The Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) warns, quite certainly with justification, that collections which claim to go to “good causes” can be misused and in the worst case contribute to terrorist financing.

In a statement from PST on 11 March it is stated:

In light of the serious threat picture we face and the situation in the Middle East, many people in Norway wish to contribute financially in order to improve the situation. Some may also feel an obligation to support.

For PST it is important to remind people of the risk that contributions to good causes can be misused.

The security service also urges people to conduct their own checks before giving money to collections.

But are collections in fact the most important source of financing for terrorists in Norway?

The largest expenditure item for many lawful enterprises nowadays is personnel costs, and the situation is hardly any different for criminal activities.

The terrorists who have resided in Norway have carried out at least as much terror abroad as domestically, but there is no doubt that several of them lived at public expense.

This applied, for example, to the 28-year-old Muslim who took part in the terrorist attack on the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi, Kenya, on 21 September 2013, in which 69 people were killed. The individual lived both in an asylum reception centre and in publicly subsidised housing in two different places not far from where yours truly grew up.

Ikrimah al-Muhajir is evidently not the only terrorist aspirant in Norway who has lived at the expense of Norwegian taxpayers.

It is therefore overwhelmingly likely that the most important source of terrorist financing in Norway is Nav.

So if one is to carry out one’s own checks before handing over money, should the first thing one reflects upon not be whether the tax one pays with ever greater reluctance is helping to finance terrorism?

It is probably somewhat difficult for PST to conclude that the government, which is its principal, constitutes a danger to the security of the realm. But perhaps the Office of the Auditor General (Riksrevisjonen) can? In any case, the rest of us can.

All in all, there is every reason to conclude that significant parts of the Norwegian state budget go towards socially destructive f…ry. It may appear that the more socially destructive something is, the greater its chances of being financed through the state budget.