Per Fugelli is a physician, originally from Stavanger in western Norway, who has for years been a Professor of Social Medicine at the University of Oslo. He also enjoys a high media profile. Fritt Ord, Norway’s most important and well-funded free speech organization, decided to give the Freedom of Expression Prize for 2013, their highest distinction, to Fugelli “for having given a voice to cancer patients.” He has been open about his struggle against this horrible disease and made a positive contribution in that regard, but in many other cases he’s been more preoccupied with harassing, threatening or bullying others who dare to use their freedom of speech.
Another person who has previously won the same award is William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, who on the morning of 11 October 1993 was shot three times and nearly killed outside of his own home in Oslo. The percentage of Muslims in Norway at that point probably did not much exceed 1%. It was even less in Japan, where the translator of the same novel was murdered. Merely one percent or less of Islamic culture can thus be enough to get people killed for criticizing Islam. This should serve as a reminder of just how toxic Islam truly can be to any free society.
After it was announced in 2013 that he would receive this prestigious award for free speech, one newspaper asked Per Fugelli about who he would like to be stuck in an elevator with. He replied the politician Christian Tybring-Gjedde, so he could “beat him up.” A funny and tolerant guy, Professor Fugelli. Tybring-Gjedde is an MP and a notable member of the right-wing Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet). His party advocates lower taxes and is critical of certain aspects of mass immigration, although some of their voters feel that the party has gone soft over these issues after its current head Siv Jensen took over from long-time party leader Carl I. Hagen.
The left-wing activist Eivind Trædal published a major essay in the newspaper Dagbladet entitled “junk people” in which he singled out a number of named individuals for attacks, among them Tybring-Gjedde, the author Bruce Bawer, and me, for spreading “hate” against Islam and thereby creating a climate of hate which allegedly fostered Breivik.
Tybring-Gjedde had to take sick leave for a while in late 2011 due to repeated death threats against him. Members of the ruling Labour Party, including Eskil Pedersen, the leader of Labour’s youth league AUF, had accused individuals from the rival Progress Party of laying the groundwork for Anders Behring Breivik’s massacre by “misusing” freedom of speech to say negative things about mass immigration or Islamization.
Pedersen and a few others survived the Utøya massacre by escaping the island in a ferry, originally a military landing craft, which had room for many more people. This triggered critical remarks from some of the other survivors, among them Bjørn Ihler. Eskil Pedersen believed that the country was under attack and did not trust any member of the police after he had escaped. He has stated that he thought this was a coup d’état involving the police and the armed forces, and claims that other AUF members thought the same.
Breivik did in fact show up at Utøya wearing a fake police uniform. Nevertheless, it is somewhat odd for the leader of the country’s largest political youth organization to say openly that he thought it was a coup d’état by the police against a youth summer camp. What is most thought-provoking, though, is that the same Eskil Pedersen just a few months earlier had tried to use the police to shut up people he happened to disagree with.
In May 2011 he pressed criminal charges against a Member of Parliament, Christian Tybring-Gjedde from the rival Progress Party, for “racism.” The case was soon dismissed. Tybring-Gjedde had stated that in the Grorud Valley in Oslo, which has one of the densest concentrations of immigrants in the country, blond girls have to dye their hair dark to avoid harassment, children are threatened with violence if they have pig meat in their lunch box and native boys risk being physically assaulted by immigrants who think they don’t get enough time on the local football team. These are merely truthful statements. In fact, reality is often much worse than this.
The reaction of Eskil Pedersen and others of his ilk to hearing that the natives no longer feel safe in parts of their own country due to the immigration policies supported by the ruling elites is to try to silence political opponents who speak truthfully about this. This betrays a totalitarian impulse.
After Breivik, Per Fugelli was among those who were most aggressive in blaming the Progress Party and its leader Siv Jensen indirectly, if not directly, for Breivik’s massacre, since they spread totally unfounded “Islamophobia” by pointing out problems related to Islamic culture and Muslim immigration. He has more than once made questionable associations with Nazi Germany against those who criticize Multiculturalism.
In May 2013, on the day when he was about to formally receive his Freedom of Expression Prize, Fugelli stated that people who worry about such things as crime related to Gypsy gangs or certain types of organized crime need a sedative for their baseless “anxiety.” Professor Fugelli, a medical professional, recommended that politicians should take a Valium pill before they speak about issues related to immigration.
Obviously, once could assume that this was intended as some kind of joke on the good professor’s part. If it is, however, it’s not a terribly funny one, given that certain repressive regimes have considered those who oppose their ideology as “insane” individuals in desperate need of forced medical or psychiatric treatment. Just ask brave dissidents from the Soviet Union such as Vladimir Bukovsky.
It’s also not the first or only time that Mr. Fugelli has indicated, jokingly or otherwise, that individuals who disagree with his views should be treated medically for their alleged delusions, with or without their consent.
During the Multicultural craze of the 1990s, the Norwegian novelist Torgrim Eggen in an essay entitled “The psychotic racism” warned against the possibility of “race wars in the streets” as a result of mass immigration. This essay was available on the Internet as late as in 2007 and 2008 when I linked to it from The Brussels Journal, but it has since then conveniently gone missing. The solution to these problems was not to limit mass immigration but to limit criticism of it. According to Eggen, xenophobia and opposition to mass immigration should be viewed as a mental illness, and the solution to xenophobia “is that you should distribute medication to those who are seriously affected. I have discussed this with a professor of Social Medicine, Dr. Per Fugelli, and he liked the idea.” Fugelli had apparently suggested putting anti-psychotic drugs in the city’s drinking water.
This may sound too extreme to be meant seriously, but Fugelli has continued to chastise all those who are critical of mass immigration. Eggen warned that arguments about how ordinary people are concerned over mass immigration shouldn’t be accepted, because this could lead to Fascism: “One should be on one’s guard against people, especially politicians, who invoke xenophobia on behalf of others. And if certain people begin their reasoning with phrases such as ‘ordinary people feel that,’ one shouldn’t argue at all, one should hit [them].”
In May 2013 Fugelli was a participant on Dagsnytt Atten, one of the most important daily news magazines and debate forums on the state broadcaster NRK. In addition to radio, it is also broadcasted on TV. On May 13, 2013, when he had been specifically invited to talk about his free speech award, during a conversation with Anders Heger, an influential publisher in the publishing house Cappelen Damm, Fugelli indicated that those who want to deport foreign gypsies should themselves be arrested and thrown in jail.
The issue was not about killing or abusing anybody, but merely whether to send back newly-arrived foreign organized beggars who cause problems. Per Fugelli thus advocated that those who disagree with his views on how to deal with foreign beggars should be thrown in jail. He said this in plain words on the country’s largest media outlet when he was there specifically to talk about freedom of speech.
So the person who had recently won one of the country’s most prestigious free speech awards has publicly advocated that those who use their free speech in a manner which he disagrees with should be beaten up, medicated or thrown in jail.
In the autumn of 2011, the author Torgrim Eggen complained in the national newspaper VG that some people make rude or threatening comments about others, whose political views they happen not to share themselves. It’s nice that he is concerned about this issue, of course, but he forgot to say anything about whether or not we should hit people who point out the negative results of mass immigration.
In the spring of 2013, the journalists Kjell Erik Eilertsen and Ole Asbjørn Ness from the medium-sized business paper Finansavisen, owned by businessman Trygve Hegnar, interviewed young people of ethnic Norwegian background about how it’s really like for them to grow up in the Grorud Valley in inner-city Oslo. They told a tale of constant, daily humiliations and abuse, until many native families simply move away from the area.
The article met with a storm of reactions on two of the major dissident websites in Norway and was translated to English at the website Gates of Vienna, which the weekly newspaper Morgenbladet has charmingly defined as the “Gates of Hell.” Yet the story largely met with silence from bigger media outlets. The state broadcaster NRK was at the same time busy inventing a positive and charming Multicultural version of this area.
My initial thought when reading about this was the deafening silence of “nice” people like Per Fugelli, or Gutmenschen as the Germans call them. What is their reaction to this? Virtually nothing; they just turn their backs to these problems caused by their own policies and pretend they don’t exist. I am sure these abused young natives, who tell horrifying tales of being robbed, beaten up or called “white infidel whore” on a regular basis in what once was their country, would have been delighted to receive some backing from a self-appointed brave “humanitarian” such as Mr. Fugelli. Sadly, they received none.
Perhaps if they asked him, Professor Fugelli would explain to them that the assaults and abuse they experience are all imaginary and can be cured with some anti-psychotic drugs. And if that didn’t work, maybe he would smear them with “Nazi” accusations or threaten to beat them up. Per Fugelli represents the dark and hypocritical face of humanitarian Norway.