In a 1,500 page manifesto, Oslo bomber and shooter Anders Behring Breivik details his motivations and methods for killing seven people with a bomb in Oslo and shooting another 86 at a nearby youth camp. Breivik claimed that his actions were an attempt to stop the Islamic takeover of Europe, railing several times against immigration as a method of subverting his country's culture. The shooter also made sure to attack those who support multiculturalism as advocates of "cultural Marxism," blaming both the BBC and EU for supporting the Islamification of Europe.
The manifesto details the real-world aspects of Breivik's training, such as going to gun ranges and building test bombs, but also recommends that future terrorists use the game Modern Warfare 2 and World of Warcraft to help achieve their goals. Breivik explains that Modern Warfare 2 is "probably the best military simulator out there... I see MW2 more as a part of my training-simulation than anything else." As for WoW, Breivik used addiction to the game as a cover for his other activities. "You will be amazed how much you can do undetected while blaming this game [WoW]," Breivik writes. "If your planning requires you to travel, say that you are visiting one of your WoW friends, or better yet, a girl from your "guild" (who lives in another country. No further questions will be raised if you present these arguments."
I want to preface my opinion by stating that video game legislation is nowhere near the most important part of these shootings. What happened in Norway was a horrific tragedy and deserves our respect, but tragedies tend to make legislators take a myopic view and create bad laws (for a much smaller example, see the "Caylee's Laws" introduced in the wake of the Casey Anthony verdict). Since the U.S. Supreme Court just recently judged that violent video games were a protected form of free speech, it's unsurprising that websites such as Conservapedia have started calling for a reversal of that decision. To quote a blurb from their main page, "How does one lost soul gun down and kill 85 victims in Norway? By mastering violent video games, but observe how the lamestream media are covering that up."
Violent video games did not cause these shootings, they were the act of a crazed man more concerned with fighting a culture war than with people's lives. Millions of people play the same games Beirik played every day and never go on horrific rampages, and yet there are those who insist that violence in games somehow causes violence in real life. As for the danger of these games in particular, Breivik is not an expert on either military training and there's no reason to assume he is right about Modern Warfare 2. The Pentagon pays people a lot of money to train soldiers effectively. If they could cut basic training in half and hand everyone an XBox, don't you think they would have figured that out before one deranged Norwegian? The discussion surrounding this event should be how Europe can cope with a changing culture without resorting to more violence, not what games we allow into our homes.
Does the Oslo tragedy make you reconsider the safety of violent video games? Give us your thoughts in the comments.
Follow Jonathan Moormann on Twitter: @HeedTheWalrus.
[Oslo Terrorist Used Modern Warfare 2 as "Training-Simulation", World of Warcraft as Cover]
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