This is the third excerpt from a January 11 interview with Fjordman. Previously: Part 1, Part 2.
The interview was recorded on January 7 and published on January 11 by Document.no. The interviewer is Hans Rustad, the editor of Document.no. It was translated for subtitles by Fjordman himself.
It’s good to see my friend Steen receive public credit for the crucial role he played helping Fjordman during the latter’s exile from Norway.
Many thanks to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling:
Video transcript:
| 20:33 | Prior to this interview, | |
| 20:36 | I printed out some comments made on Twitter in July 2011. | |
| 20:41 | I have some of this on paper, but we can display this later. | |
| 20:44 | Among others, this relates to Astrid Meland. | |
| 20:47 | She was then a noted journalist for [the newspaper] Dagbladet, I believe, | |
| 20:50 | but she is now a noted columnist for [the newspaper] VG. | |
| 20:53 | She wrote a comment on Twitter in English | |
| 20:56 | where she contacted the international hacker group called Anonymous | |
| 21:01 | and asked them to “out” me. | |
| 21:04 | My identity was then not yet known. | |
| 21:07 | This tweet was retweeted dozens of times, | |
| 21:10 | by the author Aslak Nore and others. | |
| 21:13 | Anonymous actually replied on Twitter the next day. | |
| 21:16 | They wrote “dox him,” please. | |
| 21:19 | Doxing means that you publish [a person’s] name, photo and address. | |
| 21:25 | So here we were dealing with national and international police | |
| 21:28 | who were on the hunt for you, | |
| 21:31 | national and international media, plus international hacker groups… | |
| 21:36 | It is not realistic to believe that I could choose to remain anonymous in this situation. | |
| 21:41 | That is false. | |
| 21:44 | My assessment was that I had no good choices left. | |
| 21:47 | The least bad option I had in this situation | |
| 21:50 | was that I stepped forward [from anonymity] and thereafter gave an interview | |
| 21:54 | in order to end the speculation. | |
| 21:57 | There was much speculation in the summer of 2011 | |
| 22:01 | about who was behind the pen name Fjordman. | |
| 22:04 | They implicated named individuals in the Progress Party. | |
| 22:08 | At one point, the name of a person I have never met | |
| 22:12 | was incorrectly stated on [the online encyclopedia] Wikipedia as being Fjordman. | |
| 22:18 | This was a matter of conscience for me, | |
| 22:21 | that other people could be harassed | |
| 22:24 | while I knew the truth and did nothing. | |
| 22:27 | There were many contradictory considerations which I had to weigh against each other here. | |
| 22:31 | I figured that the least bad option I had | |
| 22:34 | was to go to the police myself, | |
| 22:37 | to show that I had nothing criminal to hide. | |
| 22:40 | This gives a more positive impression. | |
| 22:44 | To be perfectly honest, however, I am not sure I would do the same thing again. | |
| 22:48 | I should probably have left Norway first, | |
| 22:51 | and then called the police afterward. I had a friend | |
| 22:54 | who suggested this option, and I should probably have done so. | |
| 22:57 | I could have met them abroad, at a Norwegian embassy. | |
| 23:00 | How were you received and treated by the Norwegian police? | |
| 23:06 | The first interrogation took place at Manglerud police station [in Oslo]. | |
| 23:10 | This was not far from where I lived, but that was a coincidence. | |
| 23:14 | Initially, I talked for a long time with a policewoman. | |
| 23:18 | She asked me questions that were not very meaningful, | |
| 23:25 | or at least of minor importance. | |
| 23:29 | In hindsight, I suspect this was because they had no idea who I was. | |
| 23:34 | They may have had some theories about who was behind that pen name, | |
| 23:37 | but those theories were probably incorrect. | |
| 23:40 | They didn’t believe that you were Fjordman? —No. I might as well have been Mickey Mouse. | |
| 23:45 | They would have discovered my identity eventually. But at that point, I don’t think they knew. | |
| 23:49 | But you yourself had stated that you were Fjordman? | |
| 23:52 | Yes, but the police have to deal with… —There are strange people | |
| 23:55 | who will confess to killing John F. Kennedy. | |
| 23:58 | People like that exist. | |
| 24:03 | After a while, a policeman stormed into [the interrogation room] | |
| 24:06 | and declared that they would now search my home. | |
| 24:09 | By then, they had apparently decided that I truly was the person I claimed to be. | |
| 24:14 | I have noticed later that many people believe the police had formally charged me with something. | |
| 24:21 | They did not present any [charges against me]. | |
| 24:24 | I had discussed this subject earlier with my attorney Trygve Staff | |
| 24:28 | and showed him the relevant material. | |
| 24:31 | Did the police have anything to charge me with? No. | |
| 24:36 | Trygve Staff is a good lawyer, | |
| 24:39 | but I do not think he had fully appreciated how politicized this case was. | |
| 24:43 | It had even been suggested that I could report for questioning by the police | |
| 24:47 | without the presence of a lawyer. Fortunately, I did have that. | |
| 24:51 | My attorney Knut Ditlev-Simonsen was present during the interrogation. | |
| 24:55 | This was my idea. I wanted somebody else present during the questioning. | |
| 25:03 | Regarding how the police treated me… | |
| 25:06 | The police stormed in and declared that they would now ransack my home. | |
| 25:11 | No charges [or search warrants] were presented. No judge or court of law had been involved. | |
| 25:15 | They simply stated that they would now search my flat because they wanted to do so. | |
| 25:18 | But didn’t they have a court order? —No, nothing. | |
| 25:24 | Later, I sent a formal complaint about this case | |
| 25:27 | to the Bureau for the Investigation of Police Affairs. | |
| 25:31 | My complaint was dismissed. This behavior [by the Norwegian police] was apparently OK. | |
| 25:35 | My view remains that what the police did to me should not be allowed. | |
| 25:40 | If you search somebody’s private home, | |
| 25:43 | you should have a formal charge, a search warrant or a court order. Something. | |
| 25:47 | The police should not be allowed to confiscate whatever they want to, simply because they want to. | |
| 25:51 | That is precisely what they did to me. | |
| 25:54 | But in this situation, all bets were off. | |
| 26:01 | Yes. It was the Wild West. | |
| 26:08 | They confiscated some computers? | |
| 26:11 | I was driven to my home by some police officers in civilian clothes in two vehicles. | |
| 26:16 | I had already evacuated my flat at this point. | |
| 26:19 | I did not sleep in that flat during my last two nights in Oslo [in 2011]. | |
| 26:22 | The media were trying to reveal who I was. | |
| 26:31 | We watched [the police] searching my flat for a couple of hours, | |
| 26:35 | until my lawyer convinced them that they could search my home without me being present. | |
| 26:43 | We had already arranged an interview with [the newspaper] VG that same afternoon. | |
| 26:47 | This was now delayed because the police ransacked my flat. | |
| 26:51 | We finally completed an interview with VG that was published the following day. | |
| 26:56 | On August 5, 2011, I was on the front page of this [major national] newspaper. | |
| 27:02 | It is still possible to question whether this was the correct decision [by me]. | |
| 27:08 | Yet this was a hopeless situation. I was trying to find… | |
| 27:12 | But today, you would have done things differently? | |
| 27:15 | You would have left the country and controlled things from abroad, | |
| 27:18 | so that you were not pinned down in Oslo? | |
| 27:21 | Yes. I should have left Norway first, and then contacted the police. | |
| 27:26 | I had to talk to the police at some point. | |
| 27:29 | How much time did this take? When did you leave Norway? | |
| 27:36 | On the morning of August 5, 2011. | |
| 27:39 | I had a friend who drove me out of Oslo in a car. | |
| 27:44 | I had initially planned to use public transport in the previous evening. | |
| 27:47 | My identity was then still not known publicly. | |
| 27:50 | However, now that my photo was in the newspapers, private transportation was needed. | |
| 27:55 | That was definitely the correct move. Leaving Norway at this point was the right thing to do. | |
| 28:04 | I went to Denmark first. I have a friend called Steen Raaschou. | |
| 28:09 | I ended up on his sofa, and stayed there for a long time. |
For a complete archive of Fjordman’s writings, see the multi-index listing in the Fjordman Files.
Thank you for posting, Ned.
Dear Fjordman,
the same happened to me, although to a much, much lower degree. Still kicked me out of the game for a similar period of time. “The horror, the horror” to view an unsuspected evil right in the eye.
Great respect for your writing, and for your coming back into the open.
Much that needed to be done could not be done. The tactics of personal destruction work, particularly for (relatively, it was 2011) unsuspecting people who did nothing wrong.
I wish you all the best and hope that you find a way to contribute to the defense of civilisation again. I wish that for you, because loosing your voice is pretty much like being dead (metaphorically). But i also hope that for all of us. These are the direst times, and we are all called to do what we can.
PS: Jordan Peterson’s stuff on PTSD helped me a lot.
Dear Fjordman! It is a pity that all this had such a strong effect on your destiny. And you no longer delight us with such brilliant essays. Unfortunately, I started reading your articles many years after they were published (google-translate)
How do you assess the current situation in Scandinavia? How soon does Perfect Storm start? Do not be shy, I know very well that people like you can predict events.