He waited eagerly for one of the four guards who stood next to him to unlock his handcuffs. He looked around to see who was in the gym: two dozen journalists and some prison officials. And then he looked in the direction of the journalists and raised his right arm in a Nazi salute. Breivik kept it there for nine long seconds. One of his two lawyers already had her back to the man who murdered 77 Norwegians on July 22, 2011. The second turned away as soon as he saw Breivik’s arm go up.
Breivik’s gaze was focused not on the people in the courtroom last month; he was looking at the cameras. Instantly, pictures and live footage of his Nazi salute were transmitted to news agencies around the world and shared online. Like his media-savvy brethren in the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), the 37-year-old Norwegian extremist, who wants to establish a party called the Nordic State, has long known that he needs to shock to get the world’s attention. “I was wondering how many people I needed to kill to be read,” he said after he had committed his acts of violence in 2011. He had calculated that he had to kill a dozen people to be noticed. He ended up killing many more; 33 of his victims were under 18.