Sigrid Bratlie is the molecular biologist who dared to break the imposed silence about the origin of the COVID-19 virus. She appeared in VG and later in an op-ed in Aftenposten where she explained how she had come to doubt that the virus originated from the live animal market in Wuhan. In Norway, that was the only acceptable narrative. But solid, recognised researchers thought otherwise. Bratlie trusted her own judgement.

The prize was probably higher than she had imagined, and that raises the question: What has happened to academic freedom, freedom of expression and the public sphere in Norway? In a very short space of time, there has been a freezing of discourse where those who dare to air forbidden thoughts are left unsupported.

We know that many people find this frightening. But Aftenposten won’t even admit that they are part of the problem when they interview Bratlie:

Last autumn, Bratlie went to see a lecture in Oslo on the origins of the coronavirus. During the lecture, the researcher also began to criticise Bratlie, citing the VG case and the Aftenposten column as examples of conspiracy theories.

“It almost felt like I was in a dream or a film,” she says.

Afterwards, one of the co-organisers sent Bratlie an apology. They describe how the researcher called her “anti-scientific and conspiratorial”, and write that they were “taken aback” by the content of the lecture.

Those of us who have followed this “journey” towards totalitarianism are not shocked.

The climate has arisen through a combination of anti-Trump propaganda and woke. Woke’s breakthrough in Norway has revealed how weak liberal freedom traditions are in Norway.

Many years ago, I read Ralph Dahrendorf, a German who had become anglicized, who emphasized that contradictions and conflict are the oxygen democracy needs in order to live. A society’s self-confidence can be measured by how it handles and tolerates differences. Dahrendorf viewed Germany’s history in light of British pragmatism and common sense. He became more British than German.

On the whole, the departure of German intellectuals and their journey across the Atlantic was inspiring. They chose exile to defend spiritual values, freedom of thought. A dissident like Cezlaw Milosz would later undertake the same journey, but by then America was steeped in hippie culture and student radicalism and incapable of understanding the totalitarian experience.

The strange thing is that Norwegian spiritual life – if one can use the word spirit to describe public discourse, the word has gone out of fashion – is more orthodox today than when the ML movement raged.

You would have thought that the ML movement, which encompassed 20,000 people, would have triggered some immune substances that would have immunised us against a recurrence. But the opposite seems to be the case. Norway is more unidirectional today than in the 1970s and 1980s. Future social scientists will want to study how it was possible to return to something reminiscent of Mao’s cultural revolution and the “little red one”.

But it won’t last. Today’s cultural revolution in the US is just as powerful as the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. This time it’s both the working people and the intellectuals who are taking back their country. Exactly what the Marxists dreamed of, but never realised.

The elite in Norway are trying to launch an alluring dream of Norway as part of the EU. But Ursula only creates distance and scepticism. They have already taken the waterfall power.

The upcoming election will be a choice between for or against Norway. Our authorities and the two major parties are against it. This is where the standardisation comes from.

They have made Norway part of a system that has never been discussed in either the media or the Parliament. Norwegians are kept in the dark, and journalists react with aggression if anyone tries to interfere with their dominance.

Totalitarian systems don’t catch on.

The elite are doing everything they can to keep the ball in the air through Trump-hatred and now increasingly Israel-bashing.

They have no control over their own narrative.

This is where Document and all constructive forces come in. A growing part of the audience is receptive.

Americans didn’t put up with being treated as colonial objects by a new tyrannical state. They rebelled.

Will Scandinavians dare to follow in their footsteps?

The story of Sigrid Bratlie is exemplary. She trusted her professional judgement and ended up in a completely new place.

Unfortunately, Aftenposten does not ask her the interesting questions: Why was it so dangerous to listen to the scientists who said early on that the virus was manipulated? Why was it so difficult to have someone to talk to? Bratlie didn’t wake up until January 2024. By then, a ton of revelations were waiting for her.

For the next six months, she scrolled and read her way down a rabbit hole. Without telling others about how she gradually was changing her mind.

“When I entered into the case, I was on one side. Now I ended up turning round. And it’s a nice stress test for me, to see if I can actually see past my own biases”, she said.

It’s Norway that has become a rabbit hole, where anyone who claims that there is another world, is ostracised and angry.

Aftenposten is still banging on about the official version:

“All indications were that the virus first spread from animals to humans at a wet market in the same city.”

No, not all indications pointed towards that. Not if you kept your eyes and ears open. The first cracks appeared as early as 2020. But Norway has landed on the same side as China, and does so on many issues, such as “free trade”.

Aftenposten pokes at the monster Bratlie encountered, but then leaves it alone.

Moreover, there are a number of factors that suggest that the lab leak theory was suppressed because it was too politically sensitive,

she says.

Why was the theory «too politically sensitive»? Aftenposten doesn’t pursue the trail, as that would take them places they’re not allowed to go.

Instead, we get a demonstration that Bratlie also knows how to grant political indulgences: If you’re going to get away with dissenting opinions, you first have to throw Trump under the bus.

The US president claimed there was “conclusive evidence” that the coronavirus originated from a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Still, most scientists dismissed this.

– So, it seemed pretty clear. Also because it was Trump who said it. When, almost in the same breath, he recommends drinking disinfectant to recover from COVID-19, it does something to the overall picture,” says Bratlie.

This is nonsense. Trump has never said anything like that. But CNN and Norwegian media twisted a statement and campaigned against the medicine that helped: hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. They were purged from the stockpiles and doctors were not allowed to prescribe them.

You can’t be slightly truthful.

I’m an optimist. Something is happening. The EU is trying to inflate itself, but the rhetoric is hollow and transparent. The use of the term “far right” and the censorship have a ridiculous flavour. Anyone can see that the emperor is naked.

But woke has already managed to do a lot of damage.

The same one-sidedness is happening in relation to the war in Ukraine as in relation to the biggest medical scandal in history. Anyone who dares to oppose is taken down. The phenomenon of Glenn Diesen is complicated by the fact that he, too, has his work cut out for him. His trip to Tehran raises many questions, and it is these that the media should be concentrating on. It seems that Diesen has several agendas and serves several masters.

A healthy attitude dictates scepticism and distance. Instead, the media and politicians go into the trenches and create so much noise that it diverts attention from the important issues.