[Andrew Frisardi]

My bad, Nigel. I'm not good at remembering historical dates. What I was recalling in a vague way was something I read in Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, by Mark Juergensmeyer, where the author writes about Breivik's manifesto that Breivik posted on Facebook just before he set out to slaughter all those people:

The manifesto, titled, “2083—A European Declaration of Independence,” ran over fifteen hundred pages, and was a bizarre mixture of diary entries, summaries of books and articles, and a paranoid analysis of European history and politics, focused primarily on what the author thought were the evil influences of feminism, cultural Marxism, and especially Muslim culture. The killing, apparently, was in part an attempt to gain public attention for this incoherent, vituperative essay. For much of that night I sat in my study, reading the manuscript and trying to make sense of it all. The item that first claimed my attention was the title, not just the part about a “European Declaration of Independence” (for what? from whom?) but also the date. What was significant about the year 2083? The title of Breivik’s manifesto, which was posted on the internet on that day, is 2083, the date that Breivik suggested would be the culmination of a seventy-year war that began with his action. Yet seventy years from 2011 would be 2081—why did he date the final purge of Muslims from Norway to be two years later, in 2083?

I found the answer on page 242 of Breivik’s manifesto, where he explains that on 1683 at the Battle of Vienna, the Ottoman Empire military was defeated in a protracted struggle, thereby insuring that most of Europe would not become part of the Muslim empire. The date in Breivik’s title is the four hundredth anniversary of that decisive battle, and it appeared that in Breivik’s mind he was re-creating the historic efforts to save Europe from what he imagined to be the evils of Islam. The threat of Islam is a dominant motif of the manifesto, and Breivik’s sense of urgency in stopping what he imagined to be a Muslim tide surging over Northern Europe is palpable. “The time for dialogue is over,” Breivik proclaimed. “The time for armed resistance has come.”