Mímir Kristjánsson is a writer and activist in Rødt.
Norway’s billionaires spent the election campaign smearing the Red Party as totalitarian extremists. But the party kept its focus on working-class Norwegians’ material interests — and secured a historic electoral breakthrough.
Norway has become famous for its social harmony and relatively generous welfare system. But the social-democratic compromise we know today doesn’t owe to some eternal national character — rather, it was a product of the revolutionary struggles of the interwar period.
Founded 100 years ago today, the Communist International quickly won the backing of Norway’s mighty Labor Party. The alliance promised to link the Soviets to mass politics in the West — but Moscow soon wasted its opportunity.
From Winston Churchill to the Nazis, anticommunists have long blamed the spread of socialism on Jews. With the Left again on the rise, the antisemitic trope of “Judeo-Bolshevism” is back.