The leader of Norway’s largest right-wing party was on a roll as the weekend began, blasting the Labour government and basking in the glow of favourable public opinion polls. By Sunday, however, Progress Party leader Sylvi Listhaug was back on the defense, after an adviser on the party’s payroll suggested Norwegian-Pakistanis shouldn’t have children.
“I think many were disappointed that one of our members and colleagues had said something like that,” Listhaug told newspaper Aftenposten at the end of the party’s annual national meeting.
Listhaug readily acknowledges that the Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet, FrP) promotes strict immigration policies, limits on refugee arrivals from outside Europe and integration demands. “There is no room, though, for this type of racist expression,” Listhaug claimed.
It hit the news Saturday evening after Hårek Hansen, an adviser for FrP’s young new Member of Parliament Simen Velle, had spent time in a bar in Oslo on Thursday with a party colleague and reporters from national broadcaster TV2. Hansen said “successul white people” should have more children in Norway, while immigrants from Pakistan, for example, should “preferably not” have more children because they are “measurably minusvarianter (below average).” TV2‘s tape recorders were rolling and the damage was done.
Listhaug didn’t directly address the offensive statement at first, when media queries were initially directed to the party’s secretary general instead. By Sunday she was under so much pressure that she announced from the podium at the weekend meeting that she “strongly distanced” herself from such a statement.
“It violates both the Progress Party’s policies and our views on humanity,” Listhaug said. She stressed that the party’s own written program stresses that it denounces any form of discrimination based on gender, religion or ethnicity. Listhaug went on to say that Hansen’s violation would be “handled as a personnel matter.”
Hansen himself has apologized for what he calls “humour and childish provocation.” He was fully aware he was talking with two reporters from TV2, though, and a communications adviser from FrP. It reportedly was only after Hansen began making provocative statements that the reporters’ recording device was activated. Party officials have so far refrained from questioning whether the recording was within ethical guidelines, perhaps because that could make it look like they were defending what Hansen said.
Listhaug herself, meanwhile, had already been on the attack against both Labour Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and his minority Labour Party government. Labour won last autumn’s election when it emerged as Norway’s largest party with 28.2 percent of the vote, but Støre remains dependent on Norway’s other left-center parties and the Greens to get a majority in Parliament.
Until a few weeks ago, Støre kept his coalition together until the Center Party (his former government partner) sided with the conservative parties in cutting fuel taxes. While that caused lots of noise among all nine political parties in Parliament, Støre has since restored as much harmony as can be found among the five parties making up his “red-green” majority.
Listhaug’s Progress Party, meanwhile, has recently emerged in public opinion polls as Norway’s largest party, with as much as 29 percent of the vote. That clearly inspired her to bash Labour and its partners during the weekend, prompting some to accuse her of borrowing “Trump techniques” full of mocking and meanness.
Listhaug claimed, for example, that “it’s been a long, long time since Labour fought for the workers,” and those she calls vanlige mennesker (ordinary folks, a phrase often used by the Center Party as well). “Today’s Labour Party is no longer the workers’ party, it’s the state’s party,” Listhaug declared from the podium. She went on to claim that Støre and his minister “thrive much better in Davos” and with international players “than with an electrician from Sunnmøre, a day care center worker or a truck driver from Toten.” She even accused Labour of having spin-doctors and administrators running the government.
It was no coincidence that FrP launched its annual national meeting on the May 1st Labour Day holiday as well, when many others were out marching in the streets, celebrating recent strike settlements and cheering on those currently out on strike. Listhaug spoke little about all the international unrest, only briefly mentioning the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East that have diverted so much more government attention to international issues. Støre is perhaps best known as an expert in diplomacy.
“It’s been remarkable,” Støre himself told state broadcaster NRK last week. “She (Listhaug) was pleasant and agreeable” just before both of them headed into a debate program, only to lash out at Støre once they were live on nationwide TV. Norwegian politicians have long been praised for their civility and art of compromise, but “Sylvi Listhaug has clearly been inspired by Donald Trump” and his followers in the USA, wrote commentator Bjørgulv Braanen in newspaper Klassekampen this week.
Braanen accused Listhaug of “sailing under a false flag,” also by claiming to represent workers and even calling Støre a “liar” at times. Her party has long advocated tax cuts, especially on net worth, and now her rhetoric “creates a climate where you don’t accept differences and disagreement as anything other than evil or fraud. The rational conversation is crushed, and only a bitter lack of compromise remains.”
Lars Nehru Sand, political commentator for NRK, noted that it’s ultimately up to voters whether they’ll continue to boost Listhaug and FrP despite her harsh new style and occasional signs of underlying racism in the party’s opposition to immigration. Støre’s minority government remains fragile. The next election, though, is more than three years away.
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
