(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
[politics] It is the personal characteristics Carl Ivar Hagen gives of other politicians that have received the most attention when launching this book. But although they are shocking and some of them politically relevant, Hagen's many outbursts against his colleagues in the Storting are not the most interesting of these memoirs. The man who built the Progress Party has provided a demonstration of the Progress Party's success. This is the book that provides the greatest opportunity to understand what is called the "Frp Code", a mix of organizational building, populism, protest, thought and political rhetoric.
rougher
Linguistically, this is like hearing Carl I. Hagen talk. Although the book is long, somewhat uneven and could have been edited tighter, he occasionally writes very well. In the committee, Hagen has made good priorities in relation to important episodes in the history of the Progress Party. His descriptions of the process of divisions in the party on several occasions provide interesting insights into how the three wings of Frp; Christian conservatives, populists and liberals, opposed each other in the struggle for positions and politics, and why and how many of them Hagen saw as his successors chose to leave the party. Anyone wondering which of them might be returning should note the Garden's descriptions of them; here the door is wide open for some, but is thrown into the grin of others. This is an exciting read, which is unfortunately overshadowed by much linguistic debris that the publisher should have put out.
Worthy and unworthy
The garden's descriptions of his own childhood are a schoolbook example of how Frp's political rhetoric defies a distinction between "worthy" and "unworthy" recipients of welfare services. The garden's memoirs are reminiscent of Bondeviks in the sense that he describes his own story with constant claims about what he learned in it and that situation. "I learned to cope with myself," "I learned to bow deeply in front of a girl and ask: Do you want to dance with me?", "I learned that such is life." should also relate: "If you get something, you must do something". The pietistic work ethic Hagen describes as his is the same as the party's: Welfare services are there to help hard-working people who for various reasons refuse to work, not for people to give thanks.
Hagen tells of a classic background for the petty bourgeoisie in western Oslo: Father was a bureaucrat, so the manager and mother were at home – at a time when the sexes were divided into different classes at the school and the family lived cramped in Røahagen. In the winter Hagen did ski jumping and bandy, in the summer football and tennis. At school, he did no better than not getting into the high school he wanted, and as a russ, the grades were too bad to get the young Hagen into proper study. His first professional experience came through the job his father got him on the American line and then the job he got in his uncle's asphalt company. Also when Hagen went abroad to study, he failed an exam in his studies and changed both university, city and line the following year.
Trustee
Carl I. Hagen portrays himself as the Progressive Party's necessary organizational builder when he describes how the experience as a student politician during study time in the UK came in handy when Anders Lange's party was to be built from scratch. Hagen joined the party at the so-called Saga Cinema in 1973, and quickly gained a position among the fresh protest politicians. In his reminiscences of the time, there was resistance among the other party founders to become a classic party, while Hagen saw the need for and completed an organizational building worthy of Einar Gerhardsen. For everyone else who is interested in organizational building, Hagen's work is worth a study. The Progress Party under him is the party in Norway that has built the organization most in line with what Gerhardsen described in his classic Confidant. There is much to learn here.
asshole
But the personal characteristics unfortunately overshadow much of the political content for good reason. Not everyone is equally interesting, but Hagen commits a political assassination of Labor and Integration Minister Bjarne Håkon Hanssen, who gives this reader a smile similar to what characterizes the book's dirt cover. The long section Hagen has devoted to Hanssen begins with a factual boast of Hanssen's behavior as a politician and debater, but continues with explanations of how close to the Progress Party Hagen believes Hanssen really lies politically. Frp has been so pleased with the Minister of Labor, writes Hagen, that they have had to "almost look for opportunities to scold him for being kind and naive, so that he does not have problems internally". For the many voters and members of the Labor Party who do not share the Progress Party's view on immigration, this is a fresh weapon against Hanssen.
But it is especially former Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik who is allowed to review in Hagen's memoirs. Repeatedly through the 563 pages, both the Krf Party and Bondevik personally suspect their motives. Although Hagen tries to separate people and politics, they quickly collide when Bondevik is accused of putting personal power in front of both politics and his own party, and is also called the asshole. There is little chance that Hagen and Bondevik will have a nice conversation after this. Bondevik is right in not commenting on the book, Valgerd Svarstad Haugland and Dagrunn Eriksen have also done a good job defending him.
The outcomes against Bondevik are neither balanced nor elegantly formulated. On the contrary, Hagen here seems like the boy who constantly bothers it in front of him during the math test, just because he can. The garden, on the other hand, does not throw paper balls, but throws shit. Politically and personally, however, this is interesting. The negative sides Hagen accuses Bondevik of having just as much backfire on him. For the book is at the same time an exciting insight into Carl I. Hagen's personality and the story of – and the recipe for – how to build one of the country's largest parties.
