Passing laws that conflict with the Constitution—or seeing laws routinely sidelined by public administration—has become commonplace in Norway. One example of the latter is the systematic failure to enforce the provisions of the Planning and Building Act that guarantee direct democratic coparticipation.
Citizens are rendered nearly powerless in the face of this, partly because Norwegian courts may not fully understand their own constitutional mandate, and public administration fails to grasp that constitutional rights in this country are effectively “on demand”—as seen in the Bølgen case.
Over many years, I have observed that politicians and public administration increasingly assume what I see as an outsized role in our lives and in the media. It’s as if this political industry—under the guise of supposed fairness—is systematically working to patch the holes in its control system. That includes taxation, which is referred to as redistribution, even though the money is no longer passed on in any Robin Hood-like fashion, but rather feeds an insatiable administrative appetite.
So much money and power now rests with politicians and the public administration that it has become natural for the media to focus almost exclusively on this system. We have political journalists who roam the corridors of Parliament and government buildings every day. Even when there really isn’t “a story,” content still needs to be produced. This leads to entirely separate criteria for what counts as news—such as grandiose promises of future action (like 130,000 new homes) receiving broad coverage—while the more grounded approach typically found in the business world is: “We don’t report on what might happen, only on what actually does.”
If someone told you that the media in Nigeria (as a hypothetical example) received large sums in state subsidies—would you then trust their independence? Hardly.
But we all know that the media in Norway receives substantial state subsidies. These subsidies don’t go to new outlets aiming to challenge the old institutions—no, they serve as permanent operating grants, often to media houses that show zero tolerance for underfunded newcomers and expend significant energy discrediting them. Yet we continue to trust these outlets—they do, after all, adhere to ethical codes like the “Be Careful” and Editor’s Guidelines.
Still, if you take a step back and view Norway from a distance, the people of Nigeria, for instance, would likely not place such trust in a media landscape heavily funded by the state—any more than citizens of other nations would believe the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee is politically independent, given that it’s stacked with former politicians. Once a politician, always a politician.
As a consequence of this situation, politicians open their mouths every day to attentive and eager journalists ready to write. The proposed Civil Protection Act encountered far too few critical editorial voices—and far too late in the process. At Oagal, we see a societal grouping of politicians and journalists that is extremely dominant and nearly impossible to engage in genuine dialogue. Worse still, things are set to deteriorate further as the new Norwegian Election Act eliminates the option for voters to choose individual candidates, transferring the power to determine the composition of Parliament to roughly 2,580 people.
The extremely dangerous constellation we’re now witnessing fuels a powerful polarization that remains hidden to many. We keep hearing about left-wing and right-wing extremism—from politicians and the media—while the reality is an anti-democratic extremism driven by those very actors themselves. The solution, therefore, is not to fight alleged extremism on the right or the left, but to compensate with more democracy.
Many national leaders have learned to identify and invoke an external enemy whenever they face domestic unrest.
Here in Norway, there is concern over the state of democracy in the U.S.—a country that, constitutionally, has far stronger democratic safeguards than Norway. While critical scrutiny of what is happening here at home is virtually absent, the U.S. president receives endless column inches simply for posting an unpleasant message on X, a platform run by one of his own associates.
Politicians also see solutions in strengthening their own political-industry sphere through supranational fusion with the EU. While cooperation with other nations is entirely possible, the idea of union keeps reappearing on the agenda—even though, here in Norway, we have voted in favor of national sovereignty in three of the (only) six referendums held since 1905.
Ahead of the second vote on the Civil Protection Act, the people revolted—on social media. By then, many had already tried in vain to reach out to Norwegian media to alert them to the blunder. From journalists at NRK, I’ve learned that many disliked the task of sitting and receiving tips from the public. A few years ago, the state broadcaster likely responded by directing all tips to a single, or very limited number of, email addresses. It goes without saying that this results in an overwhelming volume of tips funneled to one point—rarely followed up—creating a barrier between the country’s largest media outlet and the public, at the public’s own expense.
In a number of other media outlets, they likely didn’t even bother investing energy in the case—which involved moving constitutionally enshrined arrangements from Parliament to the administration/government—because they were either ideologically aligned with the governing party, funded by it, or blindly shared the same ideology as part of the political industry.
The powerful gain even more influence in this system—while the small are left with less. Ordinary people are very small, and it’s far more difficult now than it was 30 years ago to get through directly to a member of Parliament by phone or email. (They use spam filters that flag all messages from unknown external senders with a yellow warning tag.) The backbone of Norwegian business is made up of small and medium-sized enterprises, yet support schemes from agencies like Innovation Norway and Enova have been criticized for being so bureaucratic—or so tailored to large corporations—that they work poorly for the businesses that actually need them.
The giant trade union LO does many good things, but what is not good is the blindness in its negotiations on behalf of public sector employees and workers in large corporations—resulting in generous benefits that will never be extended to small businesses or ordinary people. There are also many other large organizations (NGOs) that could have raised their voices on behalf of citizens and the backbone of Norwegian business—including Virke and NHO with their many sub-associations. But these must tread carefully, as they fear the increasingly absolute power of politicians and the close alliance between LO and the socialist side, which reduces the tripartite model of cooperation to a two-party system. Even ordinary people like myself must be cautious when writing about such organizations—for fear that it might affect funding applications or personal relationships.
A great number of volunteer-based, non-political organizations have become so infiltrated by politicians in their boards and leadership that they now function as political instruments. Speaking out against this would mean risking the loss of support from the political industry—even though it is the people themselves, the very ones the political industry claims to serve, who actually want that support to be given.
If you’ve followed social media in recent years—and still do today—you’ll notice a growing wave of anger among individuals, groups, and organizations. I myself have for many years operated the “Ombudsman for Coparticipation” (self-appointed), yes—it all began with the Skøyen scandal). We also have the Architecture Uprising, the Waste Ombudsman, Direct Democracy Norway, the new Generasjonspartiet, and parties like the Liberalistene—whom Parliament, through the Election Act, has effectively prevented from remaining registered parties and from competing for political power and media visibility on equal terms.
We also have individuals who express many valuable and critical viewpoints, yet who occasionally reveal ways of thinking that are so unwelcome in Norway’s supposedly free public discourse that they become persona non grata—or are outright canceled. Merely describing their sound ideas can quickly lead to accusations from the media, politicians, or the amorphous entity Faktisk.no, claiming that you endorse the entirety of these individuals’ beliefs. I’ve personally seen people who have supported new media outlets financially—without having any more editorial influence than investors in legacy media typically have—suffer reputational damage for years afterward. The harm comes as established media repeatedly dredge up these connections, fully aware that these individuals had no direct control over editorial content. The motivation is clear: to inflict damage while protecting their own power.
As a result of the lack of support for the breadth of their viewpoints, some of these canceled individuals—living in what is supposed to be a democracy—reside at undisclosed addresses in Norway.
On March 31, 2024, at 12:00 noon, the deadline passed for parties to submit their candidate lists for the 2025 parliamentary election. These lists from the professional political parties are never rejected—at most, individual candidates may be removed. But under the new Election Act, there is no longer any possibility for voters to delete names, add extra support to individual candidates, or write in alternatives. This means that roughly one-third of the parliamentary election has already been decided. What were once considered “safe seats” are now undeniably safe. The individuals occupying these seats are already well known—and they are not going to bring about any real change. As a result, the troubling trend of growing public anger is only likely to continue.
Once again, we’ll be told it’s left-wing extremism or right-wing extremism—when in reality, it is politician-driven extremism that is gradually grinding down popular sovereignty in favor of a small circle of politicians and parties, and an ever-expanding public administration.
The proposed Civil Protection Act—with a name as cleverly misleading as “natural concrete”—didn’t pass. But the next version will. And Oagal predicts it will contain plenty that is extremely hard to swallow for those of us who are expected to go to war as servants of the political industry. We will continue to see proposal after proposal pushed through by a representative system cloaked in the language of democracy—while real democracy, the kind Oagal writes about, remains content for a niche audience at best.
Christian Sømme er Oagals redaktør og demokratiaktivist. Overalt i Norge og internasjonalt møter han mennesker som ikke kan assosiere seg med og føler maktesløshet overfor beslutningene til politikere, offentlig administrasjon og domstoler. Han har etablert Oagal som en uavhengig mediekanal for å dekke disse problemstillingene, oppsummert som «reelt demokrati». Sømme har vært tillitsmann, by- og stedsutviklingsaktivist i en mannsalder, og demokratiaktivist som Medvirkningsombudet (selvutnevnt) fra 2018 og med Oagal fra 2024. (Foto: Thomas Eckhoff)
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