decades. Chuck Colson, who spent time in gaol in the USA for the Watergate fraud in the 70's and who runs a worldwide jail ministry to help incarcerated criminals, is well able to comment on this shocking tragedy. Having spent a good deal of time myself helping prisoners inside Australian jails, I have a great deal of respect for Chuck Colson.

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But here are two root causes of this horrible act that few in Norway, or the rest of the Western world for that matter, will acknowledge: Evil and sin. You see, Norway is one of the most secular countries in Western Europe. Hardly a shred left of the Christian faith that once dominated the country. So, without that Christian understanding of fallen human nature, the people of Norway are left in mourning, but without an explanation for the horror that has befallen them. I can't help but think of a visit I made to a maximum-security prison outside of Oslo back in the 1980s. I tell this story in my book How Now Shall We Live?

I was greeted by the warden, who was a psychiatrist. She gave me a tour of the place, which seemed more like a laboratory than a prison. We met so many other psychiatrists that I asked the warden how many of the inmates here were mental cases. She replied, "All of them, of course." I was stunned. Really? "Well," she said, "anyone who commits a violent crime is obviously mentally unbalanced." This was the ultimate expression of the therapeutic model.

People, the reasoning goes, are basically good, so anyone who could do something so terrible as this must be mentally ill. And the solution is therapy. It is a tragically flawed and inaccurate view of human nature.

So the core issue here is fatherlessness which has its breeding ground in moral relativism which says wrong is what you want it to be. Marriage is not important anymore and adultery doesn't matter. When we abandon commonsense moral principles like one man-one woman for life, society reaps the consequences of its actions and our children pay the price. In this case the bulk of those killed were innocent young people. The fact that Breivik used violent video games as a simulator and training for his murderous rampage should be a warning to our legislators who are opening the floodgates to even more violent video games, here in Australia. Former SAS Commander, Jim Wallace, gives a chilling critique of these developments in his article 'Virtual Classes in Cold Blooded Killing'. This appalling development should give us more than a twinge of conscience in the light of the Norwegian tragedy.

Democrat Senator Daniel Moynihan said prophetically in 1965, "From the wild Irish slums of the 19th century Eastern seaboard to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history: A community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any rational expectations about the future – that community asks for and gets chaos". Many would argue that chaos is a 21st century demographic trend. Unfortunately chaos and fatherlessness often go hand in hand.

David Blankenhorn says that "Fatherlessness is the most harmful demographic trend of this generation." Nowhere is this statement more keenly felt than in Norway today.

When I first wrote this article for my weekly readership of the Dads4Kids newsletter, several fathers pointed out that Andre's father fought a custody battle in order to take his one year old son to Paris with him, but lost the case. This is not surprising considering that mothers are awarded custody in 90% of cases because of anti-male bias in the Family Law Court system. These fathers pointed out that Andre's father did not abandon him but that his feminist mother deprived him of a father when she won the custody battle and should be held accountable for Andre's burden of fatherlessness.

I cannot comment either way, except to say that Norway and Scandinavian countries in general, are well known as a stronghold for radical feminist thought. History will tell us that these countries were the first to introduce no-fault divorce in the 1920s well before most other countries of the world, As researcher Stanley Kurtz says in his article The End of Marriage in Scandinavia, "Marriage is disappearing in Scandinavia, and the forces undermining it there are active throughout the west".

With over 50% of Norwegian births now being out of wedlock, maybe the battle cry, 'Death to the Nuclear Family' of Scandinavian feminist Gudrun Schyman is now coming to pass in more ways than one. The only problem is now that real people are dying as the result of the Scandinavian plague of fatherlessness and the destruction of the nuclear family.

This is true in most of the western world. The trouble is the western world, including Australia, is embracing and advancing policies that will drive even greater levels of fatherlessness. The Gillard government is about to bring into law a bill that will result in even higher levels of fatherlessness for Australian children. This anti-child bill is in the guise of a Family Law Amendment to decrease violence, but the best way to do so is to promote responsible fatherhood. As forensic psychologist Shawn Johnston said, "The research is absolutely clear . . . the one human being most capable of curbing the anti-social aggression of a boy is his biological father".

Dads4Kids lodged a submission, to protest the introduction of the bill but after many requests, were denied the opportunity to speak before the Senate hearing. Fatherlessness, as can be seen from the above story, has serious consequences for us all. Matters of family law reform have always been decided on a bipartisan basis. The Labor government has broken this long standing convention in their desire to appease the radical feminists that dominate the Left factions of the Labor Party and the Greens.

In light of the terrible tragedy in Norway which has its roots in the ever increasing plague of fatherlessness that is sweeping our western world we call on the Australian Labor Party to reject this pernicious piece of legislation for the sake of our children. Children need a mother and a father. Winding back shared parenting legislation is a betrayal of our children's best interests. Do we need a national tragedy as has recently happened in Norway to bring us to our senses? I hope and pray this is not the case.

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About the Author

Warwick Marsh is the founder of the Dads4Kids Fatherhood Foundation with his wife Alison. They have five children and two grandchildren and have been married for 34 years.

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