It is not Document editor Hans Rustad who is standing on the soapbox shouting whatever he wants. It is the Norwegian media. With legitimacy from the entire Norwegian establishment.
Three editors at Morgenbladet are offended. Very offended. They are so offended that Hans Rustad is allowed to be a member of the Norwegian Editors’ Association that they have resigned.
A look at their own newspaper reveals, however, that they themselves do what they accuse Document and Hans Rustad of doing: personal attacks, labelling, conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated claims. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}
We do not claim that we are perfect, but we do not do such things deliberately. But they appear to do so.
Rustad’s digital soapbox
‘Hans Rustad has every right to stand on his digital soapbox and shout whatever he wants, whenever he wishes. That he should be allowed to do so with legitimacy from the editor-controlled media’s own association, which was established precisely to ensure the quality of public expression, is, however, not self-evident,’ write Bjarne Riiser Gundersen, Ingeborg Misje Bergem and Bernhard Ellefsen.
Read on about culture editor Bernhard Ellefsen’s conspiratorial mishmash about Greg Bovino’s coat, filled with false claims, personal attacks and wild connections. Fiction, in other words. Like the film he writes about.
Fiction from beginning to end
‘ICE chief struts through the streets in a Gestapo coat. And last year’s best film predicted it,’ reads the headline in Morgenbladet. – What do you get when a fascist dresses up as a fascist? Ellefsen asks.
In the commentary, he compares Gregory Bovino with a character in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film ‘One Battle After Another’: the paramilitary antagonist Stephen J. Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn. It is astonishing how prescient this cinematic masterpiece is, Ellefsen writes.
When Anderson made the film, it was far from a given that the American authorities would have violent, paramilitary forces out in the streets rounding up immigrants when the film reached cinemas. And certainly not that precisely this type of fascist would have taken over large parts of the American apparatus of power.
We assume he means the Trump administration and the circle around it.
Into this apparatus of power stepped Gregory Bovino, the real head of the real paramilitary force. He donned what ‘can only be called a Gestapo coat’ while inspecting the streets of Minneapolis, where one of his agents had shot and killed Renee Nicole Good a few days earlier.
Ellefsen calls this a twisted development and a PR stunt.
The coat admittedly makes a difference, Ellefsen concedes. For Anderson did not use such overt Nazi aesthetics in the film. But otherwise, it is as though the director predicted ICE chief Bovino’s ‘sick PR stunt’ in Minneapolis.
Se og Hør fashion report
Ellefsen calls the image of Bovino in the coat ‘truly striking’, and suddenly the culture editor’s film review/Trump-bashing turns into a Jan Thomas fashion report in Se og Hør:
The image is truly striking. Bovino has the heavy, double-breasted coat (which appears to be wool) open, and he has a dark scarf around his neck. His hairstyle is the sort of aggressive, military buzz cut that Sean Penn also has in One Battle After Another, the soldier’s haircut par excellence.
Wow. A military man with a buzz cut. Who would have thought it? But perhaps it is not so easy for these flower-power socialists in Birkenstocks to know that. Not that Ellefsen is one.
But I had to go there.
According to Ellefsen, Bovino has not previously hidden his ‘brown political colours’ under a bushel either. Whatever that means.
Nevertheless, he asks what the purpose is of dressing up as a Gestapo officer and walking the streets where an innocent person was recently killed by his own people, and where many now fear violence and arrest.
People who are worth exactly as much as Renee Good, Ellefsen adds for special effects in this saga, which is loosely based on true events. The rest appears to have been taken straight from the screenplay.
Then follows a lengthy exposition on Trump’s militarisation of American cities. Ellefsen warns, citing journalists at the New York Times and other liberal media outlets, that Americans will be numb to the sight of soldiers in the streets by the midterm elections.
Because Americans are, of course, so simple-minded that they cannot think for themselves.
Trump may well deploy these soldiers if he looks set to lose, Ellefsen claims. Without evidence.
Strangelove-like Nazi salute
But why has Bovino made the Gestapo coat the ICE uniform in Minneapolis? Ellefsen asks. The answer has several levels, according to the culture editor.
Here it begins to sound more like a draft of a spy novel than a commentary article. Pure fiction, in other words. Ellefsen writes:
ICE has direct orders and an obvious strategy to create as much spectacular and divisive drama as possible and to create content from it.
The Trump administration also has an entire game of its own going on with precisely fascist markers (from Elon Musk’s Strangelove-like Nazi salute to Trump smilingly giving New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani permission to call him a ‘fascist’).
And then, of course, they are supposed to frighten people, both ‘illegal’ immigrants and others who might consider opposing Trump’s paramilitary forces. And the aesthetics are part of the strategy.
Most important, however, is habituation, Ellefsen believes: When Bovino wears a Gestapo coat, it will take more to shock us next time. By then we will have become numb. The boundary of what is acceptable will have shifted. Lockjaw could not have done it better.
A uniform from 1929
And Ellefsen could hardly have produced a better demonstration of what they themselves warn against: conspiracy theories, half-truths and claims without documentation.
The truth is that Greg Bovino has worn the coat for 25 years during his service with the Border Patrol. Through thick and thin, as the saying goes, even in 2022 under Joe Biden.
But no one said anything then. He was even complimented on the coat during a ceremony at the Department of Homeland Security while Joe Biden was president.
Bovino was a guest on NewsNation. He told host Leland Vittert that it is a standard Border Patrol winter uniform that he has owned since the late 1990s.
The coat comes from a uniform tradition dating back to 1929, according to NewsNation.
Bovino said that he has worn the coat publicly for years, including at official ceremonies, without anyone objecting.
– That coat is definitely issued by the Border Patrol, Bovino said. – I have had it for more than 25 years. I bought it when I was a young agent, around 1999.
Bovino said that he wore the coat during the 2021 swearing-in ceremony for the then Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Chris Magnus, in Washington. An appearance that he said attracted no criticism at the time, when he received many compliments on the coat.
Fast-forward a few years to this administration, and suddenly it is a problem. – What has changed? Why is it a problem now, when it was not under the previous administration? Bovino said.
Not the Code of Ethics of the Norwegian Press
We all know the answer to that, and we all know that Morgenbladet, Ellefsen or other Norwegian media would not have cared one bit about the coat. They barely bothered to cover Joe Biden’s four years in the White House. His countless missteps did not fit the story they wanted to tell.
That is precisely what makes the witch-hunt against Document so surreal. Norwegian media breach the Code of Ethics of the Norwegian Press (Vær Varsom-plakaten) every day, and it goes under the radar, while we are the problem.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that the coat Bovino was wearing is part of the Border Patrol’s standard winter uniform. She condemned comparisons with Nazi-era forces and said that comparing law enforcement with the Nazis or the Gestapo is incredibly dangerous.
It certainly is.
As mentioned in this article, attacks on ICE agents increased by more than 1,300 per cent in 2025, from 19 to 275. Vehicle attacks increased by 3,200 per cent, while death threats increased by no less than 8,000 per cent.
Peter Svaar og NRK frykter nye visumregler: Som man reder, ligger man
The establishment’s soapbox
In Bernhard Ellefsen’s commentary on Gregory Bovino, we are served precisely what Bjarne Riiser Gundersen, Ingeborg Misje Bergem and Ellefsen accuse us of: smear campaigns against politicians and ICE agents, half-truths and dangerous conspiracy theories.
In the letter, the three editors write that it is untenable that an organisation which, according to its own statutes, is supposed to ensure ‘the quality of journalism as truth-seeking, relevant, factual and comprehensive’ is so acquiescent on issues that go to the heart of the activities of editor-controlled media.
That is why they are resigning from the association.
Perhaps it is time to put the same question to Morgenbladet: What happens to truth-seeking journalism when a traditional Border Patrol uniform is transformed into a Gestapo coat, and a federal force of more than 20,000 ICE agents, many of whom are minorities, is portrayed as a paramilitary Gestapo force?
Then we are back where we began. Except that it is not Hans Rustad standing on the soapbox shouting whatever he wants. It is they themselves. With legitimacy from the entire Norwegian establishment.
And this is not over. The next Morgenbladet article to come under scrutiny will be their coverage of Trump’s alleged attacks on freedom of expression and freedom of the press. They accuse Trump of doing precisely what they themselves are doing to Document.
