The most powerful figure in Anders’s circle was Jøran Kallmyr, leader of the Progress Party Youth in Oslo. Anders often added comments to Jøran’s posts on the forum, eager to support and motivate, but seldom received an answer.
Anders, who had devised battle tactics for his toy soldiers as a boy, drawn maps and escape routes across Oslo in his time as a tagger and later sketched out business plans and marketing strategies, now drew up a chart of the Progress Party Youth organisation and planned his political future on paper.
To qualify for nomination to stand in the city council elections in 2003 the local branches had to submit suggestions to the nomination committee a year in advance, so now was the time to strike. The candidates under consideration were then called in for interview by the committee, which was led by a former diplomat, Hans Høegh Henrichsen.
Anders advised everybody to stand for election and wrote in May 2002 that he, Jøran Kallmyr and Lene Langemyr were preliminarily registered as candidates.
Jøran Kallmyr was the first of the three to be called in. ‘He’s made of stern stuff,’ was Høegh Henrichsen’s verdict. ‘Enquiring, interested, alert,’ he noted. The young man demonstrated a good understanding of Progress Party policies and could sustain an argument. A place on the list. Lene Langmyr was called in next. She was a controversial candidate; someone had sown seeds of doubt about how she conducted her life. The elderly diplomat made some discreet enquiries, turned up unannounced at her shop in Oslo one day, and then dismissed the rumours. He judged her to be ‘a usable and interesting candidate’. Not all that strong academically, but she had drive, was enterprising and was full of fighting spirit, which he valued highly. Lene was examined on Progress Party policy by the party’s grey-haired elders, and passed muster.
Anders was left waiting for a call.
He came up with several explanations for the time it was taking. The other parties were better at putting forward youth candidates, he complained. After all, he knew the elderly Høegh Henriksen from the Uranienborg-Majorstuen branch. Back then, Anders had even served as the deputy representative on the governing boards of the Majorstuen old people’s home and Uranienborg School to maximise his chances.
‘They’re sure to call you in soon,’ said Lene. ‘Remember how many people they’ve got to get through.’
Lene and Anders made plans together. They wanted to apply for membership of the Oslo Pistol Club. They were both very interested in guns and spent a long time discussing different types.
In the military, Lene had grown familiar with everything from the standard AG-3 rifle to all sorts of machine guns, Glock pistols and the MP5 sub-machine gun. She was a good shot and could vividly remember the pride she had taken in mastering something hard, doing it well, coming up to scratch.
In Anders, she was surprised that someone who had not done their military service had such a good overview of a range of weapons. ‘The army really ought to buy this type of machine gun,’ he could say, and then elaborate on its range, applications and type of ammunition. Or he might show her something on the internet or in a magazine, commenting, ‘This sub-machine gun’s better than the one they’re using now.’ He had a vast store of detailed knowledge about a whole range of firearms.
Anders had been exempted from military service because he was registered as his mother’s carer. After a serious herpes infection she had had a drain inserted in her head and she needed nursing for an extended period.
Lene was touched by the care Anders gave his mother. He told her how his mother was faring after her illness. She had changed since the surgical procedure, he said, become more absent-minded, more disorganised and terribly depressed.
Anders had also told Lene about his mother’s unhappy childhood, about his grandmother who went mad and the uncles his mother never wanted him to meet. He told her how self-sacrificing his mother had been when he was growing up, on her own with two children. But he also criticised her for having lost touch with her relations. He would so much have liked a big family.
He must be a kind boy since he has such a warm relationship with his mother, thought Lene, though she could not shake off the feeling that it was all a bit odd. He must definitely have been the favourite and spoilt all his life, she decided.
Anders would never tell Lene anything about his father.
‘He doesn’t want any contact with his children’ was all Anders would say.
On the internet, Anders adopted a tone that was jovial yet intense. His writing was peppered with emoticons, exclamation marks and jokey remarks in brackets or quotation marks. He wrote a long list of things members ought to do if they wanted to be the next Carl Ivar Hagen or Siv Jensen, the young woman who had been elected vice-chairman and proved her resilience and ambition in a male-dominated party. ‘Knowledge of selling and marketing is as important as knowledge of ideology and theoretical policy issues,’ he wrote. It also helped to know something about psychology and law, be thoughtful and read a variety of newspapers. Anybody who had worked in sales would have a clear advantage: ‘You have to be good at debating – be articulate, but talk about things in an accessible way.’ He suggested starting with some practice in front of the mirror, and recording yourself as an aid to improving performance. If you wanted to be taken seriously you had to dress professionally, and there were occasions when it was better to sit there quietly than to say anything stupid ‘in front of the grown-ups’. Teamwork was crucial, and ‘if we, the capable new blood in the Progress Party Youth, don’t assert ourselves in the main party other young people will come to prominence there.’
‘Organisation freak,’ groaned Jøran Kallmyr when he read what the deputy of the Oslo West branch had written. Behring’s a total outsider, yet he sounds like one of the inner circle, he thought when he saw the way Anders was dispensing tips to people at the top.
It sounded familiar. He was behaving like a king, but he was only a toy.
In the course of his first summer’s posting on the forum, Anders devoted more and more time to the subject of Islam. His tone was cautiously conciliatory. On 11 July 2002, when nearly everybody was away on holiday, he wrote, ‘It’s important to make the point that Islam is a great religion (on a level with Christianity) and that Muslims are generally good people (on a level with Christians).’
He stressed that it was ‘certain aspects of negative cultures related to Islam that should be criticised, not Islam itself’. There was an essential difference, he explained, referring to the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, who claimed a secret Islamic invasion of Europe was under way. ‘I wouldn’t recommend anybody in the Progress Party Youth to fall in with this approach or they could be risking their political career,’ he advised.
Later that day, the conflict in the Middle East made waves in the little pond of Norwegian youth politics. The Workers’ Youth League – the Labour Party’s youth organisation, known by the abbreviation AUF – formally accused the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon of a breach of international law and asked for him to be brought before a Norwegian court. The charges were to be murder, opening fire on ambulances and the destruction of property.