When Nyhetsmorgen sets out to commemorate 9/11, it invites Øyvind Strømmen. He says the same thing he did 15 years ago after 22 July. It is now 25 years since 9/11, and old stories about the far right become new again. NRK has failed to renew itself at the level of ideas. Everything is about the fight against the far right. It has become the left’s raison d’être. Its justification for existence. That is how it is throughout the West. But you cannot build a political programme on negatives. The Republicans have understood that. That is why they win.

To conceal the negative, history is invoked, and then only the Third Reich will do. But even that no longer works. Trump is such a dominant, consequential politician that he has blown the comparison with Hitler out of the water.

But in little de-Christianised Norway, people suck on history and believe in their own purity and infallibility.

Helplessness has become the common denominator of Nyhetsmorgen. In Politisk kvarter, the far right was the topic, and Bjørn Myklebust had with him Conservative Party deputy leader Ola Svenneby and Socialist Left Party leader Kirsti Bergstø. Svenneby is his own worst enemy. He is intelligent and knowledgeable, and he first presents descriptions of the situation that make it understandable why Germans vote for AfD, but then denies them legitimacy. His lament is directed at the established parties, which are unable to come up with anything other than the policies pursued that have created today’s frustration. But no such right of reservation exists in politics. You cannot be a little pregnant.

To understand this mechanism in crystallised form, one should listen to UnHerd’s interview with one of its stars, the German commentator Wolfgang Munchau. Munchau belongs to the talented class who can leave an established media outlet and strike out on their own. Some of them are gathered at UnHerd, which is not pro-Trump, but is nevertheless worth listening to for a European. This is some of the best we have to offer.

Munchau is utterly unsparing: The result in Saxony-Anhalt is a catastrophe for the established parties. The CDU has been halved, and AfD has reached a level – 44 per cent – that is simply no longer seen. And that is only the beginning. AfD has also begun its conquest of western Germany. Unless the centre-right manages to put together a sensible economic policy, its advance will continue. Alice Weidel will become Chancellor.

But there is a logical flaw in the argument: He believes that AfD lacks precisely an economic policy. He also condemns immigration policy and manages to say that without immigrants Germany will grind to a halt.

Politics is not a buffet. If you do not mention the factors driving voters into the arms of AfD – crime, abuse of the welfare state and Islamisation both from above and below – you are displaying a fear of touching the subject.

We have reached a point where scare propaganda is increasingly bouncing off voters. They are on the move.

The media have become a soup kitchen whose purpose is to try to slow the voters down, make them forget that they are in a race; they want to capture their attention, make them forget.

For that, Støre pays NRK 8 billion, and the three media houses are integrated into – and are part of – power, rather than its critics, so that the democratic circulation of blood comes to a halt.

Voters have developed antibodies against this dumbing-down. It is as old as Aristotle. The elite refuses to acknowledge the criticism because doing so would mean acknowledging that there is something wrong with them. They have passed the point at which they are capable of self-criticism.

This is where Munchau is good. Unless Europe’s elite changes course, in 2027 we will see Marine Le Pen governing France, Farage governing the United Kingdom, Meloni governing Italy and Weidel governing Germany. It is a scenario that ought to scare the living daylights out of the elite, but instead of changing course, they choose to frighten the voters. The media have lost their grasp of elementary psychology.

The elite journalists with perfect-pitch Oxford English and good looks can tell the difference between a donkey and a thoroughbred.

We are served a reheated Tove Bjørgaas, who says that 9/11 was the beginning of the conspiracy war that led to Trump. Quite ingenious. Whom should the Americans have listened to? Neither Bjørgaas nor Strømmen says anything about that. Obviously not Bush II, nor Obama, who continued the war. But perhaps Mamdani and El-Sayed and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Bjørgaas has mentioned several times that these are the left’s Tea Party. That says a great deal about where NRK has ended up, but they serve it up in disguise through attacks on the far right.

Viewers must not understand too soon that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is the future. But Conservative Party Mayor Anne Lindboe has understood it – and is enthusiastic.

We are going to get Mother Goodheart’s cheerful version 2.0, and King Haakon will surpass the speech in the Palace Park to demonstrate our goodness.

That is why the contrasts must be maintained.

It is repeated again and again by the studio and Strømmen that the far right grows on catastrophes and images of enemies. That the far right refuses to deal with facts. It appears that presenters Marte Kaasa Arntzen and Linn Wiik believe their own narrative that there is some salvation beyond the walls of Marienlyst.

Believe in us or perish!

It is as Bob Dylan sings: ‘And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden.’

The vitality of Western culture depends on the ability to engage in self-criticism. To be able to look both outwards and inwards. The United States is rediscovering its core values under Trump, and the foundation is growing stronger and stronger. Some of the best of the ’68 movement can be found in MAGA: self-realisation and protest. But not at the expense of others.

Europeans do not understand what is happening. They live outside time. They place greater trust in what the reflections on the wall tell them.

But increasing numbers of voters have lost faith and are choosing media outlets such as Document. That triggers panic in the ivory tower.