The wars in the Middle East appear to have freed Norwegian media from the requirement of journalistic integrity and adversarial reporting (kontradiktorisk reportasje) from a conflict area. When NRK was placed on the state budget with a freely increasing number of billions in subsidies without clear journalistic conditions, the organisation lost all political restraints and lowered its flag as the far left’s studied “agitprop” – an organ in the service of the revolution. There are none among those responsible in the Storting who will admit what a burden they thereby placed upon the people.

The Norwegian people, however, stand rock-solid in their historical tradition, shaped through centuries of frugality, purposeful toil, and the struggle for freedom and democracy. The key word is trust that our leaders know where we are heading, and on behalf of us all there is created a vision of a Soria Moria that glitters beyond the blue mountains. Are we there, or are we at all on the right path? Where will the journey end if the state-financed media are allowed for long enough to exploit their de facto monopoly to mislead and brainwash their audience with half-truths, omissions, and outright lies about the world’s conflicts? Is it merely to lead a flock of sheep into the EU, or is there a larger design behind it?

There rests today something resembling a national resignation over the picture of the world and the news that the authorities’ state-financed media now massage into our people’s consciousness. The state media no longer convey a truthful picture of the world around us. They work deliberately to lull the people into notions that their secure future lies within a European and global community, where everyone will be safe and well, where one does not trouble others, but is agreeable and kind – and where we otherwise do as the EU wishes: the fairy-tale world of the Cardamom Law (kardemommeloven), which not even Theodor Kittelsen had sufficient imagination to depict with his brush.

From morning to evening, the people are led by NRK and the other tabloids to believe that we stand at the outset of world war and catastrophes for which we must prepare. We must have water and food in readiness, and then we must ourselves determine where we are to hide when an atomic bomb falls in the neighbourhood. In Norway there are so many neighbourhoods where an atomic bomb might fall that the authorities long ago abandoned the idea of building shelters for all, so the message is to do the best one can manage on one’s own. In other words: You cannot rely on there being any authorities of any kind if disaster strikes. You are left to fend for yourself, but thank you for using your final freedom to choose unfreedom.

The state media do not operate anonymously. They have a growing staff of spokeswomen and spokesmen who daily rub the message into people’s consciousness. This is nothing new. For several decades NRK and others have prepared and staffed their ranks with editors, journalists, and commentators who without exception convey and elaborate the correct political doctrine concerning everything of significance that occurs in the world. It is no coincidence that this unchanging team of opinion-makers who appear daily from morning to evening and without exception tell you what you are to think and believe, are engaged and remunerated precisely for that task.

We can trace this tendency towards political agitation in the media and organisations all the way back to the 1970s, when Arab terrorist actions against European targets led Europe to relinquish its unbreakable support for the Jews and their homeland, Israel, and defined the PLO as the representative of “the Palestinian people”, as had already been formulated in Moscow. What we are now experiencing is that all restraints have been set aside in the endeavour to delegitimise the Jewish state. This is incontrovertibly evident in the position both the media and politicians have chosen regarding Trump’s efforts to prevent Iran from developing the nuclear weapons which for years it has intended to use to destroy Israel and other enemies. We cannot understand it otherwise than that this is precisely what our media and politicians also desire.

But only now do the state media feel sufficiently secure in their livelihoods to dare, without restraint, to assume control over the country’s foreign policy. This occurs in the knowledge that their de facto monopoly position and the long-standing tradition of trust in what is said in the media grant them unhindered opportunity to shape public opinion. This applies not only to a uniform opinion among the people, but to an equally uniform opinion among the country’s elected leaders. Among them there is no longer anyone who dares to challenge the media they themselves finance. They have all fallen into the trap and have become as media-driven and uniform as the evening news audience they have created through their short-sighted appropriations.

Can this be changed, or is the restoration of an independent popular rule built upon a true understanding of reality and the safeguarding of our own national and cultural interests and values a lost opportunity? The answer will lie in popular engagement in the existence of alternative and truth-oriented media with broad public access to facts about what is happening in the world and how we are being manipulated and deceived by those who do not wish us well. The methods of standardising and deceiving nations by means of media monopolies are known to us from the 1930s. We also know the consequences that this then produced.

Rarely have we seen clearer examples of this problem than in the media’s coverage of the negotiations between the United States and the Iranian regime concerning its entitlement to develop nuclear weapons. The conclusion must be unequivocal: The regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran will under no circumstances relinquish its opportunity to equip itself with nuclear weapons for use against Israel and the United States, which it itself defines as its mortal enemies.

We too will be within the range of such nuclear weapons. There is nothing in the ideology of the ayatollahs that grants us exemption from their objective of dominion. Do our leaders have the courage and will to acknowledge this and to take the full consequences of that recognition, as Israel and the United States have done, or shall we merely sit and wait and console ourselves that the evening news (Dagsrevyen) knows best?