Øivind Østberg filed the following review of Oyvind Strømmen’s book, ‘The Dark Net’  at Document.no, published on 30.12.2011. Østberg’s review exposes the shallowness and overt bias of the author’s book, which entirely excludes the circumstances in which the anti-Islamization movement was born. It’s as if the opposing of Islam took place within a bubble, with no other outside influences of Islam itself. That should tell you pretty much all you need to know about Oyvind Strømmen’s book, he’s not interested in historical accuracy, but in timely (and very slimy, greedy) opportunism.

In short, Oyvind Strømmen is nothing more than a gadfly Norwegian douchewriter who has lots in common with other douchewriters of the totalitarian stripe (he defends intolerant tyrannical ideologies). So party hearty douchey Strømmen, your incredibly stupid gig has been laid bare for the English speaking world to see, and to mock with gusto. KGS

Translated by: Cecilie

UPDATE: A little bird tells me that the Norwegian police have:

“after months of extensive investigation, finally concluded that Breivik’s so-called terror network probably exists inside his head, and only there. The best comment about Breivik was made by a psychiatrist who stated quite early that his extreme narcissism would have prevented him from cooperating wih pretty much anybody.”

That goes hand in hand with forensic psychiatrist,Dr.Michael Welner’s professional opinion back in the immediate days after Brievik’s hideous massacre. So I think that Oyvind Strømmen’s invented terror network proves ABB’s grandoise delusions.

In the heart of darkness. About Strømmen’s writings.

Document.No.: When ’The Dark Net’ was published in November, reviewers were lining up to applaud it and the doors of the studios were wide open. It’s not often that an unknown documentary journalist has been able to make a name for himself so fast. In this book he gives the commentators exactly what they needed: A platform to explain the terror acts of July 22 as a logical and expected consequence of the tireless activities of a larger political scene. From this book Raymond Johansen of the Labour Party plucked the catchy one-liner he has been using so assiduously in the last few months: Breivik was a lone wolf, but he came from a pack.

Strømmen admits that it’s possible that someone is to blame for not having taken real problems (presumably with immigration and Islam) seriously, leaving it all to “the radical right and right-wing extremists”(page 122). A whole sentence is dedicated to this. In the rest of the book there is hardly a reflection over such problems existing; that there are indeed underlying societal tendencies and realities giving reason to worry. His description of the new right-wing forces also doesn’t connect them to any social groups or interests. As phenomena they remain completely unexplained other than as collective madness or evil. It is as if one should analyse the growth in extreme movements on the right and left in Europe between the two world wars without mentioning crises and unemployment.

Of course one must be careful criticising an author for writing what he chooses as his topic and not something completely different. An empirical mapping-out of certain political movements and environments has obvious worth in itself. But when there is no reference to the social realities behind the described political environments – except when he conveniently distances himself from “demographic panic” and “conspiracy theories – the book becomes not only a documentation of one aspect of reality but a contribution to an ideological production: The idea that mass immigration, demographical changes, increase in crime, the development of parallel societies, Islamic pressure on freedom of speech etc. aren’t real problems in themselves; the problem being evil people exploiting these phenomena for their own nefarious and hate-filled political project. A political project which is the direct reason to the bombing in Oslo and the shots at Utøya.

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