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Nobel chair warns of giving voice to Fjordman

Richard Orange
Richard Orange - [email protected]
Nobel chair warns of giving voice to Fjordman
Thorbjørn Jagland: Latvian Parliament

The chairman of Norway's Nobel Prize committee has attacked the Norwegian press for allowing the extremist blogger Peder "Fjordman" Jensen to air his anti-Islamic views.

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The chairman of Norway's Nobel Prize committee has attacked the Norwegian press for allowing the extremist blogger  Peder 'Fjordman' Jensen to air his anti-Islamic views. 
 
Writing in Dagsavisen, Thorbjørn Jagland argued that a "misguided liberalism" in the Norwegian media had allowed the sort of ideology held by Anders Breivik to enter the mainstream. 
 
"Someone has to say stop before we find ourselves on a slippery slope where Fjordman's voice becomes more and more normal," he wrote, praising Hans Fredrik Dahl, the historian of Norway's Nazi occupation for being the first to do this. 
 
He said there was little difference between Fjordman's arguments and those of Breivik. 
 
"If you read what Fjordman has published online, you can easily see that he is coming from the same mindset. The only difference is that while Fjordman writes, Breivik acted. But there is not much difference between giving Fjordman the support to publish his opinions and giving the killer himself a public microphone." 
 
Jagland served as Prime Minister in the 1990s and is now Secretary General of the Council of Europe.

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