Conservative deputy leader Ola Svenneby said on Norway’s public broadcaster NRK’s political current-affairs programme that it is permissible to say that one would like to see a bullet through Gaute Skjervø’s head.

He also embellished this with quotations saying that it was not certain that one bullet would be enough, because it would encounter so much fat and ‘wood’. At the same time, he reproached Jon Helgheim for not taking the threats against Skjervø seriously enough.

A reasonable person would say that it should not be permissible to write what Svenneby recounts. It is not merely deeply hurtful, but intimidating and threatening. This clearly falls into the category of threats. We know that the hate category in the Penal Code is broad. But is it really permissible to make threats involving ‘bullets’ and death?

Most people find this incomprehensible. The Ministry of Justice should take immediate action.

Such statements should furthermore be treated as an aggravating factor if they are directed at survivors of Utøya.

It is quite incredible if no such provisions of law apply.

Ola Svenneby made a point of saying that it was permissible to say such things, but that they imposed a great burden on those targeted.

He then reproached Jon Helgheim for not taking the threats and hateful messages seriously.

Helgheim is able to distinguish between two different things. Svenneby was not.

Helgheim expressed scepticism about the 30,000 hateful messages that Skjervø is said to have received over the course of two months. Many of these are the price of living in an open society. But not for Gaute Skjervø. He wants to close the comment sections.

We sense that there may perhaps be plans behind Skjervø’s initiative, both to throw Document out and to close comment sections.

Now there is to be a clean-up.

It was refreshing to hear that Helgheim did not buy this ‘package’.

He is chairman of the Standing Committee on Justice.

There will probably now be demands for him to step down, as happened with Richard Jomshof in Sweden after he spoke about Islam.

The left has ‘taken possession’ of freedom of expression. They have appropriated it, and with NRK and Lilla Sølhusvik behind them, that works perfectly well.

But they underestimate the political shift in a conservative direction that electoral researcher Johannes Bergh spoke about on Monday.

Svenneby had brought along his own smear package, which he dumped on Helgheim: The Facebook page Vi som støtter Sylvi (‘We Who Support Sylvi’) is overflowing with hateful messages against the left. Why does FrP not take responsibility for these and understand the problem?

Helgheim replied that Svenneby knows perfectly well that Facebook is unmoderated and that it is impossible to sit there continuously weeding out unwanted comments. He turned the question around: Why does Høyre not do the same? Trond Helleland is an administrator of a page where Støre is called Judas.

Svenneby did not take the criticism on board and continued: It was something entirely different when Skjervø’s wife received threats and someone wrote that they knew which nursery their child attended.

Yes, that is something entirely different, and that is a matter for the police. Is it so difficult to agree on this? Why did Svenneby play this card against the chairman of the Storting’s Standing Committee on Justice?

It was a blow below the belt.

Svenneby behaved like a schoolboy. He said that Helgheim sounded like an Islamist who, after a terrorist attack, distances himself from terrorism. This was a low point in the debate.

Finally, we had Tore Bjørgo, head of the C-REX Centre for Research on Extremism, brought in, who ever since 22 July has used his role to stigmatise the right.

That is one of the principal problems in Norwegian public life. The left refuses to relinquish its privileged status.

This can be resolved by making the Penal Code equal for everyone.

Then freedom of expression can encompass everyone.

The fact that Svenneby refuses to see that Skjervø, through his initiative, is attempting to acquire the power to define the limits of press freedom will not be forgotten. Svenneby is not the young hope many had expected him to be. He has now taken his place as second to Skjervø’s rabid initiative.