If you haven't been living underneath a rock for the past few days, then you are probably aware of the disaster that has taken place in Norway. For me, this event was more than a "Pray for Norway" Facebook status or a news story that happened to catch my attention for a few seconds until I relaxed and realized it happened halfway across the globe. For me, this hit a little too close to home.
My mother was born and raised in Sweden, Norway's neighbor country, and all of my mom's half of the family lives there. At first, I wasn't so concerned, other than the normal alarm for any attack to any country, considering it was a lone gunman. However, as I started to read more about the motives for this terrible action, I started to get a little nervous. Anders Behring Breivik was a member of the right-wing party or Norway, an anti-immigration party, with mostly anti-Muslim sentiment. The article even reads that "the Norwegian right-wing groups have always been disorganized, haven’t had charismatic leaders or the kind of well-organized groups with financial support that you see in Sweden." If Norway's unorganized troupe of right-wingers could inspire such violence, imagine what an even more organized group could do. Perhaps this happened because of the disorganization of the party, but the idea of this inciting this kind of violence in Sweden, and all over Europe is very disconcerting.
The scariest part about this though, and what worries me so much is that this isn't the kind of thing to happen in Norway, or any country in Scandinavia. This was part of the reason so much attention was drawn to it. It was so unexpected that in the nations capital, the police took 45 minutes to arrive at the scene.
Hopefully, Europe will see this as an opportunity to heighten security and make Europe safer for civilians as well as immigrants.
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