The Asylum Ideology

Many thanks to the anonymous commenter who left a tip last night about this article published today in Document.no. A big thank-you also goes out to our Norwegian correspondent The Observer, who translated it on such short notice:

The Ideology Behind The Multicultural Society
by Knut Skjærgård

All of a sudden one discovers patterns that have previously been invisible, because the perceived problem and the words used are new and detached from previous ideologies. New words are used, and the underlying ideological currents behind them go unnoticed. One has a wish that everything will be new and that this time things will be different.

After World War Two the nations of the world decided that there would be no more war. The war had created international legal issues, large groups of people had been displaced from their homelands, and solving the refugee crisis was the most pressing task for the newly-founded United Nations. The brutal toll that the war had exacted on the civilian populations led to the creation of the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The International Convention on Refugees first saw light in 1951, and its purpose was to ensure equal treatment for all refugees. It also placed legal obligations on the host nations to properly consider each asylum application. Additionally, it required that the host nations refrain from repatriating refugees in those cases where there was a real risk of persecution.

Ideas such as international cooperation and globalization arose as a direct result of the International Declaration of Human Rights. The idea of a United States of Europe attracted support from a new generation of politicians and visionaries. The influence of the UN kept increasing, and so did the support for globalization. A big international treaty of co-operation eventually saw the light of day.

But in the 1960s and ‘70s, long after the refugee problems of World War Two had been resolved, something happened in the West. The labor migration from the East began. This immigration came as a surprise to the Western nations, although it wasn’t necessarily unwelcome. Manpower was needed. The old colonial powers welcomed huge numbers of citizens from their former colonies. But the scale of this immigration was relatively modest, and assimilation went fairly smoothly. No one had heard of Islamic extremism. Suicide bombings were an unknown phenomenon. It was something that the Japanese kamikaze pilots had engaged in during the war, and the stories of their exploits had spread fear throughout the West at the time.

There was an explosive increase in this immigration during the mid-’80s, and it presented unprecedented challenges for the Western host nations. Every asylum-seeker who arrived was able to tell of horrific atrocities committed against him. The UN convention on refugees was once again thrust into the media spotlight, but now it had to deal with a completely different category of individual, namely voluntary “refugees.” All of a sudden large numbers of asylum-seekers with no known identity started to show up, and, because their identities couldn’t be established, they couldn’t be repatriated. Approximately 85% of asylum seekers arriving from non-Western countries in Norway today have no identification papers.

On October 3, 1987, the People’s Movement Against Immigration was established, with Arne Myrdal as its founding leader. This eventually led to the first major conflicts over immigration policies. Arne Myrdal was also among the individuals arrested in January 1989 for plotting to blow up an asylum centre at Tromøy. For this he was sentenced to 1½ years in prison. Later on there were numerous other confrontations, including the so-called ‘battle of Fevik’.

But in the 1990s something happened with our political elite. After having had a fairly objective and sober view of asylum immigration, and after having a drawn a relatively strict line on immigration, policy abruptly took on ideological undertones. New, positively-charged words were suddenly introduced. The first person to use such words was then-Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who introduced the phrase “the colorful community.”

A number of new perspectives with political undertones began to appear in the national immigration debate. A new society was to be constructed, a society in which tensions between the different classes, ethnicities and religions were supposed to be abolished. It was claimed that this immigration was an expression of globalism, which everyone embraced, and that it was an expression of trade and the dismantling of social and economic barriers between countries and people. It was also claimed that it was a sign of international solidarity. And besides, the people in question (asylum-seekers) were often people that had escaped from wars and persecution. Those who opposed this new agenda were denounced and labelled fascists and racists. Most people were reluctant to oppose something so noble. One started to see the emergence of the utopian society.

And now, in my personal opinion, something ideologically very interesting has taken place: the immigration premises are monopolized by the socialists, the Left and the cultural elite. The conservatives are slowly dithering along. Although new words are used today, we can now see the dialectics from the former class struggle being subconsciously used in a novel way. Today the fight is not directed against capitalists and the ruling class, but against another “ruling class”, those Norwegians who refuse to give up their traditional Norwegian ethnic preference! In this new classless society preferences such as ethnicity, religion and culture are not allowed to create artificial barriers between Norwegians and their new “compatriots”! In the politically correct public discourse it’s not “allowed” to refer to ethnicity when categorizing individuals.

And now we can clearly see the characteristics of the new authoritarian ideology, the links to the former revolutionary movements. In order for the project to succeed it’s essential to create a new person. In order to achieve this new inclusive tolerant society, it is essential that Norwegians change; they must be open to this new multicultural society. That which might obstruct new understanding must be relativized. As a result attacks on “Norwegian” culture and identity become very important. It’s claimed that a distinctly defined Norwegian culture does not exist; everything is a result of outside influence. Another point is that it’s hard to find a defined Norwegian culture, built on Western European cultural ideas, when we know that the Cultural Revolution for the most part has been completed in the Nordic countries, inspired by Anglo-American secular culture and a dehumanization of big capitalism. If we don’t stop this internal deconstruction of our own culture it won’t be necessary for an outside culture to complete the dismantling of our social structures! The fear of our own culture, oikofobi, as Roger Scruton defines it, and the post-colonial guilt syndrome that is still present throughout the West, has to be replaced with traditional Judaeo-Christian heritage.

The asylum ideology has also got a religious dimension. The church can participate in international campaigns for solidarity and peace. The church’s role as a participant in the dialogue is given just as much importance as its role as a keeper of tradition. Through dialogue, a more moderate form of Islam can find its place in Norwegian society. In reality we’re talking about a destabilization of the Protestant Church’s history and religious foundation. And, in all honesty, this doesn’t seem to cause any problems; the Norwegian church was secularized a long time ago and new ideas are more than welcome! Last fall the leader of DNK [The Church of Norway] formulated a new trinity: asylum holiness, climate holiness and sacredness of marriage. What we are now seeing is the dismantling of the old society, and we’re moving down the road towards a new society that no one has ever seen before. The new asylum ideology now has an element with an spiritual and ethical dimension.

Another typical trait that characterizes totalitarian ideologies is the denial of reality. The fact that we now have an ideological, authoritarian asylum regime with religious overtones is evident when the advocates completely close their eyes to the enormous economic and social costs of this policy. When the King and the Prime Minister in their 2012 New Year speeches failed to mention anything about the massive challenges that Norwegian society is facing as a result of the mass influx of asylum seekers, it is incomprehensible, considering that most outside the nomenklatura read, see and hear about these problems every day. The unpleasant reality is covered up and is not talked about; thus the problems do not really exist other than as delusions among the common people. So far the authorities have managed to sweep clear signs of ethnic and religious conflicts under the rug in Norway, problems which in Western Europe, however, are about to destabilize nations such as France, England and Germany. The problems are serious, and they have the ability to transform Norway into a new society divided by class, characterized by religious and group identity. In the future individual security will not be determined by being a citizen of the Norwegian state, but by belonging to a strong ethnic or religious group.

The only thing these two heads of state mentioned in their respective speeches was the Utøya atrocity committed by an ethnic Norwegian. Some people probably wondered if these two were in fact talking about Norway. Their speeches show a strong display of ideological normative force, a strong consensus culture which is sufficiently based in itself. The king and the queen had even visited a Muslim family and found that everything was normal!

This removal from reality can only be explained by the fact that all authoritarian and totalitarian ideologies distort reality. All such ideologies share a deceptive (seductive) character, and by agreeing to achieve a stated goal, they tolerate endless violations of ordinary citizens, none of which presents any ethical problems for them. Those who do not agree are excluded and lose their careers.

After the collapse of communism in Europe, after members of the ’68 Generation abandoned their utopias about armed revolution, we all believed that the notion of the ideal society, the classless society, was history. What we are seeing now is that the era of the great social experiments is back again, but in a modern form, justified by arguments based on human rights and tolerance.

The socialists and the Left will never relinquish their ideas about designing the ideal society, far removed from their original roots, their traditions and their culture, and a lineage that goes back several thousand years. No one knows the cost of this; no one even knows if these projects are feasible. Just as in other failed social experiments, the end could be tragic.

The notions of a multicultural society can in many ways today be recognized in surviving traditions of thought that have strangely resurfaced in the West. Fortunately, people are waking up to dangers. I’m not saying that everybody with a positive attitude towards the multicultural society necessarily has a totalitarian disposition, but it is important to shed some light on the underlying ideological currents and name them. When the authoritarian aspects are more clearly defined, most liberal and conservative politicians will reject the multicultural experiment. For the time being, we are talking about a form of false consciousness that must be exposed, and it is then essential to do this among the ruling class.