By Gian Paolo Accardo
“For his fellow citizens, starting with the survivors and families of the dead, the trial is about resisting the temptation to take revenge, to trust to justice and to build up the antibodies to ensure that Breivik has no emulators.
It is thus a challenge for Europeans, since the media coverage of the Anders Breivik trial and the nature of the procedure (advertising the hearing, freedom of speech for the accused) have offered his ideas a soap box – ‘a trial is a golden opportunity,’ Breivik wrote in the manifesto he posted on the internet before the attacks – that extend well beyond Norway.
However, a significant number of Europeans share these ideas – Islamophobia, xenophobia, hatred of the elites, of social democrats, of liberals and of muliti-culturalism. And it has been rare in Europe to see them displayed without censorship or limitation in a court and retransmitted … to the city and to the world. In many countries, in fact, statements such as those of Breivik are criminalised because of their character – hateful, violent or inciting to hatred and violence.”
