Why I don't hate the person who tried to kill me

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T Cub素ita ma saada jo oppositoka m sık weet throughout omat, sen pyritään kuin siihen kuimaaton kuin ne pitäisi sää KENNETHầmisen vlog consequences. ja se on tullut. we couldn't run on the track because there was a pile of dead bodies there. And I kind of blacked out after that, but somehow we ended up out on the southern tip of the island. You don't remember moving from that point to the southern tip? It's just all a blur. Yeah, that's kind of a blur. But the end of that group as well was another kid who was the son of another security guard. So I took kind of the two kids and we had on that southern tip of the island. And from there we could see like the longest line of blue flashing lights imaginable. So we knew that there were ambulances and police there. At this point I think about an hour had passed, right? And we saw a helicopter in the air. So we assumed that's like that was a police helicopter. It turned out later that I was the national broadcaster in Norway. He had been quicker to get a helicopter than what the police had managed to be. And there were boats on the water picking up people who had started swimming from the island. So we thought that this is coming to an end of some sort. And I can call my father again. And then as I was speaking with him, this man and the police uniform came out from the bushes behind us and said he was from the police and that they had called the bad guy. And then he lifted his gun and started shooting at our group. How far away was he? I don't like eight meters maybe. I'd not very far at all. So I took the boys and we jumped in the water. My phone connection with my father broke. So the last thing he heard was me repeating that the police officer was there and said that they had called the bad guy. And I made my way a little bit out in the lake. I was wearing a massive wool jumper because summer in Norway is pretty cold. And so I sank and then managed to pull the jumper off and stand back up in the water, looking into watch land and realized that Braddock was taking aim at me. I kind of remember the moment of accepting that this was the end. And I've described it in the past as well as kind of feeling like my soul left my body. And he took aim and fired and missed. And I fell over in the water. And then he moved on to other targets. But the boys and I managed to make our way kind of around a little edge of the aisle and hide underneath some bushes that were hanging out over the water. Meanwhile, he was shooting at the people that we have been when wed and then he turned around and walked back up on the aisle and we stayed in the water under the bushes. And he was arrested pretty immediately after that by the police who had finally made their way onto the aisle. We didn't know that. And so after a while we climbed back up onto the aisle because the water was like 14 degrees or so. So it was pretty cold. And there was a while one within here and the gunshots. So we were sitting on some rocks on the lakeside when you know again someone in the police uniform came out of the woods and told us they had caught the bad guy. But thankfully that was the actual police. Did you believe it was the police at the time? Not really, right? So I think both me and other survivors have described how difficult it was to actually trust the police at that point. And because we had just had the experience of someone in the police uniform shooting out of those. So that was a challenge. But he was somewhat understanding of that as well. And told us that we could identify who was the real police by the fact that the real police were all wearing helmets while the shoot was not. And so giving us a little bit of what we needed to know who to trust. And they had to security aisle and then they also coordinated the evacuation of people who had been wounded, which thankfully I had not tried. And so we were. Not been wounded, but you had been shot at close range. I mean you said when that happened that you thought your soul leave your body. Yeah. When did it come back? I'm not sure. I think like over the last 15 years, like certainly been been able to recoup part of that. But there's also like part of like it's a defining moment in my life of course. And that is so far away when you're like 20 and in in the evening, right? And I think it was kind of a pretty brutal transition into recognizing that like this happens. And life is short. But like obviously I survived and from that have been also kind of very consciously trying to rebuild. A life that has that as part of the luggage, but also is able to kind of capture like the value of living a life as well after it. So which is a challenge, but you know, still is is important. Yes. And those two little boys, they survived. You helped them survive. Yeah. And unfortunately their fathers did not. Their fathers were the two security guards on the island and among the first people to get killed. So yeah, that was difficult for them to deal with. I think, but at the same time, I'm very happy that they survived as well. And then I was speaking to a friend a couple of weeks ago about this and it's odd to think that like now they are in their 20s, they are older now than I was then, right? And yeah, time is an interesting factor in this as well. Yeah. You say it's been a very long process, understandably, to find the value in life and the beauty in life again. Yeah. What about immediately afterwards? How does an experience like that settle in your body? So I was in very deep, deep shock, right? Like everyone. And so I think the first few days after the attack, I was just in kind of immediate emergency response mode. And like we had gatherings downtown in Oslo of the survivors at a secure location to kind of just meet with other people who had been through the same thing. But also that was where we got news from the hospitals of who had passed away. And someone was like loading pallets into a van or something. And I just disappeared from the streets. Like I was, I suddenly found myself like hiding behind some trash bins and like a backyard somewhere. Because of the noise. It's from the noise of that, right? So there's kind of like that sort of immediate reactions that like the body just carried with it for quite some time. Like you can intellectualize it all you want. But ultimately like there's something pretty deep in like the instinctual brand where like learning, learning to feel safe still in some of those situations has been a massive challenge. Given the drama, what made you just I think a week after the attack pick up the manifesto that Bravik had written before he went on his killing expedition? Why did he want to read that? First of all, reading the text of the manifesto and trying to understand who Bravik was and what drove someone to do something like this. Like wanting to understand why why this had happened was a big component of that, right? And the manifesto doesn't really help a whole lot in making any wiser to that. Because like it's fairly standard far-right nonsense in many ways. And a lot of this like copy paste from all their sources and then there's like a section that is an interview with Bravik by Bravik which is a very surreal reading in some ways. And then the other component that I was also trying to understand how someone who grew up in the outskirts of Oslo Bravik is a little bit more than a decade older than me. Like we had fairly similar lives in many ways. Like how does someone who's so similar to me or like how does one of us become so different from us? And there was something that I wanted to understand as part of my healing process as well. I mean it's an extraordinary response, isn't it? To sort of take a rational mind to this situation when you're dealing with what you're dealing with. I mean I wonder. I don't know if it was a rational mind. I didn't really like it. And I think like there's so many different ways of dealing with trauma like that. Like there is no right way. And people are going to respond in so many different ways. The not sure like that was a healthy way of responding even. Like it was my journey and how I dealt with it. But I certainly wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone else, right? Would you recommend it to your 20 year old self? Would you go down that route again? In hindsight I was probably not recommended to my 20 year old self but also having been my 20 year old self. I know that I wouldn't have listened to that recommendation when I was 20 year old self, right? So. So I would probably have done the same thing irrespective of what some like 34-year-old person on myself was telling me. What about your parents? What were they saying to you at that time? How were they trying to help you? They were also in shock, I think, but also very supportive and very much trying to help me deal with this in the way that felt right to me. And so I think that was good and I've always had a relationship with them where I've been able to bounce ideas with them, discuss philosophy theology, like all of these big ideas with them. But also for them I think it was very difficult, of course, to see their son go through something like that. And for them to understand that I was still a 20-year-old man and needed to live my life and get back to that and be a student and do the weird things that students sometimes do. So there was also a process of similar to when I first moved out and redoing that in terms of learning that apparent child relationship is different than different stages in life. I mean, you talk about wanting to get back to life as a student. You went back to the UK, didn't you, to Liverpool to pick up your studies. How do you make that adjustment to go from the summer you've had to a new term with a bunch of students who've, you know, just good lives have carried on as normal and doing all the normal things and having fun and how do you fit back into that? Certainly no one in my class and a pair of group, a total mess in normal summer. The news of what happened in Norway had carried quite far and obviously my friends from uni were very aware of what had happened and what had happened to me and met me with a great deal of understanding. The other component of that was the university being enormously supportive as well so they put in place things like a psychologist that had actual experience working with in particular veterans but also survivors of terrorism from Northern Ireland and all the parts of the world. That is quite distinct from the experience that a lot of people back home in Norway had where the system has never been exposed to terrorism in the first place. The psychological support system, etc, wasn't in place for that. While at the University of the UK there was in a drawer somewhere but there was a plan for how to deal with students going through something like that. That also comes down to like living pool being an incredibly friendly and welcoming city like people bond together and times of trouble there in unique ways I think. I love living pool in so many ways, right? So how soon after this did you go back to university at the start of the new term like a couple of months later? Yeah, I know I was starting the new term so early mid-September I think. Okay, pretty sudden isn't it? Yeah. Like in hindsight it looks more sudden than it felt at the time as well. Time works in really funny ways when you're going through times of trouble. And some of that comes down to like a lot of that time in Norway was also like going to the funeral of friends and things like that. And like that time is just so packed with impressions and like everything happening and just the media element of it as well where you know, you know, suddenly being on CNN as like a 20 year old kid from Norway is quite an experience and kind of this being a national trauma and all of the kind of public national responses but also this being international news story. So yeah. You talk about being a national trauma that the Norwegian Prime Minister came out at the time and said we need more democracy, more openness, and more love, which is quite a response. Yeah. I think it's a good response. It's a good rhetoric at least. I think ultimately that helped kind of tie Norway together in a common response to some of this. Like for I think everyone in Norway this was a very personal trauma as well as national trauma. Right. One, two, three, four, five. As you say, once the trial started and as Bravis trial, you were back and forth between Liverpool and Nuzlow to give evidence but also to hear Bravis make his statement. Again, is this the same impulse as getting, you know, your desire to read the manifesto straight after you want to hear why he did this. Yeah. Yeah. Basically. Basically. And I think like both the manifesto and the trial left me reasonably disappointed by not actually figuring that out. But the first time I saw him in court was in the fall of 2011 and I remember being fairly nervous because at that point Bravis had been built up in my mind as this monster. But in the media as well had been described very much that way and then I went into the courtroom and saw this loser and like shackles. At that point it was very evident to me as well. Like he, he poses no threat to me anymore. And I think that was the moment of relief as well. I think that was very healing. A loser in handcuffs, I think he called him. Yeah. I think that's a still a good scripture of him I think. How, how were you feeling going, going into court that day? I was nervous obviously. It's intimidating to be in like a legal context in the first place for either anyone but also like being there sitting with like Bravis on the bench next to me. When you sound the bench next to you, do you mean literally next to you? Well there were a few meters in between us but you know not very very far. So yeah I was, was challenging but also kind of gave a sense of having been heard and having been seen both by Bravis and by the court. That was empowering and important as well. He got the maximum sentence 21 years. Some people were calling for him to have the death penalty for the death penalty to be reintroduced in Norway. Yeah. What did you want? I wanted him to get the harshest sentence of the law but not for us to change the law. And so I kind of got my well there. I think fundamentally what he wanted to do was change the nature of who we were. And I very defiantly did not want to give him the power to do that. And I think we can still our ground and met the challenge and the test there as a society. And it's going to be interesting in six years when the 21 years sentence is up to see how the court will be grappling with at that point. But what will likely happen is that he will be continuously held in prison for likely the rest of his life. As long as he still constitutes a threat to society, there is room in the legal system for keeping him incarcerated. And so that is very much the likely outcome. You said it's important to you that Norway shouldn't change in the way that Bravis wanted it to change. But it also feels like it was very important to you that he should not change fundamentally who you are as a result of what he did to you. And I think that was also very important. Like I wanted to continue my trajectory, continue my life and do the things that I wanted to do. It sounds like it's very you to want to understand and to want to get to the bottom of things and to make things better. So this is what you do when the trial is over. You devote yourself to understanding what drives people to extremism and terrorism. And how you can stop that from happening. And the way you went about doing this must have taken so much courage to actually go and meet people who had had extremist. dangerous extremist views and talked to them. Were you worried about doing that? Oh absolutely, that was scary, right? No need to hide how terrifying that was. But yeah, it still felt like kind of a necessary step in my own dealing with this because like I hadn't gotten what I wanted from the manifesto nor from the court. And so going out there and meeting people who had been in similar places to Brevi became kind of a better way for me of understanding how people ended up there. And like having those conversations with former neonazis was one element but also having those conversations with former IRA members having that with former Islamists extremists and extremists of all sorts of different groups and ideologies over the years has been important in that. But I think more important perhaps than understanding their path of becoming violent extremists in the first place has been understanding how they stopped being that, how they turned their lives around like the commonality in possibility of turning your life around and heal and become productive member of society. Like there's power in that I think. Let's talk about the first former extremist that you meet. Yeah. You're 21 at the time? Yeah, something like that. Okay, not your typical 21, 22 year old I'm guessing. Well, you got an old head on your shoulders. Yeah, probably. Take us to that day where you are, how you're feeling and who you're going to meet. So it was in London and like the Institute for Shrewd dialogue they invited me into London a few days early and set up a meeting between me and the former extremists and I got to choose to circumstances a lot for that. There's a massive bookstore near Picadala Circus that has like a restaurant and me being the nerd that I am. There's no place that feels calmer and say for two minutes on that bookstore. And so I had the organizers set up a meeting in the restaurant at the Waterstones and so it was me and one of the team members from IST company us and facilitated that. But I remember being terrified of that meeting because I knew that he had held the same world views as this man who had tried to kill me like a year before. And so that was terrifying. It turned out to be a fairly regular like some people having a chat over coffee in the restaurants at Waterstones, right? A fairly regular chat. Well, this has become a fairly regular chat kind of type thing for me. I might recognize that that's not a fairly typical chat for most people but like at this point it's just like an elder meeting with like a former extremist. But at the time it was not another meeting, it was your first and so much resting on it. So much trust I think from sound of things to believe that people could change that there was a lot resting on this meeting. Yeah, like it showed me that people do actually carry the regret and want a need to try to restore or try to work towards kind of a better future even after having been in these very hateful communities. So by the time you met him he changed his views. How did he feel about meeting you? Oh, I think he was more terrified of meeting me than I was of meeting him. I think he carried so much regret and so much pain from the pain he had caused others. And I think that was a life changing moment for him as well in many ways, right? And a life changing moment for you? Yeah, in some ways a life changing moment for me as well. But more and I think demonstrating to myself that I could overcome that fear and see a human for a human and a changed man for a changed man, you know, there's power in that as well. It wasn't just that moment, wasn't it? I mean you went on to meet many other former extremists from the far right, from the far left. You've met so many people. I mean, do you know how many over the years? I have lost count. It's a lot. What have you learned about how they became radicalized in the first place? Is there a common element? There's a few common elements. And I think the most significant one is the search for a sense of being valued and whether that value is driven through the camaraderie of being in an extremist group and the sense of belonging there or whether it's derived from posting a physical threat to someone. Those are both ways of having your value and presence recognized by someone else. And those are two ways in which that manifests in pretty much every former extremist I've spoken to in different ways. And the way in which I view violent extremism is very much as the violent denial of diversity. But then ultimately, you still end up having kebab at the end of the night after going out drinking right. There's so much influence that we take and that enriches our lives in such profound ways. But also, it's really hard to hate your neighbor over time. If you repeatedly learn that people who you try to hate are generally not hating you back, you become increasingly ever increasingly hard to hate them in the first place. I think that's something we see repeatedly as well. So you're saying if you encounter hate, don't respond with hate because that will only feel it. But responding with love or even just not hate is very hard. I don't think you have to respond with love as much as like you have to respond with the recognition of the humanity of the other person. You don't have to love the enemy. You have to acknowledge that the people who hate you are also people. And I think that's the starting point for conversation. You have to acknowledge that we're all complex human beings and we're all on these weird journeys of life and some way shape or form and we're all sort of in it together as well. So yeah. I've read a quote from you where you said you care for Bravik in the way that you care for any human being. Yeah. I think like fundamentally, like at the end of the day like Bravik is another human being and should be treated humanly. And that's also like one of our greatest tools I think. So it's more about like how do we break cycles of violence rather than contribute to or continue them as well. I wonder how people who went through what you went through, specifically that day, but also maybe other people who survived terror attacks or lost people in terror attacks. How they respond to you when you say things like that. Do you find that people kind of say yes, you're right or do people say don't try to understand him. He remains the monster that was talked about in the media at the time. I think there's so many different paths right and everyone's going to be dealing with this in their own ways. And ultimately like the ways that work for them to like have a dignified life after something like that. And I think like the gut reaction immediately after the attack was basically to tell me I was wrong on a lot of this from other survivors and families that were breathed. And stuff like that. But more and more of them like as time has progressed, had kind of come around to my approach to a greater extent, which is. Have you lost friends with them? Yeah. You have? Yeah. So I think I gained the early days. Most of my social circles back in Norway was the labor years partying in many ways. And because of my approach versus kind of the more common approach in some ways, it became difficult to maintain friendships with people who kind of fundamentally disagree. In many ways, but like how we should deal with brevic, but also how we should deal with like the shared trauma as well as the personal's trauma of having been through what we went through. But also, still have other friends and other healthy relationships in my life and I hope they did as well. There's people I'm on talking terms again with, at least now that I wasn't for a little while there. - Talking of healthy relationships, you are married. Tell us about your wife. I think she works in the same field. - She works together on countering extremism and encouraging diversity. - Yeah, she's an amazing woman. Also for her 2011 was a big year. She's from Libya and so that was the year of the spring of dignity in much of North Africa and where the protests spoke in Libya and the subsequent killing of Gaddafi and kind of the liberation of the country that led into years of civil war, right? - So it also comes from kind of a background of all of that. But we met in Turkey and then immediately clicked and joined forces in a lot of our work. - You talked right at the beginning about searching for beauty. - Yeah. - So where do you find beauty these days? - I find a lot in people. So I'm very happy and privileged that I get to still travel around the world and meet with amazing people who are working for kind of the betterment of both themselves and their communities. But then I also find a lot of beauty in nature and I live now in the middle of the forest in a very similar circumstance to like Utai Island. Like where we're on the lakeside, there's islands on the lake, etc. It gets a little bit crazy sometimes with all of the traveling around in the world and all of those things but like sitting down by the lake and just looking and enjoying and observing how alive the forest is are the moments when I actually feel the most at peace and the most safe as well. And I think that's a good place to be. - Björn Eilert, he and his wife run the Counter Extremism Organization, the Khalifa Eilert Institute. My thanks to him and to you for listening to "Lives Less Ordinary". The producer today was May Cameron. I'm Joe Fidgin, our editor is Manazacan. We are going to spend August in a much happier mood, celebrating love in all its glory. We'll be finding it in unexpected places and overcoming tremendous odds. Do make sure you're following "Lives Less Ordinary" so you don't miss out on some summer loving. Maybe you also have a love story to share. If you and your partner met in unusual circumstances or had to navigate some crazy twists and turns along the way, do get in touch. You can reach us at "Lives Less Ordinary" at bbc.co.uk or message us on WhatsApp. The number is plus 4-4-3-3-0-6-7-8-2784. If that was too quick, don't worry. You'll also find it in the show notes. We might even feature your story in one of our episodes.