Are you a "communist"?

I take as my starting point today's Russian enemy picture and the military exercise Trident Juncture (pages 4-5 in the newspaper), which has a deep mythological background – something you can find and understand if you read the book. For the word "trident" refers to Neptune's three-headed spear used to trigger tidal waves and storms, and "juncture" means "the decisive moment". So what disaster is Trident Juncture now preparing for – with a NATO led by Jensemann and others' war incitement as well as the media's exaggerated enemy image of Russia and the Communists?

One would think that Øhra is really inviting trouble, where in what I would call a masterpiece, he reveals our Norwegian NATO-oriented self-image, our warrior culture, anti-communism and the Norwegian post-war settlement. Instead, he shows us the path of solidarity and charity. The material is overwhelming: The history of power is full of revealing historical details and events, plastered with 665 footnotes and an associated literature list of over 200 books – a work that took him 15 years. Øhra sweeps through a long history of 7000 – from the peaceful and cultural Mio people with their rice terraces, positively via Egypt and Mesopotamia – and through the bloodthirst of warrior cultures, which fill streets and landscapes with corpses and beheaded people. He ends the book with time around the Holocaust and post-war anti-communism.

Yes, it is time that we, with the Western culture of war, realize that we are no longer the solution, but rather that it is we who are the problem, as Johan Galtung writes in the preface to the book.

A vengeful God

A little more about the background: Øhras highlights the love of Semitic culture, Christian Hellenism, Judaism and the New Testament. We read about the destruction of the Persians and the devilish devices of Catholicism. After all, Augustine introduced fall, and dismissed the desire as sinful to place the fertility culture in "a grip for Cain to take Jesus' place in the Christian doctrine." They poisoned Eros, reduced sexual drive with shame, guilt and other mental power struggles.

Øhra quotes Susan Sontags Styles of Radical Will (1967), in which Christianity was used as a heartless sacrificial or "cleansing" tool for evil people in power. Enemies are designated "as unbelievers and evils so that their destruction will appear as a process of purification, while the criminals are ennobled." This has Øhra from the Old Testament with its avenging God. Sacrifice and sacramental murder took the place of grace and charity. In this way, the images of the enemy have led to many forms of racism and ethnic cleansing, where one was supposed to liberate the world from the evil ones – but actually hunted for the defined "others" out of a desire for power or one's own existential crisis.

Conversely, the mentality that fights for community – and solidarity with the vulnerable, poor and oppressed – has had many champions. Øhra mentions many previous equality-based and well-organized cultures, including leaders who Aleksander the great, Nero and Caligula, where agriculture, distribution of food and work were organized for the common good.

The Norwegian self-image

But now, to the book's Norwegian critique, and my main point: The Norwegian mental self-image and the enemy image.

Øhra shows that Norwegian political leaders in 1940 wanted to welcome the Germans – with a line of neutrality. They also wanted to depose the king, who had run away. The king protested and said that he could stay abroad for up to six months without losing his role. But according to Øhra, "most people at this time saw King Haakon 7's 'no' to negotiations with the Germans and the government's flight as a betrayal because it dragged Norway into the war on the British side." Nygaardsvold's government was aware that England and France had plans to invade Norway at that time, and feared this more. (Because this is neither the first nor the last time the Allies would use other countries as a battlefield, so-called deputy war.) It was then experienced that the Norwegian resistance forces were quickly put under English command. And England actually had no interest in liberating Norway, but on the contrary by showing some resistance by tying up as large German troops as possible in this country, which would weaken the Germans' strike force on the continent and prevent German invasion of the British Isles. The Germans then built 160 cannon and air defense installations along the Norwegian coast, and not least, Hitler deployed 400 soldiers to guard the new Festung Norwegen. One could say that the strategy was successful for England.

It was probably them too communist the resistance groups with Asbjørn Sunde as leader, who wanted liberation. They were responsible for 200 actions against the Germans during the war – even though Norway with the feature film Max Manus have led people to believe that Milorg was important. The Soviets were also the main reason for Hitler's defeat, from both the north and the east, although most believe they were allies – a myth some American feature films continue to confirm. 27 million of the war's nearly 70 million dead came from the Soviet Union – a total of 16 percent of their population. In Norway we lost 0,03 percent, France and England 1-2 percent.

Anti-communism

Øhra also mentions Foreign Minister Halvdan Koht, who opposed England and France – he remembered Spain being sacrificed on the altar of anti-communism – being allowed to use Norway for an attack to the east. Finland also said no when they realized how they would be able to get in the middle of a major war. Well, that led to Hitler coming instead – but what battlefield would it not have been if the great powers had used Scandinavia in such a battle? Then we would not only have 0,03 percent dead of the population.

"In six hours I may have to press the button, which will mean that 1,2 billion people will be dead when it's over."

But Churchill went on with his anti-communism, like Norwegian Haakon Lie, who called the communists beasts. And with the post-war period, the Norwegian right wing imprisoned the war hero Sunde. The Communists were portrayed as scapegoats and the power that could have taken over Norway. According to Øhra himself, he confirms when I ask by phone, that the home front around Sunde later told him that the reason why the communists asked Sunde to close down the resistance activities in Norway already in the spring of 1944, was that they would not let anyone believe that they wanted to take power in Norway when the war was won.

Nevertheless, Norway began spying on the new enemy after the war: the Communists. As the war hero Svein Blindheim tells here in Ny Tid (July 30.7.1977, 10, reproduced on page 24), Norway trained anti-communists in Finland to engage in illegal espionage, sabotage and undermining activities in the Soviet Union. The decorated war hero Blindheim was then imprisoned for listening to his conscience, where XNUMX years later he went public with what they were doing: "I realized that this was terribly crazy," said the then Edward Snowden to Ny Tid. Øhra uses him to show how Norway militarily builds images of enemies: "They create victims who in turn will justify anti-communism." Øhra also writes how Norway, in collaboration with the CIA / USA, built up the military stay behindgroups, out of parliamentary control, something Blindheim mentions was done because they were skeptical of what many communists in the Storting could do.

England actually had no interest in liberating Norway.

According to Svein Blindheim's book Officer in War and Peace (1981) Churchill suggested that the Western powers use the atomic bomb against the Soviet Union! And here at home: «Norway stepped up the surveillance and registration of left-wing radicals and communists, and otherwise everyone else with divergent views. These were years when it was not appropriate to be socially critical. "

intelligence

Today, the government recently proposed exculpatory for intelligence sources or agents' offenses. These must also be payable with black money. In the case of the offenses – what this is is a secret, so we do not know if it is about executions or something else – this is beyond parliamentary control. We are thus in the same "smear" of a warrior culture where enemy images maintain a spying mentality that is extremely dangerous, and which is not peace-loving at all.

Such psychological needs to see faults in others can create situations that ultimately affect ourselves.

Now Stalin, with his crimes, is a "communist." So what does Øhra mean, I ask him: On the phone he explains that it had to be Gandhi – who himself had read about both Christianity and communism.

Øhra ends with Kennedy and Cuba in 1963: The United States created tensions around the Soviet Union with its deployed missiles, and the Russians responded by moving towards Cuba. Kennedy said at the time: "In six hours I may have to press the atomic button, which will mean that 1,2 billion people will be dead when it's over." According to Øhra, Pope John XXIII prevented the disaster with a letter to Nikita Khrushchev that was printed on the front page of Pravda: "If you have the courage to call back the boats with the rockets, you will prove that you put charity first, not only for the Russian people, but for all mankind. History will then remember you as pioneers in a revolution built on the gospel of love. You may claim that you are not religious, but religion is not so much a collection of principles as an obligation to share love with the entire population of the earth. "

Dear reader, Merry Christmas, and thank you for this year!

• Also read: There is no contradiction between the peace movement, the Home Guard and the Armed Forces, where we talked to Homeland Security soldiers who participated in the Trident Juncture.