Norge

[marshtide]

O Norway. :( I am thinking of you guys. Much love.

By the way, for those of you I've been wailing to about the entire series of horrible assumptions about the culprit of the crimes, Swedish media is finally getting its act together and moving away from treating this as some kind of lunatic who came from nowhere and examining context. We're also admitting that this was explicitly political. (It is admittedly pretty impossible to deny at this stage.)


For example:

In SvD Tötte Löfström writes,

Risken är nämligen stor att vi i våra huvuden avfärdar det hela som en galen människas verk och därmed möjliggör fler, liknande dåd i framtiden.

Tr:

There is a great risk of writing the whole thing off as the work of a madman in our minds and so making possible more crimes of the same kind in the future.

In Expressen Ann-Charlotte Marteus writes,

Kent Ekeroth är inte heller ensam om att överge politiskt och kollektivistiskt språkbruk och övergå till individuellt och psykologiskt, när han får veta att gärningsmannen är norrman. "Galning", "vansinnesdåd", "ensamvarg" och "tragedi" var mycket vanligare ord i går, än "terrorist", "terrordåd" och "extremism".
Om Anders Behring Breivik visar sig vara skyldig, och utan medhjälpare, kommer det bli frestande att börja kalla honom ensamvarg, en särling, och ge honom en psykiatrisk diagnos. Han kan bli en sorts norsk motsvarighet till den misstänkte svenske seriemördaren Peter Mangs.
Den strategin har sina för­delar. Genom att använda medikalisering kan samhället slå sig till ro med slutsatsen att "ensamvargen" är en sjuk ö i en frisk kultur, inte ett symptom på problematiska drag i själva kulturen.

tr:

Kent Ekeroth* isn't alone in abandoning political and collective language and going over to individual and psychological when he realises that the culprit is Norwegian. "Madman," "act of lunacy," "lone wolf" and "tragedy" were much more common words yesterday than "terrorist" "act of terrorism" and "extremism."
If Anders Behring Breivik turns out to be guilty and without helpers it will be tempting to call him a lone wolf, a nutter, and give him a psychiatric diagnosis. He can become a kind of Norwegian equivalent to the suspected Swedish serial killer Peter Mangs.
This strategy has its advantages. Through use of medicalisation society can comfort itself with the conclusion that "the lone wolf" is a sick island in a healthy society, not a symptom of a problematic movement in the culture itself.

Uh-huh.

* Kent Ekeroth is a member of Sverigedemokraterna who spent Friday night talking with particular glee on twitter about who he thought was behind the whole thing and sending HAHAHA TALK YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS ONE to muslims. Class act, truly.

SVT has also broadcast some good interviews from Norwegian TV, but since it was on TV I can't quote you.

In DN someone writes that we win by talking and looking honestly at what's going on in our society and by being politically active. We don't win by saying it was pure madness with no explanation and allowing ourselves to dismiss it.



But I'm done for today. I have a horrible cold. I've mostly been sleeping. Time to go find some easy reading.

Comments

[meloukhia]

It is heartening to hear that the media is shifting their framing! This is some really sharp commentary, here.

[marshtide]

Someone at Expressen had a good thinking day, for serious. The last time I saw a copy of expressen it was handing out advice on how to avoid getting caught cheating on your partner via facebook (I DON'T KNOW, MAYBE DON'T CHEAT ON YOUR PARTNER VIA FACEBOOK?) so I am... pleasantly surprised.

[meloukhia]

It's almost like the media needed a day to process and get its ya-yas out before it could settle down and commit to some serious, productive commentary.

[shadowings]

wow, that's really cool! serious props to the Swedish media for examining context. in the US the coverage is so... i don't know, subtly biased in a distinctly US way. the narrative there is that the attacks were first thought to be from a terrorist, then determined to be an extremist instead, which implicitly defines terrorism as solely the work of muslim extremists. -_- making context in a totally different way.

[eggcrack]

Go Swedish press! I'm sure people will keep on trying to debate it into something else, but I'm glad right now they call it exactly what it is: right-wing white-guy terrorism. Finnish press is still pretending that it's more about guns and Internet, but I hope the Swedish and Norwegian examples will turn that fucked up tide.