(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
[anti-totalitarian] This is an important issue Kåre Dahl Martinsen (Department of Defense Studies) and Pål Veiden (Oslo University College) traveled in their New Time column «SV and the regimes in the east» on 7 December: Namely to what extent the left and Ny Tid until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 supported opposition groups against communist regimes in Eastern Europe.
Some will probably settle down with the fact that even Martinsen and Veiden, the latter project leader in the right-wing think tank Civita, find that support for dissidents such as Vaclav Havel became stronger throughout the 1980s. New Time writers such as Gunnar Kopperud, Ingolf Håkon Teigene and Hans Wilhelm Steinfeld followed the undogmatic tradition of Orientering, Ny Tids' predecessor, which was just to be a critical corrective to the great powers in both east and west.
Others will point out that the right wing and its newspapers in the 1970s also made their big ideological mistakes, as Professor Bernt Hagtvet pointed out in the last Ny Tid. Romania's dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was awarded the Order of St. Olav by King Olav V in 1983, a prize that Norway first withdrew when the people rebelled against the dictator on Christmas 1989. In the clear light of posterity, there are many on both the left and right who could had statements unsaid from the great ideological wars during the end of the Cold War in the 1970s and 80s.
But at the same time, it is important to sweep for your own door first. And to the extent that there should be any doubt, today's New Time is in the tradition that fights against dictatorships and the totalitarian. This anti-dogmatic struggle is overriding ideology or political preferences. And this is where it is useful at the beginning of 2008 to draw lessons from the past so as not to make new mistakes in the present and future.
We show this best in practice: At a time when the Norwegian authorities, oil companies and the public have been very limited about human rights in Putin's Russia, from the spring of 2006 until the death of her politician we gave Anna Politkovskaya's oppositional voice. Now Natalia Novozhilova is following up with her exclusive columns from increasingly totalitarian Russia. While Najmeh Mohammadkhani is our voice in Tehran, Iran, a country ruled by an undemocratic regime contrary to the wishes of the Iranian people.
It is also in this spirit that New Time in the leadership position on 7 December warned the European left that "now the warning lights should flash" with regard to Hugo Chavez 'petropopulism and undemocratic tendencies. In summary: "It does not matter if a leader is on the right or the left if the leader is a dictator."
Unfortunately, this is still not a given. Therefore, it needs to be said, since it is an eternally relevant issue when dealing in Norway with regimes such as Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Cuba. And that is when the mistakes of the past can come in handy. ■