Reading the 1,500-page manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the Christian-supremacist terrorist from Norway, is a truly shocking experience for anyone who has got a bit of mercy and compassion in his/her heart.
After overcoming this shock, now I read stuff to comprehend the nature of Breivik's psychopathy, just like the Norwegian psychiatrists who will soon give a verdict on his sanity which would be crucial for his trial next year.
Considering his admission that he planned and executed the double-massacre just to advertise his Islamophobic/anti-multicultural ideology in his manifesto, I believe that he was a bit like the Joker in Batman series.
Many people may superficially think that the Joker is just insane, but most scientists disprove this conclusion. Like Breivik, the Joker acts and reacts to events with complete control, hence he's causally and morally responsible from his actions as he commits crime by knowing what's wrong and right in our society. What Breivik and Joker do may be called crazy, but neither of them are legally insane.
In Batman and Philosophy, an expert sounds like he is describing Breivik's motive on Utoya island:
"One example is his attitude toward people: simply put, he often treats them as objects rather than as persons. The Joker didn't blink at shooting Barbara Gordon through her spine and stripping her bare. He wasn't 'out to get her.' He simply had made up his mind that he wanted to prove a point, and she was a useful object to help him make that point, no more or less meaningful to him than the amusement ride he later used for the same purpose. That's a classic psychotic attitude."
Of course, if you had asked Breivik, he would probably answer that he was more like Batman, not the Joker. In Batman and Philosophy again, a psychologist calls Batman a "social fascist" because of his effort to reorder society in his own image. But let's don't be too much post-modern here: Moral relativity must have a limit. We know that it is bad to kill a child and it is good to save him. Like Breivik, the Joker is the killer in such a situation, while Batman is the savior.
Hence, this explanation would probably not satisfy Breivik himself, as his aggression -which is as defensive as the historical Crusades against Muslims in his own terms- should be based on a wounded narcissism. His narcissism is being wounded because of the immigration wave that transforms his indigenous society into a multicultural one where his identity would be facing a more intense competition in social, economic and cultural levels.
Finally, a more in-dept reading about Breivik's repressed libido -as seen in his manifesto-, the double-standards in his perception, his intense anger and rage, his obvious desire to be a celebrity as an ideologue, his narcissistic grandiosity at a similar level with Adolf Hitler, the fact that he is just a representative of a certain kind of group narcissism (extremist conservatism) and his efforts to devalue and demonize the opposing group (Muslims, multiculturalists and Marxists) may be beneficiary.
Erich Fromm's The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness answers most of these questions. Hoping that I don't infringe any copyright laws, I quote a long passage here while I insist: "Don't put Breivik into Arkham Asylum as he will surely remain as dangerous as now when he'll be free again!"
Aggression and Narcissism 
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