No Rest for the Weary

Quislings and the Roma

For longer than any living person can recall there have been Roma in Europe. They came westward before we had any idea what laid east of Jerusalem. And they have continued to live amongst Europeans for hundreds of years. Yet in Norway the Populist would like you to believe that these are eastern invaders. That they are taking everything you own while doing nothing to benefit the society they wish to destroy. 

These same socialist parties were around when Adolf Hitler took power to the south in Germany. They have been around before World War One and every since the unification of Germany. And not surprisingly these socialist ideologues have not changed their message in all these years. They still want to kill the Jews and Gypsies no matter how polite they are forced to sound in public today.

Norway is no exception. One fifth of Norwegians voted for the populist (socialist) Progress Party. The shift toward fascism has been going on in Norway for some time now. And their "tolerant" society is starting to show just how intolerant Norwegians have become.

And as with any shift toward the "right" the climate in Oslo has become far less hospitable for the Romani. Stories in Norwegian newspapers have stretched every supposed fact almost paper thin to try and link all Norwegian Roma to Romanian immigrants. The xenophobic attitude is only bolstered by the Progress Party leader Siv Jensen as she calls for all Norwegian Roma to be deported.

The facts however point to the issue that most Romani in Norway today have lived in Western Europe for generations. These are the same families that were persecuted by the Nazis and Quislings in Norway 70+ years ago. They are the same families who suffered forced sterilization by Norwegian law right up till the 1980s and some as late as the 1990s. Yet the Norwegian socialist point to a small minority amongst the minority and claim that all of the Roma are Eastern Europeans (thus new arrivals).

Now, just one year after claiming Norway would not change due to one right-wing gunman, the Roma are faced with the threat of expulsion. Many Roma who stand to be deported have never been East of the German-Polish border. They and their ancestors have called Norway home no matter how hard it has been to do so. Yet this is what "tolerance" is to them... the Progress Party.

Roma however are not alone. Norway's Islamaphobic right wing also wishes to expel any Muslims they can get their hands on to. This means that any "asylum seekers" in Oslo are under threat to be sent back to countries either currently hostile to them or in a state of civil war. Muslims in Norway who would not be sent back are constantly waiting for a French style "burka ban" in which they loose their freedom to observe their religion. (In France Muslim women caught wearing a headscarf of any type can be detained by police. Depending on the officer they could face a fine.)

All that is left now is for the world to wait and watch to see if Norway will revert back to its Quisling past. Nazism took barely two weeks to capture Oslo. This time around it may take longer.... but it is still pressing along as the radical right rears its ugly head once again.