The media are holding the Democracy Festival in Trondheim at Trøndelag Theatre. It is modelled on Arendalsuka: a series of meetings running in parallel and attended by the same people both on stage and in the audience.
In that sense, Document was once again the one invited to stir up controversy, and once again it was VG’s outgoing editor-in-chief, Gard Steiro, who served as the opposing debater, with Adresseavisen’s political editor, Siv Sandvik, acting as moderator. It was two against one. Again.
Steiro and Sandvik will no doubt deny that this was the case. They hold up the ‘Vær Varsom’ code of conduct almost as if it were the Ten Commandments. They are objective and represent a measurable standard. Anyone who fails to adhere to them has no place in the Editors’ Association. Both were clear on that point.
Attempts to raise questions – by asking whether the concept of truth and truth-seeking journalism are one and the same – met with no understanding.
I believe this is why gatherings of left-wingers are increasingly perceived as prayer meetings.
It is difficult to get a hearing for objections.
Such as, for example, the fact that the editors themselves do not respect the requirement for a diversity of sources. This is particularly glaring in the coverage of Trump and Trump’s America, but also applies to the pandemic, vaccines, climate change, immigration, Islam and trans issues. The answer is predetermined, and that is not journalism. It is propaganda.
Such views provoke a certain amount of irritation. Steiro is keen to lecture on what it takes to be a member of the Editors’ Association: whether one has the ability and/or the will. It is the latter that is lacking, according to Steiro, who therefore asks why we want to be members.
When I try to say that the Norwegian public sphere is at a crossroads, that there is little oxygen in the room and that civil society is being squeezed and suffocated, I meet with little or no understanding.
We are therefore compelled to raise our voices and stand firm: Norway is heading in a totalitarian direction, and it is precisely this lack of understanding on the part of Steiro and Sandvik that confirms it. Through negative confirmation. By failing to acknowledge the problem.
When VG’s Hanne Skartveit said in all seriousness that Norway has the world’s best press, something had happened and we have only moved further into the tunnel.
Mari Skurdal writes in an editorial in *Klassekampen* that Ole Asbjørn Næss essentialises Muslims. This is a term from the 22 July debate, and people still believe it is applicable.
Essentialisation is a concept of power. If you can say that someone is essentialising a particular group, you have put that person in the doghouse, and as of 2026, it is something even more serious: Muslims are on their way into positions of power and influence, and so accepting such a term could mean you end up in trouble.
Skurdal herself gives an example of this when she writes about Abdul el-Sayed, who won the Senate seat in Michigan.
Skurdal must not have been paying close attention; she says that Sayed has been elected governor. But let’s leave that aside.
Michigan’s newly elected governor, Abdul El-Sayed, is also facing allegations that he is in fact an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood. Because he is a Muslim with family roots in Egypt, he is portrayed as an unchanging representative of global Islamism, even though he has never said anything that could be interpreted in that way. This view is even expressed in major European newspapers. The conservative German newspaper *Die Welt* wrote following the US mid-term elections ‘that an unsavoury, radical Muslim such as Abdul El-Sayed securing a seat in the Senate is a disgrace for the Republicans and an ominous sign of the civilisational rupture threatening the US’. The Danish tabloid *B.T.*, owned by Amedia, has, for its part, embraced remigration and claims that the cultures of Denmark and the Middle East are incompatible. Some people with a Muslim background may nevertheless adopt Danish values, but only if they are not particularly religious, according to the newspaper.
This is a flimsy argument, and Skurdal gets away with it because she knows nothing about el-Sayed and his family either. The links to the Muslim Brotherhood are numerous and well documented.
I tried to raise this in the debate, but was met with rejection. They do not acknowledge the issue.
Whilst the debate across Europe is moving towards the view that Islam is incompatible with Western values, the Norwegian media are attempting to suppress the discussion.
This makes us poorer.
Michigan elected Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed – the first Muslim senator in US history.
His parents came from Egypt on student visas in 1978.
A generation later, their son is drafting laws for 330 million Americans.Michigan’s Muslim population has roughly quadrupled since the 1990s, driven by waves of refugees from Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Syria whom Washington welcomed with open arms.
Dearborn now has an Arab majority. Hamtramck elected the US’s first city council consisting entirely of Muslims in 2021.
As demographics change, politics follows – and that was proven last night.Five self-declared socialists won seats in the House of Representatives. Texas – yes, Texas – turned blue for the first time in 30 years. The Democratic Socialists of America now have seven members in Congress.
Biden’s wide-open border didn’t just let people in. It created a permanent voter base that will shape American politics for decades to come.
Sana Ebrahimi Ledene @SanaELedene provides the details.
“1. In 2012, he signed a letter to Mohamed Morsi (Egypt’s president from the Muslim Brotherhood) in which he supported his seizure of power and urged him to ‘purge the media and the police as quickly as possible’.”
2. His biological mother, Fatten Elkomy, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), which the US Treasury Department has designated as a supporter of terrorism. His half-sister has publicly stated that their mother was active in the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1970s.
3. His half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, posted on social media about their mother’s activism in the Muslim Brotherhood and expressed support for family members who support the Brotherhood in Egypt.
4- He refused to condemn the IRGC when asked directly by an Iranian-American student whose family had been attacked by them. Leaked audio recordings also show that he deliberately chose to remain silent about Khamenei’s death because ‘there are many people in Dearborn who are sad’, thereby prioritising his own supporters over a fundamental condemnation of a terrorist regime.
5- His father, Mohamed El-Sayed, sits on the board of Life for Relief and Development, a Michigan-based Islamic charity that paid a $780,000 settlement to the US Treasury Department for breaching sanctions by transferring money to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The organisation has also been subject to raids and investigations due to alleged links to terrorist networks.
Norway and all Western countries are heading into the same waters as the US. Skurdal signals what the press’s role should be: not to understand and defend our values, but to turn a blind eye and ‘silence’ those who dare to speak out.
