Norwegians have always suffered simultaneously from an excess of trust and a lack of anger, and therefore Norwegian globalist politicians who work for foreign powers in the form of the EU, the UN, the WEF and all other countries in the world can do whatever they wish with our society. And they do – under false premises that it is inevitable, necessary and solidaristic. And even though the negative changes occur frighteningly quickly for people over 60, they occur just slowly enough that those aged 40 accept them.
The smiles of the forty-year-olds are, however, beginning to stiffen somewhat. You can see the confusion in their eyes now, because everything is moving in the wrong direction, and at a pace that not even a life-lie can conceal any longer. But for those aged twenty our society appears almost static, and since they have no memories of Norway in the year 2000 or in 1980, the society of the past does not mean anything concrete to them either.
We are not good enough at reminding young people what they have lost. Today’s parliamentary parties (stortingspartier) have to far too great an extent succeeded in conditioning people to believe that society must be chaotic, expensive and volatile because of mass immigration, Islamisation and globalism, while the labour market disintegrates and price inflation is out of control. But there are better alternatives.
Therefore I have made a list for the young. Not because everything was perfect earlier, but because we actually had a better functioning society before, and the politicians have deliberately destroyed what we had by using our society as a play laboratory for their political hobby-horses and social experiments. Here is the list that ought to make young people furious about what irresponsible politicians have deprived them of.
Anchor enterprises (Hjørnesteinsbedriftene): Norway has dispersed settlement as part of the desire to “use the whole country”, which is also important for NATO preparedness. In order to make this function, Norway had “anchor enterprises” – local industrial companies that provided employment for towns and rural communities. The dismantling of this began in 1981 with the introduction of globalism by Arbeiderpartiet and Gro Harlem Brundtland. Everything was sold to China.
Entry-level jobs (Innstegsjobbene): Anchor enterprises and local business communities always needed people, and the most common way to obtain a job was to visit a company and ask: “Do you have a job for me?” There were genuine workplaces there, and a genuine shortage of people willing to work. Therefore one could often obtain employment on the same day, entirely without a master’s degree, CV or four rounds of interviews. It was also easier to employ people permanently, since LO had not yet managed to destroy the possibilities of dismissing idlers.
A functioning labour market: Previously job applications were taken seriously by real people. Now you cannot even expect a reply from automated application portals. Previously a seventeen-year-old could obtain a job in the local shop the same day. Now Rema 1000 often has 200 applicants for a part-time position. And the reason is not only the relocation abroad of Norwegian business and a broken labour market, but also the mass importation of immigrants that pushes wages downwards.
Equality: Through forty years of globalism from Arbeiderpartiet and Høyre the aim has supposedly been to create change, solidarity, levelling, equality, trust and harmony in a better society. The problem is that Norway was such a society. There was nothing to fix at that time. Globalism has made it more unstable, less solidaristic, more divided and unequal, with widespread distrust, fragmentation and more aggression, frustration, tribal affiliation and powerlessness in a worse society.
Professional knowledge and the value of experience: Norway was the country of working people, where practical knowledge and vocational certificates were more valuable than academic trivialities. In the year 2000 an “expert” was a person who had worked in practice since the age of eighteen, not an academic with a theoretical approach and vague answers. But then Reform-94 and the “Knowledge Promotion Reform” (Kunnskapsløftet) arrived and undermined practical experience in favour of degrees and theory. And Gro Harlem Brundtland was the saboteur.
A homogeneous population: Norway was already sufficiently divided between east and west, north and south, Oslo and the provinces, city and countryside, Bergen and Norway. The people and cultures were already sufficiently diverse and interesting, yet we shared history, language, ethnicity, symbols and rituals. That was enough to create genuine cohesion despite the differences. Our population has increased by around 30 per cent in only thirty years, and politicians have densified the cities and imported other countries’ hostilities, wars, conflicts, antagonisms, bad cultural practices and superstition – in exchange for kebab and chilli. We could have managed that with a cookbook.
A secular society: Until 1960 the Church and priests had surprisingly much power in this country, but Norway was a secular state where religion did not possess political power as in Muslim countries. As society was modernised, the population also became increasingly secular. With the introduction of Islam and sharia law this trend is rapidly reversing, and clergy obtain ever greater political influence over immigrant populations, normalising religion as a political power factor and thereby undermining both democracy and the position of women.
Security: Our homogeneous population created a culture with moral pressure to appear honest and upright. There were limits and norms regarding what one could do and could not do (as in all cultures). Norwegians have always looked down upon violence, aggression, ostentatious behaviour, lack of self-control, dishonesty, lies, corruption, greed, macho nonsense, selfishness and attacks on women, children and people who are already down. But then foreign cultural norms arrived to “enrich” us. We still look down upon such behaviour and these bad cultural practices, but we are not permitted to say so aloud.
The Labour Exchange (Arbeidsformidlingen) and “Dagsen”: It may sound strange, but before Nav we had public systems that could provide you with a job on the same day. At the Labour Exchange you sat together with a case officer and could select employment from a list. They were not prestigious jobs, but they were paid and provided the opportunity to move onwards. At “Dagsen” you appeared at 07.00 and went with an employer to perform a day’s work, possibly continuing there for a longer period. With today’s broken labour market and the Nav system this is impossible.
Affordable housing: Until the 1990s the housing market in Norway followed a natural rhythm because there was balance between the number of homes built and the number of people who required housing. This ensured affordable housing and relatively stable conditions. Then mass immigration arrived and destabilised the housing market to an increasing degree. In only thirty years Norway’s population increased by around thirty per cent, and the number of people requiring housing creates enormous price pressure. Despite insane densification that destroys our cities, housing construction cannot keep pace.
Economic freedom: In the 1960s a newly qualified engineer could enter the labour market, establish a family, have children, obtain a car and purchase a house that was paid off in under ten years, and still have money left for food and living expenses – on one salary. The extreme growth of the public sector, the costs of mass immigration, the expansion of the welfare system and the introduction of the fiat monetary system are among the factors that make this completely impossible today. And even more paradoxically: the enormous revenues from the oil sector should have led to less need for taxes and charges in Norway. Instead the exact opposite occurred.
A fraud-resistant economy: One may say what one wishes about the monetary system of the 1980s, but fraud was almost unknown to Norwegians. Naturally it occurred, but with cash and banks staffed by real people it was far more difficult. No one could empty your bank account via a keyboard in India, no one sent false emails from your bank or about a parcel that had been stopped, urging you to press the link now. Recently DNB boasted that it had stopped three billion fraud attempts. Why did that suddenly become necessary?
Predictability: Politics should be boring. The more boring the better, because that provides stable conditions and good sleep for both business owners and the country’s citizens: everyone knows what will happen the next day, which rules apply and what to expect next year. But then came the reform zeal and mania for change of the globalists. Now stable conditions no longer exist, and catastrophe constantly threatens – whether climate, covid, interest rates, war, price increases or new digital systems that do not function. Young people are no longer allowed to be carefree, and then we do not live in a good society.
Secure jobs: Only thirty years ago young people could take a short education, begin working and expect to have the same secure job until retirement. One even received a gold watch for one’s service. Now? Now you are fortunate if you have the same job for ten years. Bankruptcies, restructurings, acquisitions and ownership changes occur so rapidly that the only sector where one can find shelter is public employment. It is the only place where one sits reasonably safely, particularly after the age of forty. At that point you begin to become less attractive, because experience makes you “rigid” and “difficult to shape to the corporate culture”. That may give you many sleepless nights in life.
Psychiatry and mental health: In the year 2000 Norway had just under 6,300 full-time psychiatric beds. That was already a decline from more than 8,000 in 1990. Now this has been reduced to 3,394 treatment places, while low-threshold services have become fewer, more formal and more difficult to access. This occurs simultaneously with the population increasing from four to 5.5 million through immigration, particularly from countries where war trauma and other trauma are common. There is no longer space for you in a daily life that becomes ever more chaotic and unpredictable, while the media warn of climate apocalypse and nuclear war every day.
Special schools: In the 1980s we had special schools and special classes for pupils who required reinforced assistance or could not keep up in certain subjects. This functioned excellently and was to everyone’s advantage: the minority received the help they needed, while the majority was not held back out of consideration for the weakest pupils. But then it was decided to abolish this, which weakened provision for the weakest pupils, who are in the minority, and harmed the majority. Today’s schools are unnecessarily chaotic, and diligent and disciplined pupils are punished.
Infrastructure paid through tax: The purpose of taxation is to create a common pool so that the state has funds for its core tasks, for example building infrastructure such as roads, railways, water, sewage and power systems. Your tax no longer pays for this because the state is no longer concerned with managing its core tasks but rather wishes to “save the world”. In addition to ever higher taxes you must therefore pay additional tolls, grid charges and other creative levies to collect ever more money. The state can never obtain enough money.
Freedom from poverty: The most important argument for introducing a welfare state was to prevent people from becoming homeless, beggars and trapped in poverty and misery from which it was impossible to escape. Now there are so many on welfare schemes, and the labour market is so broken, that people who end up “outside” are in practice condemned to permanent poverty and misery, and beggars have returned to the streets. They call it “progress”.
Cheap energy: The precondition for well-functioning industrial countries with strong economies and high living standards is not public administration, business and welfare schemes – as everyone seems to believe. The precondition rests upon a single factor: abundant cheap energy. If one experiments with this factor, one experiments with the stability of the entire society. And that is precisely what is happening throughout Europe. Your electricity bill and the price of filling the petrol tank underline the point.
Cheap transport: That people, goods and services can move freely in the cheapest possible manner within a country’s own borders is the key to cheap food, cheap goods, cheap services and easily accessible labour. Freedom of movement creates dynamism, flexibility and progress for society. All of this is under attack through regulation from the EU, which makes electricity, fuel and transport ever more expensive – without transport becoming any better as a result.
Cheap food: Competition should in principle create cheaper food. Instead Norway has been taken over by a food cartel consisting of a few large actors that in practice have a monopoly – and the authorities are unable to do anything about it. This means that when one chain in Norway raises prices, all the others do the same, and then they blame “external factors”.
Anti-corruption: Norway has always been culturally distinctive: we had a flat social structure where luxury and ostentation were regarded as ridiculous, and classical corruption involving large sums of money was almost unheard of. Distinctively Norwegian “favours between friends” have always existed, but now times are different: nepotism, corruption and closed rooms flourish everywhere. Everything revolves around money, money, money, while it has become “cool” to flaunt luxury and overconsumption. That may be pleasant for those on the carousel, but not so pleasant for those outside it.
Some things really were better before
I am therefore not a man who says that “everything was better before”. I do not remain stuck in the past, I do not indulge in nostalgia, I have little interest in ritual, I seek new music and technology, and I welcome change and new factors. But I care about facts and results: new factors must actually be improvements, not merely novelties. And changes must be for the better – not simply change for its own sake.
Change is inevitable and occurs naturally over time, but that is not what Norway has been subjected to since the year 2000: our society has been subjected to political mania for change, where everything must occur at express speed, problems must be swept under the carpet, crises must be evaluated afterwards instead of avoided beforehand, and reforms undertaken in panicked haste have become a virtue rather than a danger. And if you do not have friends on the “inside” of wealthy Norway, you risk remaining on the outside for the rest of your life.
When a country increases its population so enormously quickly through uncritical mass immigration from foreign cultures, and politicians simultaneously launch health reforms, school reforms, transport reforms, crime reforms, energy reforms, environmental reforms and a hundred other large and small reforms at the same time, it goes without saying that the danger of something going wrong is sky-high. And that is precisely why everything resembling risk reduction and responsibility has been eliminated from Norwegian public life.
Nothing can go wrong so that those who govern can appear brilliant and infallible. They are not. They have been incompetent bunglers who wish to leave their mark upon society but accept no responsibility when things go wrong. The problems will be left for the coming generations to solve.
They destroy. You must clean up. But you must stop accepting that!