First it was broadsheet Aftenposten that ridiculed the religiosity of Trump and Pete Hegseth. Now the Norwegian News Agency (NTB) journalist Nils-Inge Kruhaug joins in with a character assassination of Hegseth. Kruhaug is assisted by Ragnar Misje Bergem, a lecturer at MF (formerly conservative Norwegian School of Theology) and author of the book “Who Should We Love? The Christian Ideas Behind the MAGA Movement”.

In the course of a few years, Norway has come to be characterised by a woke cult. It launches a frontal attack on Trump’s America, where One Nation under God is the foundation. For the woke left, this is translated into theocracy, as Hilde Sandvik has also suggested.

If anyone wishes to turn around, and away from the anti-Christian, nihilistic, pro-Islamic course they themselves follow, it is towards theocracy they are steering.

Will Christian Norway dare to confront this threat, or will they continue to hide in their holes? This is not going to disappear. What they demand is that you distance yourself, condemn Trump and everything he represents. It is entirely religious.

Kruhaug’s ingress sets the tone:

The United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sees himself as a crusader, has introduced mandatory prayer meetings in the Pentagon, dismisses experienced generals and has nothing but contempt for the law of armed conflict.

One conflates fear of “crusades”, prayer meetings as an overreach, dismissal of liberal generals, and a justified critique of international law in war.

For years, the left has cultivated the portrayal of the Crusades as Christian Europe’s attack on innocent Muslims.

It began with the Saladin days at the House of Literature, showered with funds by Fritt Ord. Those who planned this had a plan: they were preparing the Islamisation of Norway. For that, Norwegians had to learn to hate their own history.

Just wait, before 2030 we will also be taught to repudiate the Christianisation of Norway, so that we learn to love Islam as the bearer of culture.

The brother of the leader of Islam Net is a teacher/researcher at MF and writes in Aftenposten:

What would we have missed if intercultural encounters had never taken place?
Zeshan Ullah Qureshi
PhD candidate, MF Norwegian School of Theology

In a recent essay I argue that the history of the Qur’an in Europe is missing in Norwegian intellectual-historical presentation, and that it should be integrated into our heritage. It is not an attempt to rewrite history, but to expand it in the light of source material. The question is what kind of knowledge we miss if this type of work is not given space.

Most people do not grasp how deeply Islamisation has already penetrated, well assisted by people such as Sturla Stålsett.

Since they occupy so many positions, many hesitate to challenge them.

But the attack on Trump/Hegseth/Vance is driven by something much larger: it is an attempt to prevent the United States from being re-established as a nation founded on Christianity.

Trump has the right balance between worldly life and heaven. For this he is ridiculed by Kjetil Hanssen in Aftenposten:

As many as seven in ten now say that he is not religious at all or not particularly religious. That is an increase of 8 percentage points since autumn 2024, when he was campaigning.

It is mostly Democrats who think this. But also among his own voters, half are either sceptical or doubtful about his Christian faith.

Trump has sold, among other things, Bibles, but unlike former president Joe Biden, he rarely attends church. Biden, who is Catholic, went at least once a week.

Biden made the sign of the cross while speaking about abortion. He welcomed trans people and queers to the White House and led a life far removed from being Christian. Yet neither Aftenposten nor NTB ever wrote about this. They never wrote about a corrupt president and a dysfunctional family. Biden represents the values that the journalists represent: pornography, sin, greed for money, lust for power, where they sacrifice their own children. Biden’s daughter Ashley has described how showering with her father made her sexually boundaryless. Hunter was a wreck in slow motion who was allowed to accompany daddy to Ukraine and obtain a board position in a gas company with a bonus of 80,000 dollars a month. Aftenposten and NTB have never written about the corruption under the Democrats.

They have become part of it. They now attack the Trump administration almost as if it were the Ku Klux Klan.

It is easy to see that Hilde Sandvik, Christina Pletten, Kjetil Hanssen and Nils-Inge Kruhaug are the ones conducting crusades. They have the entire Schibsted, Amedia and NRK behind them.

War is war

For the Democrats, war was not about killing. Nor is it for the Norwegian Armed Forces. They find it acceptable to kill with drones, but have the same detached relationship to it as American aviators over Vietnam.

They are children of the Vietnam protests who have now taken a 180-degree turn: they kill at a distance with a clear conscience.

The rules of engagement introduced by the UN and Obama cost many American soldiers their lives. They were not allowed to fire first, but had to wait to be fired upon.

War as something defensive. They themselves would never think of entering combat.

Those who have introduced rules that allow others to die can attack those who actually wish to win. The United States has not won a war since the Korean War.

With these rules of engagement, the West always loses.

That is what the EU, Støre and the media stand for. Right now they are trying to make the United States lose in Iran. They have no scruples about it, even if it should mean that the butchers survive.

Trump is worse.

He survived his third serious assassination attempt (there was a fourth, but he was not at home then).

They are sorry that he survived. You can see it in their faces. They hope the next one succeeds. They are like Jimmy Kimmel and treat Melania with equal disrespect: she looks forward to becoming a widow.

But they have a problem: why does Trump survive? There is a nagging suspicion lurking that they do not dare to formulate: what if Trump is protected by a force stronger than theirs?

The reds have an inquisition: everything you say can be used against you. That becomes easy if you have a monopoly on the other’s words, which can be twisted and turned to suit the need:

Hegseth belongs to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), a strongly Christian conservative and nationalist movement with churches, schools, publishing houses and media outlets in several countries.

CREC was founded and is led by Pastor Douglas Wilson, who is, among other things, an outspoken opponent of women’s suffrage and wishes to ban homosexuality, notes the American online newspaper The Conversation.

Wilson has also portrayed slavery as something positive, and the German Der Spiegel described him last autumn as “one of the arch-conservative Bible fanatics” in Trump’s circle.

Several of the movement’s leaders believe the United States should have priestly rule, a societal model with obvious similarities to Iran.

What does a red journalist do when he is to smear a conservative? He turns to opponents who denounce Hegseth and his church, just as Kruhaug, Aftenposten and Sandvik do.

When the starting point becomes as distorted.

But there is a particular relish in dragging Hegseth down into the “mire”.

Ragnar Misje Bergem, photo: MF

Hegseth’s church community is more extreme and nationalist than the evangelical movement as a whole, notes Associate Professor Ragnar Misje Bergem at MF Norwegian School of Theology in Oslo.

– They definitely represent a radicalisation on the right in American Christianity, and they have more outspoken and explicit Christian nationalist attitudes than most evangelicals, he tells NTB.

In the sermons Hegseth delivers in the Pentagon, the use of military force and a warrior mentality are recurring themes.

– There is a macho ideal in American evangelicalism in general, and hate rhetoric and violent rhetoric are a tendency among the group of Christians to which Hegseth belongs, says Misje Bergem, who is the author of the book “Hvem skal vi elske? De kristne ideene bak MAGA-bevegelsen”.

Imagine that Hegseth has tattooed a cross on the left side of his chest. A cross is apparently suspect.

The United States Secretary of Defense has tattooed a large Jerusalem cross on his chest, a symbol frequently used by Christian crusaders.

On one upper arm he has tattooed “Deus Vult” – God wills it – the battle cry of the first crusaders and a frequently used slogan among white right-wing nationalists in the United States.

He also has a tattoo referring to chapter 10, verse 34 of the Gospel of Matthew. There it states “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth”.

– Crusade rhetoric is common on the far-right wing and is also a recurring theme within Christianity as an image of a civilisational struggle, says Misje Bergem.

– Hegseth uses it both as an image of a struggle against internal enemies, typically the liberals, and external enemies, particularly political Islam, he says.

If Bergem had visited St Olav’s Church in Oslo, he would have discovered that the cross he casts suspicion upon is painted into the dome beneath the new organ.

Misje Bergem is not impressed by Hegseth’s religious rhetoric and references to the Bible.

– He does not really appear to be very knowledgeable, he says.

– He has probably read a little of the Bible, and it is important for him to be situated within a Christian frame of reference, but he does not appear to be an intellectual, he adds.

Hegseth’s dismissal of a number of military leaders, most recently the country’s Army Chief Randy George, has aroused greater concern in the Pentagon than the introduction of mandatory prayer meetings.

More than 20 generals have been dismissed since he took office last year, apparently for no other reason than skin colour, gender or presumed political sympathies. Others are denied promotion.

“He has probably read a little of the Bible” – that is the pharisaical know-it-all attitude one also encounters towards Trump.

One openly displays contempt. But since Trump is President of the United States and Bergem is an insignificant lecturer at a remote college, it may well be that it is Trump’s ideas that have the wind in their sails, and not Bergem and Kruhaug?

Note that “international law” is now being forged from ploughshare into sword.

– This is without precedent, says Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute to The Economist.

That he also asks American forces not to show mercy, not even towards opponents who have been neutralised, and refers to the law of armed conflict as an obstacle, also raises concern in the Pentagon.

Military personnel under his command know that they can be court-martialled if they refuse to follow orders, but they also know that they can be charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) if they do as Hegseth says.

Norway has helped to make Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defence Minister wanted as war criminals.

That is the future journalists and academics envisage for Trump, Vance and Hegseth.

As Roman triumphators had the defeated dragged behind their chariots, they fantasise about humiliation and punishment.

This is not journalism, this is not university, nor ordinary politics.

It is something entirely different.

The Democrats have already announced that they will initiate a new impeachment if they gain a majority in the House of Representatives.

The new proceedings will be more extensive and the punishments harsher than in the first term.

This time they will break Trump and his men. Many have already been instructed to “preserve all documents”.

For that reason, the media are engaged in a systematic preparation for something resembling the Moscow Trials.

The systematic lie put into a system.