The immediate reaction to the terror attack in Oslo on the part of the Norwegian government has been to say that they will react with “more democracy.” This apparently is to mean that a stronger distinction should be made between those who have “extreme views” and those who actually take to arms (Ap). The idea is that the current setup may have led to Breivik keeping his views to himself and fanatic groups on the internet, while the media has avoided printing such views.

For us who have been involved in civil disobedience actions and alike, this sounds promising, and every Norwegian leftist I have communicated with in the past week has been rather happy that the official response has been so different than that of the Bush-government after the terror-attacks on September 11th 2001.

It is the case that in the Norwegian radical left, enormous resources are used within each organization to make sure the organization does not leave some political line that falls within the acceptable. It is fairly easy to get involved in Norwegian politics, as long as one sticks to this line. Those who don’t stick to these can very soon find themselves socially isolated with just their computer and their own ideas. To me it never seemed healthy as the number of people who have been isolated socially or who have been isolated is enormous. Hardly any meeting goes by in which it is not discussed that “so and so is crazy” and consequently needs to be kept away from most means of communication and political intervention. Allowing for more divergent views internally can be a good thing, if this is actually carried through.

The New York Times and in Germany Der Spiegel have been the main proponent of giving more arms to the Norwegian police and roll back democratic rights, whereas this view has not been very prominent in the Norwegian media in the past week.

Yet today the “Police Security Service” (PST, Norwegian FBI) released a report titled ‘Estimate of security threat — Extremism in Norway after the terror Attack‘. In it, four extremist groups are listed: Right-wing extremist environment, anti-islamic environment and left-wing extremist environment and “extreme Islamists”. I wonder — why did we suddenly as leftists get listed there? Extreme Islamists is not a surprise, given that Norway goes to war in countries view a mainly Muslim population. The other two groups can be seen as being somewhat related to the incident, but how did left-wing extremist groups get the honor of being listed there?

The part about left-wing extremism is rather short:

Left-wing extremist environment

Traditionally the left-extremist environments in Norway have been concerned with fighting racism and right-wing extremism, the conflict in the Middle East, as well as questions concerning the climate and globalization. There has been little activity within this environment in recent years.

PST estimates that he threat-level coming from left-wing extremists in Norway has not changed significantly as a result of the terror actions on July 22nd.

Ok, so if we are no threat, why list us? it turns out that PST reaches the same conclusion also about right-wing extremists. About the anti-islamic groups, they seem to not conclude at all. They merely state that “in other European countries these groups mainly represent an issue of public nuisance” and that there are people with such views who communicate in social media. About “Extreme Islamists” they write:

The threat from extreme Islamists
Even though few people in Norway support extreme Islamism, the activity level in some extreme Islamists environments is high. People living in Norway are involved in different types of supportive activity, radicalization and operative activity outside of Norway. A growing number of younger radicalized Islamists and contact with international terror networks lead to a situation of an uncertain terror threat.
PST believes it is not very probable that extreme Islamists in Norway will do acts of terror as a direct response to the attacks on July 22nd.

Nice. So even though the only terror attack so far came from the anti-Islamists, PST does not see much of a threat in them, whereas they believe that Islamists continue to pose the main problem in Norway it seems. Even though we, the Left, were only briefly mentioned, as not really being a threat, the last paragraph of the report says:

The acts of terror do not lead to an increase in the threat from known right-wing extremist and left-wing extremist groups in Norway. At the same time do copy-cats represent a possible and undefined threat. such acts can be planned and be enacted individual actors without warning and without the existence of operative links to other individuals.

So we leftists are not really all that active and not a threat in that sense, but we are a threat in that we make go out and copy-cat that maniac???! I hope the police wrote this report by themselves. If they receive more funding to keep watching left-wing extremists it sure doesn’t sound like “more democracy” to me.