The article “Easy to Become a Rebel in One’s Castle” (Klassekampen 27.2.2026) is not easy to make sense of. Despite a text of almost two thousand characters, it provides no insight into the subject of the text, namely the French author Renaud Camus.

First of all, the text lacks basic facts. Such as that Camus has, over the course of approximately 50 years as a writer, published around 170 books. His authorship spans a range of genres. Camus has also been the subject of considerable praise, admittedly before he adopted political views that are not welcomed in literary salons.

Instead, all the space in the text is devoted to all manner of person-focused and speculative trivialities, where an alleged paradox is supposed to lie: Camus has gone from being a kind of avant-gardist author to becoming, according to the article, “one of the world’s most influential far-right ideologues”. The terminology here speaks clearly about the portrayal being constructed.

That authors, in addition to people generally, change their minds over the course of their lives can hardly come as a surprise to anyone. Furthermore, there could very well exist good, rational reasons for Camus’ shift in literary focus and further development of his own opinions. But the presentation in Klassekampen does not open up for that possibility.

It is furthermore also strange that support for remigration is presented in the article as though it were some sort of outrageous viewpoint requiring a kind of psychological causal explanation, presumably in contrast to ordinary political discussion. It is nevertheless a fact that leading political parties in a number of European countries now have remigration as part of their official position. That the hegemonic Norwegian media public sphere wishes things were otherwise does not alter that fact.

The framework of the presentation thus does not permit any interesting or substantial light to be shed either on the person Renaud Camus or on his authorship. The author’s own reflections and explanations regarding his work are accorded no weight in the presentation, except as a kind of pathological symptom. This fundamental prejudgement appears to be decisive for the shaping of the presentation that is given.

Allow me finally to mention that I have repeatedly had the pleasure of conversing with Camus on various subjects in addition to reading several of his books, and thus have a certain basis for having formed my own opinion regarding how matters stand.

My conclusion therefore becomes that the aforementioned portrayal of Renaud Camus and his authorship in the aforementioned article is entirely worthless, except as an attempt to place Camus in a gallery of villains consisting of those who hold opinions different from what is evidently common in Klassekampen’s own editorial office.

Accompanying text: This article was first sent to Klassekampen debate, with a copy to the newspaper’s editor Mari Skurdal, on 16 March 2026. No reply came. A new enquiry concerning the article was sent to the same recipients on 29 March, which also went unanswered. The same applies to a third enquiry in the matter on 26 April.

What makes the handling of the article rather special was that the author, as acting leader of Norgesdemokratene, entered into an amicable agreement in a Pressens Faglige Utvalg (PFU) case (case ID: 49933) with precisely Klassekampen editor Mari Skurdal in September 2025. She then assured me in a pleasant telephone conversation that, as consideration for my withdrawing the case, I (as spokesperson for Norgesdemokratene) would, without any problems whatsoever, be published in Klassekampen in the future.

Is amnesia the problem?

Øyvind Eikrem, acting party leader of Norgesdemokratene