Aktuell artikler, videoer og arrangementer

Styremedlem Peter Eisensteins appell på LOs fanemarkering 22.07.2024

We are here today to honour the cherished memory of the victims and pay tribute to the survivors of the unspeakable terrorist attack that took place on Utøya island and the government square 13 years ago today. 

These young men and women, many under the age of 18, that is, really, children and youth, were targeted for no other reason than the principles and values they stood for: tolerance, solidarity, and equality. They stood not only against far right extremism and racism, but they offered another vision, albeit a vision that was just taking shape as their lives were cut short or irreversibly altered.

As brutal, tragic and unforgivable as this terrorist attack was, it was only unique in terms of the country in which it occurred, but sadly not in its choice of victims. The main target of racism, the main victim of white supremacists, has always been children and youth.

And it is the ideology of white supremacy that has shaped the modern world through colonialism. 
What is colonialism if not the ideology of white supremacy, as captured so well in the phrase the white man’s burden. 
A phrase that was coined and meant to be spoken without irony.

Imperial rule was barbaric enough. In these areas, such as India and many African tribal nations, European colonisers enslaved the local inhabitants and stole the resources. 

Settler colonialism, however, in which the European colonisers stole the land itself, settler colonialism always brought with it genocide. 
Always. 

Children and youth were the first targets of these white supremacists. From the Indian wars of the American continent to the half-caste act of Australia, colonisers always knew to target children and youth.

Many of these white supremacist crimes were long hidden from the societies and cultures which violently replaced the indigenous peoples. Growing up in the US in the 1960s, neither I nor my friends ever heard of the Native American genocide. And since I was raised in a zionist household, I never heard of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

But the crimes of white supremacists, the crimes of colonisers, can no longer be so easily hidden.

The most recent, and hopefully final, European settler colonial project is zionist Israel. This is no longer controversial, as the international court of justice declared just a few days ago that Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land has mutated into annexation. 

As many of you certainly know, you do not have to be jewish to be a zionist, you just have to be a racist. 

What some of you might not know, is that zionism itself is actually a European restorationist christian idea from the early 19^th century. It was taken up by the secular Jew Theodor Herzl and then given the European colonial imprimatur by Lord Balfour in the scandalous Balfour declaration of 1917.

It is important to note that there was only one jewish Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons in 1917. His name was Edwin Montagu and when the Balfour declaration came to a vote, Montagu voted against it and explicitly referred to the Balfour declaration as antisemitic. 

Anyone can be forgiven for not knowing of the zionist crimes of the 40s and 50s. But the barbaric occupation of Palestine since 1967, and now the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people is taking place everyday on our front pages and at the top of our news programs. 

Nine months of a genocide. 
And our support of this genocide is more than just our collective silence.
Our support of this genocide is tangible and profitable. 
And no one can claim ignorance.

And just like the settler colonial projects of the past, and the barbaric act of July 22, 2011, zionist Israel, today, targets children and youth. 
Nearly half of Gaza’s population are children.

Why do white supremacists target children and youth? 
Because they are the future. 
And the whole purpose of genocide is to erase the future.

This is why the July 22 attack was so despicable. It was specifically designed to not just be a crime of the moment. The impact of July 22 is more present today than ever before because those young men and women represented the best of Norway’s future. And thirteen years on, the future, which should have been today, has been erased. 

Instead, the future we have received, the ever-present “now” in which we live, is one of a jingoistic, indeed a white supremacist foreign policy and an increased polarisation at home. 

As much as we would like to think of Norway as a country of peace, in reality Norway profits from war, profits from genocide and has relinquished its own sovereignty to a foreign power which now controls a significant part of Norwegian soil. This is a reality to which the heinous white supremacist crime of July 22, 2011 was but a harbinger.   

Because those children and youth rejected racism and white supremacy, because those young men and women believed so strongly in the goodness of the human spirit, they were the enemy to white supremacist ideology and that is why each one of them remains a hero to humanity. 

While the crime was monstrous and the loss devastating, we do not have the luxury of despair. The reality we face today requires each one of us to find the courage to create the future that our lost youth envisioned for us. 

We must not give up the fight. 
We must not fail them. 
And as a society, we must not fail ourselves.