The most revealing aspect of the campaign against Einar Andreas Lund is not that some people use the label “far right”. That has by now become routine. What is revealing is that the person targeted immediately feels compelled to explain that the label does not apply.
It is human. But strategically it is a trap.
For the moment the accused begins to provide evidence that he does not belong to the “far right”, he has already accepted the accuser’s right to appoint the court, formulate the charge and define what shall count as an acquittal. He has accepted that there exists a political priesthood that issues admission tokens to polite society – and that his own dignity depends on the priesthood’s verdict.
It is precisely this right that must be contested.
Václav Havel understood the mechanism. The communist system he described was not maintained solely by police, censorship and formal prohibitions. It was maintained by millions of small adaptations. By people who repeated language they did not believe in, displayed symbols they did not respect and pretended that the lie was true because the cost of protesting could be high.
The real power of the system lay in the fact that even its opponents began to live within its concepts.
Our time’s ideological control is milder in its external forms, but the mechanism is recognisable. No one necessarily needs to forbid you from appearing. It is enough that someone contacts the organiser. No one needs to enact censorship. It is enough that the client is made nervous. No one needs to prove that you are an extremist. It is enough to create an association that makes you costly to defend.
This is how modern exclusion works.
First comes the label. Then comes the demand for dissociation. Then follows guilt by association: Whom have you visited? Who has published you? Whom have you spoken with? Which posts have you liked? In the end the pressure is shifted from the person to his surroundings. The employer, the organiser, the publisher or the cooperation partner is informed that continued contact may damage their reputation.
The goal is not necessarily to convince the accused. The goal is to make him lonely.
That is why it is insufficient to reply: “I am not far-right.” That claim will rarely end the matter, because the accusation is not primarily a factual description. It is a social signal. It tells other people that association with the designated person may entail risk.
The stamp functions roughly like a warning triangle placed around a human being.
The accused often believes that the conflict is due to a misunderstanding. He presents his texts, explains his actual positions and hopes that reasonable people will see that the label is incorrect. But often no misunderstanding exists. The accusers have not read wrongly. They have understood that the person is moving outside their control, and therefore use a language that can reduce his room for manoeuvre.
There is a decisive difference.
One can correct an actual misunderstanding. One cannot explain oneself out of a strategy.
Environments that systematically use such labels often have no interest in a stable and precise definition of “far right”. A precise definition would limit the concept’s applicability. If the label could only be used about authoritarian, anti-democratic or violence-oriented movements, it could not be applied to conservatives, nationally oriented people, immigration critics, system critics, satirists or people who simply refuse to repeat the era’s correct phrases.
The concept’s vagueness is therefore not a weakness. It is its political strength.
A category without fixed boundaries can be constantly expanded. What yesterday was ordinary conservatism can today be called right-radical. What yesterday was social-democratic immigration policy can tomorrow be described as xenophobic. The person who defends biological facts, national sovereignty, cultural continuity or the right to prioritise one’s own citizens can be placed on a slippery slope towards extremism.
This is how the centre is moved without any formal decision being taken.
First the outer edge is redefined. Then ever more positions are made into neighbours of the outer edge. In the end anyone who refuses to move is left standing as extreme – not because he himself has moved, but because the measuring stick has been moved around him.
This is not open debate. It is cartographic power.
The most serious mistake the designated person can make is therefore to use all his energy on getting back inside the map. He writes assurances, moderates his words, removes connections and distances himself from people he has no responsibility for. But every adaptation confirms that the gatekeepers have the right to demand new ones.
There will be no final approval.
For people who make their living from discovering extremism will never reach the conclusion that society is now sufficiently cleansed. If the task, the funding, the status or the self-image is linked to the struggle against an ever-growing danger, the danger must also be constantly rediscovered.
Otherwise the mission disappears.
This does not mean that all anti-racists, cultural workers or researchers are part of a centrally directed conspiracy. Such an explanation is unnecessary. Institutional interests, social conformity and ideological reward systems can create coordinated behaviour without a command centre. People quickly learn which opinions grant recognition, which accusations open doors, and which persons it is risky to defend.
The system can function even if no single person controls the whole.
Therefore the answer must be more comprehensive than individual indignation. The individual cannot alone bear the cost of challenging the entire exclusion apparatus. If organisers withdraw at the first protest, employers sacrifice employees to avoid bad publicity and colleagues remain silent because they fear being hit themselves, the method will continue to work.
A different kind of solidarity is needed.
Organisers must understand that a boycott demand is not only about the artist in question, but about who shall decide the programme. Employers must realise that they do not protect the enterprise by giving in to activists, but teach the activists that pressure works. Cultural personalities must stop believing that silence will save them. The person who never defends others when they are labelled has no reason to expect defence when it is his turn.
And above all, alternative public spheres must be built.
Havel called them parallel structures: spaces where people can speak, work, publish, organise themselves and create culture without asking the established apparatus for permission. Not as a flight from society, but as a reconstruction of civil society’s independence.
For the person who controls the stages, the publishers, the organisations, the money flows and the appointments does not need to win the discussion. He can simply make the discussion economically impossible for the opponent.
Therefore independent newspapers, publishers, stages, professional networks, support schemes and meeting places are not a luxury. They are democratic infrastructure. A society with only one legitimate cultural circle is not pluralistic, no matter how often it professes diversity.
Diversity must also include opinions that power dislikes.
The correct response to the stamp is consequently not only: “It is incorrect.” It should be: “Show what I have specifically said, and argue against it.” Do not let a diffuse category replace evidence. Do not let guilt by association replace individual assessment. Do not let political activists act as certification bodies for who are decent people.
And most important: Do not seek moral acquittal from those who have built their influence on the right to accuse you.
Freedom of expression rarely disappears in one dramatic moment. It retreats every time a person refrains from saying something true in order to retain access to the room. It is weakened every time an organiser cancels to avoid trouble, and every time a colleague sees the injustice but chooses safety.
In the end all formal rights still stand written in the law, while ever fewer dare to use them.
Then censorship has become internalised. The gatekeeper no longer sits only in the editorial office, the organisation or the cultural institution. He sits in the person’s own head and edits the sentence before it is uttered.
It is this gatekeeper who must first be deposed.
Not by becoming more extreme. Not by defending actual extremists. But by refusing to let political opponents define truthful speech as moral deviation. By standing firm that decency does not entail obedience, and that respectability cannot mean submission.
The person who always asks power what may be said has already stopped speaking freely.
Freedom begins only when one stops asking for permission.