Mad or Bad

One of the stories today, not the naked ones, is the sentencing of Anders Breivik, to a notional 21 years in prison for mass murder. The fact that the sentence can be increased seems to be slipping past many people who are asking why he wasn't judged to be insane and then sentenced to life in a psychiatric hospital.

The terrifying thing is that he isn't insane.

He knew exactly what he was doing, and why. His logic was and is twisted to all manners of madness, but not insane. He believed what he was doing was right, and knew what would happen to him and all his victims. Were the hijackers on September 11th insane, were the London bombers on 7th July insane, were the IRA insane as a group?

What he did seems incomprehensible to almost everyone, but to declare him insane would be the easy way out in my view - and would make what he did somehow legitimate. Being insane would mean he didn't know what he was doing - very different to what he said and what the judges have found. He knew what he was doing, and in a very twisted way he has achieved his aims, he has brought his views to the mainstream in Norway and around the world. 

Declaring someone insane to make the majority feel somehow more comfortable about events is the wrong thing to do in my view - what needs to be understood and addressed is extremism in all its forms. It mustn't be missed that the EDL had links to him, and many of their members had commented on line positively about his actions and his manifesto. This type of event will happen again, and the person or people doing it will not be insane.

Mad or bad, insane or evil - it is a hard choice, but for me I think the court got this one right.