From the Marxist-Leninist Organization Revolusjon
February, 2001
40,000 people answered a call to demonstrate their abhorrence against racism, Nazism and violence in Oslo on 1 February.
Such a mobilization of popular feeling has seldom been seen since Nazism was defeated in 1945.
The brutal Nazi murder of 15 year-old Benjamin Hermansen, a boy with a Norwegian name, but with one parent of foreign origin, has provoked a wave of anger and despair among the Norwegian people. On February 1st this feeling was given expression in anti-Nazi demonstrations throughout the country. In Oslo the demonstration was larger than any other mobilization in several decades, despite the bitter cold of around minus 10 degrees Celsius.
Thousands of Oslo citizens from differing ethnic backgrounds and nationalities filled the streets in a powerful and dignified demonstration in support of a Nazi-free society.
The authorities, police and others have for a long time refused to acknowledge Nazism and racism in Norway. It has taken a murder and popular protests to wake a sleeping society. However, the awakening may not last for long, unless the anti-fascist forces utilize the current circumstances to keep up the offensive against the racist and Nazi forces, whether they be of the overt or the disguised type.
The so-called Progress Party, which subsists by attacking immigration from the underdeveloped countries and instigates conflicts between "ethnic" Norwegians on the one hand and refugees and immigrants from the so-called Third World on the other, is still the second largest political party.
Even after the recent racist murder at Holmlia, there are some who warn against pushing the Nazis and the racists too hard. Some "liberal" lawyers and professors, and a number of "leftists" too, warn against using legislation against Nazi activities in the name of free speech. This has also been the "argument" of the present and previous governments, thus ignoring the fact that Norway many years back signed and ratified the UN convention against racism, which compels the authorities to ban organized racist activity, i.e. including Nazi groups of the sort that actually have been operating in our country for a number of years.
Nazism - whether "old" or "new" style - is not some form of political expression it is organized crime and terrorism. Nazism and racism have nothing whatsoever to do with defence of the principle of free speech. The majority of the Norwegian people have no problem in understanding what appears to be incomprehensible to bourgeois, Social-Democrat or some "left-wing" politicians and intellectuals. Several opinion polls clearly show that a majority of around 70 percent are in favour of banning Nazi organizations.
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