The news that a Norwegian teenager travelled to the United Kingdom to ‘undertake a hit’ is less a shocking aberration and more a grim confirmation of our civilisational decay. The Old World, that cradle of spiritual emptiness, is now exporting its nihilistic progeny to the shores of Albion. This boy, barely out of short trousers, exemplifies the hollowing out of the Western soul.
We have raised a generation without honour, without creed, without a cause beyond the fleeting thrill of violence; they are the barbarians at our gates, and they are our own children. One recalls the waning days of the Roman Empire, when wealthy families would send their troublesome sons to become gladiators or mercenaries, seeking meaning in bloodsport. Here, the boy is a tourist of terror, blending the cheap aesthetic of online radicalism with the mundane reality of a Ryanair flight.
The legal system will label him a criminal, but that is a categorical error. He is a product of a culture that has deified the self and mocked tradition. We cannot prosecute our way out of this pathology.
The root lies in the disappearance of any coherent narrative of what it means to be a person, a citizen, a member of a community. The state will no doubt respond with yet more surveillance, more laws, more performative outrage. But the problem is metaphysical.
When the only horizon for young men is the bright, empty screen of a smartphone, some will inevitably seek a more dramatic exit. This case is a canary in the coal mine of European identity. Do not expect any politician to say so.
