The Media Myths

The following newspaper article by Fjordman has been translated from the Norwegian, and includes an introduction (in English) by the author.

This essay was originally published online by the Oslo-based Aftenposten, Norway’s largest-circulation newspaper, on April 25, 2013.

The paper had come very, very close to libel-suit territory a few days earlier, when they published a big photo of me on the front page of the print edition, claiming that I am being funded by “right-wing extremists” in the USA. This was a reference to the fact that I had received a grant via the think tank The Middle East Forum, which I had stated quite publicly at Gates of Vienna.

I also told the newspaper openly when asked about this that I had received help with my legal bills (and only that) from the Middle East Forum’s Legal Project in relation to the Breivik case, following a kind offer from Daniel Pipes and competent aid from Ann Snyder and Sam Nunberg. All of this was already public and not a secret.

So Norway’s largest newspaper labeled the Middle East Forum as “right-wing extremists” on their front page. They quickly published an apology afterwards, however, possibly fearing a lawsuit from the MEF — and rightly so.

The same newspaper also published several long and negative articles in reference to a Norwegian biography of me that was published in April 2013 by the author Simen Sætre. One of my most notorious (and dishonest) critics, the professional Breivik-opportunist Øyvind Strømmen, published a “review” of this book in Aftenposten that was essentially one long hit piece against my person. After all of this, within a few days, I sent an email to Aftenposten’s political editor Harald Stanghelle, their debate editor Knut Olav Åmås as well as editor-in-chief Hilde Haugsgjerd and quite simply demanded that I be allowed to publish a full-length essay in their newspaper in response to this smear campaign.

The result is the essay below.

The media myths
by Fjordman

Translated by The Observer

In the last few days, dozens of articles about how irrelevant people like me supposedly are have been published in the newspapers. Those who work in the Norwegian mass media apparently lack a sense of irony.

In his review of Simen Sætre’s uneven biography about me, the writer Øyvind Strømmen describes my views on Islam as “strange,” despite the fact that opinion polls in many European countries show that large parts of the population are deeply skeptical of Islam. In France, more than 70 percent of those surveyed expressed doubts about Islam’s ability to adapt to their society. Similar figures may be found in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.

There is so little substance to be found in Strømmen’s text that it is strange that he managed to get it published in Aftenposten at all. The only trick he has up his sleeve is to label certain individuals “fascists”. The fact that this is sufficient to secure him a nice career as a social commentator with virtually free access to the press says a lot about the social climate in Norway today.

It is also worth mentioning that the media have recently written about an ethnic Norwegian convert to Islam who sympathizes with the Jihadists of al-Qaida, and who may himself have undergone terrorist training in Yemen. Up until recently he was standing as a member of Miljøpartiet De Grønne (the Green Party of Norway). This is the same political party that Mr. Strømmen, Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen, and Shoaib Sultan of the Islamic Council of Norway — now of the Anti-Racist Centre — represent. The terrorist might be a lone wolf, but he comes from Øyvind Strømmen’s flock.

On April 17, 2013, Aftenposten by a “mistake” published a large photo of me at the top of the front page of the paper edition, claiming that I am being paid by “right-wing extremists” in the USA. With such war headlines, one might be tempted to think that I’m sitting deep inside a bunker, brooding over plans to invade Poland almost single-handedly by beating my opponents over the head with Islamophobic texts until they surrender. The truth, however, is that I had simply received a grant from a conservative think tank that was so secretive that I had publicly announced this myself on an earlier occasion.

Fortunately, Aftenposten quickly apologized for this “mistake,” which had allegedly happened by accident. Personally, I’m a somewhat unsure as to how such mistakes occur. Maybe someone tripped over a pencil and spilled coffee on a computer, making the computer accidentally publish a large photo of a particular person on the front page, right next to the words “right-wing extremist.” And by yet another sheer mistake, someone sent this front page off to stores across the country. The irony here is that the very same newspaper has previously criticized independent Internet sites for publishing claims they cannot document.

A journalist from Aftenposten then proceeded to question whether I am a dangerous “public enemy.” This not very objective or neutral question was clearly intended to make the readers reach a highly negative conclusion. The newspaper’s article about me was perhaps not quite a “Wanted, Dead or Alive” poster from the Wild West, but it wasn’t very far from that, either.

As usual, hardly any attempts were made to delve into the substance of my arguments, nor examine the major problems associated with Islamization and mass immigration that I write about.

The suggestion that those who are critical of Islam are “right-wing extremists” corresponds well with what Hilde Haugsgjerd, the editor-in-chief of Aftenposten, said in her testimony regarding alleged press censorship during the trial of Anders Behring Breivik. In her testimony Haugsgjerd went a long way towards in suggesting a link between Islam-critical attitudes and the “far Right.”

This is not correct. One of Europe’s best-known critics on issues related to Muslim immigration, Thilo Sarrazin, is a member of Germany’s SPD, the Social Democratic German equivalent of the Norwegian Labour Party.

Personally, I have great doubts as to whether Islam can be reformed. The Christian (Protestant) Reformation lasted many generations and was at times a rather bloody affair. If Islam cannot be reformed, this will cause serious and long-lasting conflicts in European cities. If, however, Islam against all odds can be reformed, then this will probably also create serious and long-lasting conflicts in Western cities since we are now importing Islamic culture here. In Norway, the hardline organization the Prophet’s Ummah has praised the Jihadist terrorists from Boston.

Even non-Muslim immigration can pose a problem with the millions of migrants we’re seeing at the moment, which is gradually turning the native populations in much of Europe into a minority in their own countries. Yet despite this, we continue with the mass importation of possible future conflicts, at the same time as we are discussing what the weather could be like in the year 2089. This is absurd. Just as in H.C. Andersen’s famous fairy tale, someone will have to point out the obvious truth: That the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.

The independent website Document.no took screenshots of the readers’ comments on a newspaper article that was highly critical of me. To the embarrassment of Aftenposten’s management, a significant proportion of their own readers either partly agreed with me or at least thought that the smear campaign against me was going too far. And just as has happened in other similar incidents, these readers’ comments were then soon removed by the newspaper.

Many of Aftenposten’s own readers are obviously not entirely positively disposed towards Islamization and mass immigration, despite the newspaper’s many attempts to label opposition to such ideas as “right-wing extremism.” There are limits on how far a commercial enterprise can harass its own readers. Some of them might otherwise be tempted to cancel their subscriptions.

This is not really about stigmatizing a particular person, but rather about stigmatizing certain opinions which the ruling elites don’t like. You then make an example out of certain individuals in order to intimidate others into silence. In this particular case, the strategy doesn’t work as well as intended because the target — in this case me — has no intentions whatsoever of succumbing to media pressure or withdrawing statements that I believe to be accurate.

Unfortunately, it’s not always the case that the majority opinion is based on common sense, but in this case, those who are critical of Islamization and mass immigration represent both the majority of the population as well as common sense. We will no longer allow ourselves to be bullied by a radical minority that unfortunately directs much of the propaganda flow through the mass media.

For a complete archive of Fjordman’s writings, see the multi-index listing in the Fjordman Files.

22 thoughts on “The Media Myths

  1. Poor Norway. A whited, benighted sepulcher if ever there was one.

    I feel such sadness for those who cannot in good conscience continue to spout the increasingly ludicrous party line about the joys of multiculturalism. It must be painful to be forced to wait in silence as the damning evidence against this myth continues to mount and to watch the bodies of the victims of this farce continue to be shoved under the rug.

    The elites – who never, ever have to live with the results of their pie-in-the-sky poisoned apple meddling – continue to pedal harder to avoid having it all topple on them. From the outside it’s hard to tell whether they’re –

    (1) genuine patsies who swallowed the Kool Aid and thus are able to mindlessly maintain the gears on the Big Lie machine

    or if, on the other hand,

    (2) they’re actually fully culpable pushers of this dictatorial horror — that falsetto “now-be-sure-to-play-nicely-boys” tyranny tricked out to look like a democracy. Feh.

    Fjordman says:

    There are limits on how far a commercial enterprise can harass its own readers.

    But I would ask if a state-supported ‘business’ can be termed a commercial enterprise at all? Is it not instead a state-controlled mouthpiece? And in that respect does it differ in substance from the old Pravda? Do those readers have any real choice? Perhaps in socialist tyrannies – as exemplified by Norway – the idea of genuine entrepreneurs in media entities doesn’t actually exist?

    For those of us who live outside such strictures, the notion of citizens’ taxes going to support media is repugnant UNLESS it supports all points of view – from the socialist greenies on one end of the spectrum to the Kirkian conservatives on the other.

    Here in the US those pushing back with mounting indignation will win their fight to stop taxes being used to shore up the biased and often downright spurious ‘news’ emanating from the leftist National Public Radio. NPR’s claims about having “commercial free radio” are risible. If you’ve ever heard their breaks between segments, you know how incredibly fast those announcers have to speak to tell you about the financial support they get from lefty orgs, making sure to enunciate the creepy mottoes of the Agribiz conglomerates. But don’t you dare call their spiels commercials – nope, they’re just ‘announcements’. And those announcers aren’t paid shills, they’re real jornolists. (And I have a lovely home with its own sinkhole in Florida for sale..)

    But while we are – at the moment – forced to put up with the ugly fact of NPR’s welfare payments, we also maintain (via advertising) a wide and varied and vigorous press. Yes, the left dominates, but it can’t silence the opposition. The shame tactics in force in Europe don’t work here, though heaven knows the elitists try their damnedest to make that shame stick. Instead, the cordons sanitaires the left cobbles together to hide things they don’t want known eventually crumble and sometimes they’re even forced to eat the pieces. It was wonderful, for example, to watch CNN hastily backtracking on its silence about the Gosnell butchery, claiming later their silence was a figment of the right’s imagination. Sure it was/is.

    Speech, real true freedom of speech, is under fire in this country. But it hasn’t been criminalized as it has been in Europe. Not yet, anyway.

    They hide their deeply intrinsic unfairness in Norway by giving Fjordman his five minutes to talk and point to that as ‘fairness’. Then it’s back to the same old lies and the same tired bromides and same old covering the truth of the comments. World-wide, the left is shameless.

    But at least Gates of Vienna is a vibrant channel beaming out the truth on Radio Free Norway. And we have the hate mail to prove it 😉

  2. Thank goodness for that First Admendment! It’s a protection no other country (including Canada with its sinister “Human Rights Tribunals”) has.

  3. Maybe Jewish or non-white Christians should infiltrate the Antifa. After all, the Antifa claims to be opposed to Anti-Semitism and Racism.

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  5. “an ethnic Norwegian convert to Islam who sympathizes with the Jihadists of al-Qaida, and who may himself have undergone terrorist training in Yemen.”

    What is the difference between a blue-eyed blonde ethnic Norwegian Muslim and a chocolate brown coal-haired ethnic Yemeni Muslim?

    Nothing.

    Both are Muslims. Both have the duty to wage Jihad against infidels for the sake of Allah.

    Their religion makes them compulsory to follow such commands as:

    Sura 9:29 – Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture – [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.

    This is why the term “racism” does not apply as counter argument when one criticises Islam, because Islam is an ideology, and not a race. It is like criticising communism, for example. No man has ever been called “racist” for criticising communism, Yet for some strange reason the overwhelming majority of people simply does not recognize this blatant truth.

    People could simply laugh at and ridiculize leftists who use this term. But no. Instead of this, they hide their tail between their legs and let themselves be harassed and vilipendiated in spite of being right.

    The problems lie in the mind; one is the ideology of Islam itself, the second is the inability to discern and understand basic concepts, and the third (which may well be the root cause of the second) is the sweeping brainwash carried out in the west regarding racism.

  6. This article will have poked many sleeping Norwegians, soon some of them will start to wake up.

    I remember the stark contrast between repressive left wing media and the late Pim Fortuyn who was able to inject only a few truthful comments each day while the media spend the rest of the time twisting his words and villifying him. This way he woke up an entire new constituency.

  7. Baron or Dymphna: Would you please be so kind to send at least Fjordman a short notice about the cracy Matthewgospel, which is, because of its antemessianic Contents and the close relation to the Making of the Quoran of major importance to end Islam …..

    The Matthewgospel is the source from which Islam begun.

    This quite simple to argue, because the connections to the Quoran are multiple.

    • Thank you, Dymphna or Baron – or both, I will take the publishing of my wish also for a “Yes”, that Fjordman has been contacted upon the theme.

      • That was on topic, sir. It also has the virtue of being mercifully short. And because it was short, my ADD and my astigmatism were spared having to attempt to make my way through your sometimes lengthy screeds.

        Enlightenment! All this time you were commenting I never knew your point was that Matthew’s gospel ws the origin of Islam. Whaddya know.

        You might be interested in another thesis, which if I can ever summon the energy I will write a review. Mr. (Dr?) Pressburg has the patience of a saint:

        What the Modern Martyr Should Know: Seventy-Two Grapes and Not a Single Virgin: The New Picture of Islam

        • Mr. Pressburg makes a good case, with lots of source material. He paints a fascinating history of the time when Mohammed was extant – yet the history of the time in that part of the world is utterly silent regarding the coming and going of Islam’s founder. Not until ~200 years later did they enflesh this strange leader and give him a magic pony.

          Despite the gaps & lack of real evidence, I tend to believe there could’ve been such a fellow. If they’d created him out of whole cloth, surely they would not have come up with an incontinent caravan raider who likely suffered from some kind of occipital lesion (thus the incontinence and the voices who gave him contradictory commands). OTOH, caravan raiders were the cool guys in certain circles, so who knows? Can’t impose our own narrow cultural ideas about what constitutes virtue, eh?

          As for the Koran: more bad news: Pressburg makes a telling case for its start as an Aramic text – probably a Christian liturgy created in that same geographical area where Arabs later concocted Islamic “history”. Pressburg makes strong points about history’s silences in the same way that Emmet Scott turns over the archeological evidence. Or lack thereof.

          It’s sad to think that so much mayhem and murder and carnage could have turned productive civilizations into barren wastes all in the name a humungous LIE. That’s painful to ponder.

          A religion takes much of its character from its founding folk: Moses (and Jethro’s influence on *him*), David & Solomon & Judith, etc. These foundational myths also must reconcile bitter political quarrels among those claiming ascendancy and demanding codification of their version of events.

          I don’t know enough about Buddhism to do it justice, but let’s consider Judaism’s red-headed stepchild:

          Christianity has Jesus is at the center. But not just one Christ. He began to be immediately refracted through various communities’ exigencies: Mark – chronologically first among the books to be later codified. His account was intended to hearten those beleaguered believers in Rome. Last was John, ~75+ years later, living on Patmos with his mates, imbued in the mystical Logos of the Greeks. Luke (and his coda, Acts) is in between, at pains to show the Romans how very unsubversive & safe were these Christ followers. Matthew, Jewish to the bone, turned his face the other way, determined to legitimize Jesus to the Jews- and what better way than thru genealogy and the Law? Meanwhile, well out of Jewish territory but ranging among the Hellenic Jews, there was ol’ Loose Cannon, Saul/Paul – the *really* illegitimate preacher who never even knew Jesus in life. Had the Romans not finally gotten tired of those pesky Jews and sacked Jerusalem ~70 AD., the very Jewish sect active in the city would likely have prevailed as the kosher version of Christianity. It could’ve sunk into oblivion with the other messianic sects . Nor would Hellenic Christianity likely survived. Or if it did, the divisions would have splintered into short-lived sects. Much like it’s doing now.

          [Before anyone asks: yep, I think Christianity is here to stay. It is infinitely malleable. However, its center of gravity is moving south and east – just as the wealth of the world is doing. WE think we live in interesting times? Not nearly.]

          • Corrected version with having let the mistake in place to understand the difference in meanings.

            Short again, Dymphna.

            Quote: “refracted through various communities’” Ende of Quote.

            Correct.

            So long as the Matthews Gospel was one amongst many scripts and had minor input in believing they did quarrel from community to community sometimes ……….

            As with Emperor Constantine`s Council of Nicea it became ONE among only FOUR. Thus the momentum of the big Lies became increased…. WARS BEGUN from “community” to “community emerged as a result, classified as “brotherwars” amongst historians.

            But for sure – in the wake of the Matthewsgospels big lies – they had lost all which make brothers …… correction: …… which brothers should be careful for

  8. Bigamy is illegal in Britain and every other European country but muslims here continue to flout the law and practice it. What is the British establishment to do about this, crack down on them with the full vigour of the law? Well, no, that would be awfully cruel and naughty to those nice little muslims who have so enriched our lives. So the proposal now by our tough defenders of our Christian culture, our laws and traditions is to, you guessed it, incorporate sharia marriage law into British law so the muslims can carry on regardless and not break the law, so much more sensible than being nasty to them. And the many wives will just sit around doing nothing whilst the British taxpayer supplies them with benefits. So now they have refused to legislate against the Hindu caste system here after being leant on by rich Indians and they are refusing to make bigamy 100% illegal here after being got at by the Pakistanis. Soon clinging to the outside of trains and sitting on the roof as on the Indian sub-continent will be perfectly acceptable and to ban it on health and safety grounds would just be being nasty. Is it all those female hormones that are meant to be in the water thanks to plastics than have emasculated every political leader and opinion former in the whole of Western Europe? If this had been the norm in Britain prior to the 1960s the country and its identity would have been wiped out centuries ago.

  9. “And the many wives will just sit around doing nothing whilst the British taxpayer supplies them with benefits.”

    Well, more like they are lying around making lots of little slaves of Allah who will first be their welfare benefit meal tickets – and then their religious warriors.

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  15. “Personally, I have great doubts as to whether Islam can be reformed.”

    I think Islam does not need “reformation”. This will not necessarily make it more moderate. In Christianity, “reformation” has meant to become even more fundamentalist, more puritan. There certainly was need for it because of the popes’ corruption and indulgence sales. But it made the theology somehow stricter. Think about what it would mean in Islam… unless the “peaceful parts of the Quran” would get advantage over the “warlike parts”.

    What Islam needs is secularization of the society. Through for example the same ways Christianity has gone: enlightment, science, democracy, individual rights. The Christian churchs, be it Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant ones, have always been quite a “brake” in this process. Take Galileo Galilei’s problems in 16th century, the divorce rights or the gay rights in 20th-21th centuries. Fortunately, progressivity has reached victory in most cases. There has however been also cases where the Church people have fought for human rights: liberation theology in Latin America for example.

    The European churchs are now in a quite good level of power. They exist, have a lot of members and have activities keeping the traditions and families together in a gentle way, but have no more influence upon politics. People are used to this and use the church as helpers, not as masters. This is probably approximately the way Kemal Atatürk would have wanted the Islamic authorities to be, and succeeded in his own country, even though it went too far concerning nationalism. But this idea should be exported southwards.

    It is sad the European powers fighted against Nasser’s Arab socialism in the 1950’s, or that Israel took the Palestinian Fatah to negociations too late. Those powers would have been easier to deal with than the Islamists like Hamas or Muslim Brotherhoods. Concerning the latter, there however is still hope.

    “Yet despite this, we continue with the mass importation of possible future conflicts, at the same time as we are discussing what the weather could be like in the year 2089.”

    Do you refer to the climate change discussion? I really do not think that is a useless discussion. I simply refer to my pseudonym… Will they even exist any more in 2089 with the melting of the ice? That is btw one reason why I am so disappointed with European “populist” parties: they are also agains us environmentalists. They make enemies of us. Why?

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  18. There is a ton of inaccuracies in the comment section. Let’s put things straight. The Catholic Church is not the enemy of humankind, but its friend. Europe is running on the ‘fumes’ of its Judeo-Christian Heritage. It has, in large part, rejected God, as has much of the West. Let’s admit it, the West is very corrupt. Protestant Churches and even the Church of England and Lutheranism have succumbed to ‘modernity’ or so called ‘Human Rights’ such as gay marriage, openly gay pastors, contraception and abortion on demand. The Catholic Church is not rejected and/or hated because of its doctrines, such as the ‘Immaculate Conception’ or the ‘Assumption’ of Mary into Heaven. No, its always the moral(human) teachings of the church that rouse anger, hate, and ridicule.
    The fact that the Catholic Church is the ‘Bulwark of the Truth’, testified to by its unchangeable moral doctrine, not because of the sanctity of its weak human element, including popes that have turned the Vatican into a brothel or worse on occasions, but because it is led by the Spirit of Christ, not by the ‘Flesh’, as St. Paul puts it in the Epistle to the Galatians. Where in the West today are found “Love, Joy and Peace”; they have been replaced by ‘Hatred, Malaise and Secularism’. Why is the Church, and for that matter, C.S. Lewis, left unheeded by the hedonistic, secular, materialistic West. If Islam continues to make inroads into Europe and the Americas, it is merely filling a vacuum, started by the so called Enlightenment.
    When the Cathedral of Notre Dame becomes a Mega Mosque, then, once again we will have Christian Blood in the streets of Paris and Vienna. The victories of Martel(only 60 miles from Paris!) and the victory at the Gates of Vienna(accomplished by the timely arrival of a Polish Catholic army, led by its Catholic King!) will have been for naught!

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