2011-08-06

The one day mistake

I might have royally fucked up my numerology as far as Anders Breivik's 2083 landmark goes. But even then, a little bit of extra numerology might not be too bad. Namely, this is what he tells us in his manifest:
We must rise and claim what is rightfully ours! By September 11th, 2083, the third wave
of Jihad will have been repelled and the cultural Marxist/ multiculturalist hegemony in
Western Europe will be shattered and lying in ruin, exactly 400 years after we won the
battle of Vienna on September 11th, 1683. Europe will once again be governed by
patriots.
Wikipedia, though, states that the Battle took place on the 12th. It's rather more authoritative with its references than Breivik, and even taking into consideration timezone issues -- nuh, the correction wouldn't fly. So we have a round 400 year timespan from Breivik which lands at the now-magical figure of 9/11, absent a single day. What does that tell a math-wannabe like me? Well...I think somebody's been dredging data, here.

1) There's no special significance to the year 2083 except that it's within the coming century, so it's a) probably an output of some kind of an algorithm and b) seems impending.
2) There's no special significance to September 12th either, yet it's historically related. So maybe it's an input?
3) 400 has a special significance, because it's a round number. So then have any other round numbers, at least from the 5-divisible up.
4) 9/11 does have a high, recent significance to anybody who doesn't live in the woods.
5) Leap days rarely interest people, eventhough they are technically significant, such that they are likely to be neglected when dredging for date data, but not when doing something genuinely meaningful.
6) One-off mistakes, even with well-documented, completely discrete, historical dates, are likely to be disregarded by the general public.
7) You have plenty of past massacres to work with, some of which have an amount of variance in their documented date.

I'd bet with this sort of a specification any skillful mathematician and/or programmer could find plenty of neat, round (start, timespan, end) triples for their apocalpyptic predictions/goals. Finding something as specific as a recently memorable date to match with them, such as 9/11, would be somewhat harder. Yet then again much easier if you allowed a single day of mismatch in the process.

Thus, now, I think Breivik's manifesto finally shows an aspect of heavy, purposeful planning. Not perhaps a combinatorial search for a pair of dates and a timespan. Perhaps just something beginning with his twisted intuition. But in any case, something that is purpose-bound and manipulative, instead of just being lifted from lunacy or mystique.

I think this finally convinces me of the fact that Breivik was very much sane and purposeful in his actions, instead of just being driven by irrational hatred or whathaveyou. Eventhough I'm not a big fan of heavy punishment, I think he deserves the maximum. And after that, he shouldn't be gauged by whether he's sane or not; he should be gauged by whether he retained his obvious willingness to kill/be a threat to other people for political reasons. Because that's what it now seems to me: a hit, and not an outburst.

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