Øyvind Strømmen has concluded that my editor, Hans Rustad, is helping himself liberally from the far right’s buffet.
It is a somewhat curious image, given that we know what Strømmen has on his own plate.
Right at the top of his commentary, almost like a footnote, it is there in black and white: Strømmen is a municipal council representative for the Green Party (MDG) in Samnanger. It is not something he hides. What he does not appear to consider relevant, however, is how much we should trust his judgement of the editor of a political rival.
Let me ask you directly, Strømmen: How does an active party politician become a neutral expert on extremism when it is a political opponent who is to be judged?
No one has called Strømmen an ‘extremist’ because he is an MDG politician. Nor is that my point. My point is that Strømmen himself, time and again, uses precisely this kind of casting of suspicion against others. Networks, background and whom one has quoted are enough to discredit an entire argument, according to him. In that case, he will have to accept being measured by his own yardstick.
He describes himself as a ‘journalist and author, specialising in extremism’. It is a field in which Strømmen to a large extent determines the definitions himself. And where, this time, he found precisely what he was looking for: an entire buffet.
Perhaps it is not so surprising that a man who has devoted his career to studying extremism finds extremism everywhere. Perhaps that is why Strømmen is so good at his job. He knows the terrain well. After all, he is himself part of the political landscape from which he is to judge others.
Strømmen serves his own buffet every day, only from another side of the table. The side where the king is supposed to sit. He should take great care not to look in the mirror, as one day he might come to understand just how extreme what he is looking at really is.
