The End of Nortopia?

Skrivet av Bernd Henningsen Onsdag, 1 Augusti 2012 10:49

Rightwing Populism and the Challenges to the Freedom of Press

The right-wing populist European reality

Right-wing populism in Europe is, 66 years after the military defeat of Fascism and National Socialism, again a political reality: In most European countries, right-wing populism has, to varying degrees, become institutionalised in parliaments and governments; it has become the focus of the public sphere, politics, the police, the public prosecutor's offices, and academia; it is part of the political day-to-day in Central, Northern, Southern, Western, and even in Eastern, Europe:

• In France looking at the polls today, the right-wing populist candidate has a good chance at becoming the next President of the Republic.
• In Hungary, right-wing populism controls the national parliament with a two-thirds majority and holds society in fear: Today, Hungary is more easily described by the term ‘Putinization' than as if it were a democratic republic in the European sense of the term.
• In Denmark, right-wing populism has dominated governmental politics for ten years - without assuming any responsibility - bringing a reactionary cultural and foreign policy to a country that was once an example of liberality.
  
• Only a few years ago, the Austrian movement became capable of governing.
  
• In the Netherlands, in Norway, Sweden and Finland, the movement has seats in Parliament.
  
• In Poland, the farther east one went, populism (and anti-German sentiment) dictated politics, and filled the offices of the head of government and chief of state.
• Even where an independent right-wing populist movement hasn't appeared on the scene, previously conservative parties have played that role and adopted (right-wing) populist rhetoric: in Great Britain, Italy, and Greece.

A glance at the USA reveals the same sight: what one calls ‘Republican' is, by today's standards, the most reactionary right-wing populism. On a national level, one realises that it, as an ideology, is nothing more than an strategy of segregation and exclusion, simultaneously emphasising the inferiority of others and one's own exceptionalism. Looking to history has become the dominant approach, intent on revealing a long-lost – in fact, constructed – grandeur and providing the justification for looking down on ‘others'. A claustrophobic paranoia (others are always to blame) and political ignorance make up this political persuasion: as the current US primaries show, the ideology's protagonists – not only the Tea Party lead by Fox News – have no idea about European history or the European economic system; American descriptions of the European welfare state couldn't be more laughable. One could say the same if one looked at the so-called ‘Europe Debate' and the discourse on multiculturalism in the Northern European countries: their cluelessness is their signature.

Right-wing populism, to me, is a genus; right-wing radicalism, far-right extremism, and actionism which qualifies as right-wing belong to the same ideological family (one should not be occupied by these kinds of definitions for too long, as they say little about actual relationships and conditions; these terms are interchangeable: in Hungary, Victor Orbán's Fidesz began as a ‘leftist' movement). People, groups, and factions associated with right-wing populism committed murders in nearly all European countries and have for years, as Germans must have experienced in these recent weeks. They did it in Sweden, in the Netherlands, in France, and in Norway last year.

Right-wing populism – even in its criminal form – is part of European normalcy. The similarity between these political reaction patterns and the end of the 20's and beginning of the 30's of the last century is evident – it was evident during the Danish People's Party's de facto ten year co-regency in the kingdom, and it is evident in Hungary today. Then – in the 20's and 30' – Germans did not want to suffer the defeat of 1918 and the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles, namely the supposed loss of prestige and status. Today, European integration politics and Brussels' efforts towards integration have been re-interpreted as a stab-in-the-back legend, aimed at killing off national sovereignty; a persecution complex has been constructed through reactionary national self-aggrandisement, erosion or denigration of the justice system, and the canalisation of emotions through paranoid mechanisms (such as finding scapegoats, such as the Jews, the Gypsies, the Germans, or Brussels). This goes hand in hand with a strong detachment from reality, whose place is taken by paranoid mechanisms designed to ward off a depression resulting from a reactive (and imaginary) loss of purpose.

In the context of the present situation in Europe, three moments stand out:

First, the right-wing populism that marked the period of the Weimar Republic has, in contemporary Germany, no institutional or personal presence; it does not dominate political rhetoric, and has had (so far!) no showing in elections. There is no demagogue, no single person who plays a central role, even when right-wing populism has exceptional success in regional and local elections and, as Thilo Sarrazin, then member of the board of directors of the German Central Bank, pointed out in his bestselling book ‘Germany Does Away With Itself'. With this diagnosis, the situation in the Northern European countries has shown itself to be substantially different from the relative lack of success of right-wing populism in Germany. Its bold thesis is that German society has developed a healthy immunity to becoming infected with right-wing extremism and right-wing populism that has protected it up to now. This immunisation strategy is called ‘coming to terms with the past' (Vergangenheitsbewäl-tigung) in political and historical jargon. As a Nazi past and right-wing populism concern Germany, informed observers are nonetheless united, and public sensibility and a broad willingness to come to a civil society discourse rules in Germany.

The second observation is that modern (right-wing) populism in Europe truly began in Scandinavia, before even Austria. The liberal welfare states of Northern Europe – Denmark and Norway – were the first societies in which (right-wing) populist movements gained their voice and achieved overwhelming success and representation in Parliament, and even came close to taking over government: Mogens Glistrup in Denmark, and Anders Lange in Norway became, after 1973, the gladiators of the political arena and the subsequent ‘common sense' tax protest movement. I will come back to that.

Third – and this is really noteworthy – right-wing populism, anti-culturalistic rhetoric, and its criminal effects in Northern Europe are today publically discussed as questions of freedom of conscience and the press. While in Germany, the appearance of right-wing radicals and right-wing populists and their effects on politics and society has been seen as an executive problem – laws become harsher, the police and security forces receive strengthened search and seizure powers - one can generalise the reaction of the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg to the bombing in Oslo and the Massacre on Utøya on July 22, 2011: Norwegian politics and society were encouraged to remain open, transparent, and liberal. There has been no debate on the merits of strengthening the executive. Jens Stoltenberg showed with his reaction that, in that society, the values of democracy and human dignity could be expressed through emotions; in extreme situations, a society sustains itself not only through words but also through its traditions. The boundless sadness of the nation found a home in the person of the head of government, who, by collecting this despair, very literally stabilised the situation.

The myth of ‘Nortopia'

The literary and cultural export boom of the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, to say nothing of Scandophilia before that, the debates on the ‘Scandinavian welfare model' of the 60's and 70's of the last century lead to a perception among southern neighbours, as well as throughout the world, of the Northern European countries as being political, social, and cultural paradises. Contemporary opinion had found their Utopia: Nortopia, an idyll nonetheless notorious for its awful climate.

After the bombing in Oslo and the massacre at Utøya many commentators wondered if this idyll had come to an end. Responses to this varied by temperament and experience, and indeed, they turned out in many different ways: if nothing else, many Norwegians no longer recognised their country after that day, and a sympathetic world - and who wouldn't be sympathetic with Norway - wrestled with their own horror.

Against the backdrop of this apostrophised paradigm shift, one must object that Norway in particular, and the North in general, has never been an idyll. The political dreamers and fools of the völkischen ideologies have so thoroughly duped us, since the middle of the 19th century, into believing that Scandinavia was a political and cultural paradise that, in the end, even the Scandinavians believed it – that not only were they somehow better, but that evil only came from the outside. Characterising this construction process with the name ‘Operation Hornochse'¹ (Operation Blockhead) is not a bad journalistic grasp of the process. The heterostereotype became an autostereotype: Sweden turned itself into a moral Great Power, and Norway became the most peace-loving nation among peace-lovers. Internally, all was good, as the evil was external – for Sweden, this meant the Russians, for the Danes, this meant primarily the Germans, but also the Swedes, and for Norway, this meant Sweden again – and for all of them, non-European foreigners. Anti-Jewish pogroms and anti-Semitism has existed throughout nearly all of Europe over the centuries – in Scandinavia, people created anti-Semitism in a place nearly bereft of Jews. Strindberg hated women, and, above all, Jews, and he found powerful allies – yet the only Jew he knew was his own publisher, Albert Bonniers (and his friend/enemy Georg Brandes).

In this respect, one can come to the conclusion that peace-loving, idyllic, democratic, social egalitarian Scandinavia - the phrase ‘Scandinavian Welfare Model' became the modern utopian cliché - was an ingenious branding concept, in today's marketing terms. The path that this ‘idyll' label took was quite peculiar: it was in the sixties, when Scandinavians rubbed their eyes in astonishment that people abroad were speaking of the Nordic or Swedish ‘model'; one didn't want that, especially not for other countries - Olof Palme was such a surprising observer of heterostereotypes. This changed once Scandinavians recognised the value of branding and stepped up their marketing efforts.

Nothing could destroy the image of a politically and culturally happy Northern Europe: not the knowledge of domestic Scandinavian anti-Semitism, the widely held sympathies for the German Nazi regime, or the not-insignificant collaboration with the occupiers. Nor could the knowledge of Nazi workshops, where Scandinavians published the right-wing German political scene's materials, banned in Germany, during the sixties and seventies, or sent letter bombs, without any success against judicial or police targets, or even the most recent criminal efforts, which are becoming clear in the light of Iceland's financial and economic conduct, dim this image. The achievements of the welfare state, its flat social hierarchies and (relative) gender equality were more important components for the construction of this image.

The South has dreamed of an idyllic North – from Tacitus and Wilhelm II – and told Scandinavians, who believed it and made it their reality. This dream of a healthy, unalienated world was - as bitter as it sounds – over before Utøya; Norwegians and the world could finally see that they lived in European normalcy, not just since July 22:

In 1975, a novel came out in Sweden, where a flower girl shot the head of government in broad daylight. It was the final novel, ‘The Terrorist', in Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's ten-volume ‘Novel about a Crime'. Over ten years later, this exact event transpired in reality – the Swedish Prime Minister was shot in public in the capital, unprovoked. The fact that reality has nothing to do with novels remains unchanged: in reality, the murderer was never conclusively identified. Nonetheless, 17 years later the Swedish Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh, was also publically murdered, although this time the killer was identified as a mentally disturbed person of immigrant background. I don't want to go into Finland's unsettling potential for violence, although one can read about this in the literature – not to mention the Jokela rampage of 2007. The knife, and the willingness to use it, are common stock tales about Finnish society. Only dreamers could believe that these cases are exclusive to Sweden or Finland.

My point, as I have implied, is a banal one: Scandinavian countries in general, and Norway in particular, are completely normal, modern societies, where people murder, whore, and drink; every deviance of human existence is not only possible, but happening! To deny this, or claim that it is monocausal – a result of welfare bums, alcohol, Protestantism, a xenophobia particular to some region, or anything else – is nonsense. I found it – that besides – quite noteworthy that a group of artists were so shocked by the murderer Breivik and what he wrought, because they recognised their own imaginary images in his actions: Lars von Trier and Thomas Enger are in this group; Henning Mankell also made a statement. Utøya is not a non-location in Scandinavian literature and film, in which the massacre happened a long time ago, and Nortopia is no ‘nowhere', as the etymology of ‘utopia' implies; it is a dystopia.

The longue durée of Northern European (right-wing) populism

This establishment of normalcy does not drive us to fatalism or decisionism; we can and must look in to possibly characteristics that allow this evil normalcy to act out. For Scandinavian countries, I would like to make four points (I will address previous material again, but I will present it somewhat differently):

1. As has already been established, in Europe, particular in the Northern European countries, political life has been influenced for years, if not centuries, by populist and right-wing populist movements and parties. Denmark and Norway have lead the way since 1972; right-wing populists have dictated politics and even the political discourse for years (and bourgeois conservatives bemoan to this day that leftists hold the high ground in the cultural discourse ...). They do this under the banner of ‘people, freedom and progress', naming themselves the ‘Progress Party' and ‘People's Party'; they are ‘true' and authentic – as if George Orwell had given these parties names in Newspeak.² In the meantime, Sweden and Finland move up behind them. The Swedish movement has a criminal history; there have been murders. The Danish movement has lead to the establishment of the most xenophobic foreign policy in Europe, receiving the backing even of the Social Democrats. Norwegian Social Democrats had long lived in the same glass house. One also could come easily to the conclusion that a social environment of accepted xenophobia exists in these countries. This came to the fore in Norwegian society after the events of July 22nd.
   
   The institutional and political success of the Progress Party in Denmark, and, after its dissolution, its successor party, the Danish People's Party, under its xenophobic leader, Pia Kjærsgaard, have become model parties on the European stage. It has expanded and has had ideological influences on similar parties in Norway and Denmark: the strategist of the party, MEP Morten Messerschmidt, was the personal advisor to Geert Wilders – and the chairman of a party, which employs Orwellian Newspeak and calls itself the ‘Party for Freedom', a freedom that, above all, means freedom without foreigners and Muslims. Mogens Glistrup was the originator of the message, in 1997, that Islam was invading Western countries in order to slay their people – one therefore had the obligation to exterminate the Mohammedans. This message found fertile soil among the Danish völkischen movement and only became more frenzied in their rhetoric after 9/11.
2. We know that political, social, and economic crises cause the question of one's own identity to take on a particular virulence. The Wende after 1989 was, for Germany and Eastern Europe, such a crisis. For Denmark and Norway, this was 1972, which saw the first EC referendum, as well as an economic crisis (the ‘oil crisis'). There are hardly any countries where so much has been discussed and published about what one could call ‘national identity'. All of this occurred against a backdrop of EU scepticism leaning towards EU hostility, anti-globalisation and anti-modernisation sentiments. The discovery of, and interest in, one's own identity – or that which people call identity – occurs through segregation: identity has become fundamentalised in political discourse and in the growing awareness of this crisis. It is something(!) that separates us from others: what this is will not be explored; it is sometimes called ‘identity', sometimes ‘mentality', but after the excesses of the National Socialist regime, these terms have been domesticated – no one today would make a claim based on blood, race, or biology. As a rule, this something is in a positive direction, implying that we are better than others. The flip side of ‘identity' is therefore always the denigration of others; in this respect, differences become political decision-making factors. ‘Cultural racism' emerges as the collateral damage of this search for identity. The interaction between the end of an epoch, crisis awareness, or actual socio-economic and political crises as a catalyst for renewed searching for identity has long been observed and described. Thomas Mann, apropos Oswald Spengler's ‘The Decline of the West', had already observed a rampant fundamentalism in the early 20s, and Aleida Assmann pointed out a tendency among western postmodern societies at the beginning of the 90s to ‘arm their identities'. This always arises – and one can see the traces of it in contemporary right-wing populist movements and the outpourings of Anders Behring Breivik – out of a sentiment of loss: previous, everything was better!
   
   For these reasons, right-wing populists in Finland call themselves ‘real' Finns, right-wing ideologists in Sweden call themselves ‘Swedish Democrats', and the ruling party in Hungary calls itself the ‘Alliance of Young Democrats' (their marches are rather about peace marches by pensioners). These names combine positive terms with political connotations, causing people to look backwards to a past which appears better, but is constructed; this is Newspeak in its most Orwellian sense. It attempts to embody the authentic Swede or the authentic Finn, youth and dynamism. Even the use of national symbols is symptomatic: bringing out the national flag is part of the daily repertoire. Football fans paint their faces in their national colours – their notorious friendliness can't disguise the fact, however, that their sport is a conflict between two teams, with an emphasis on conflict: one must find out who is the best.
   
   Recently, a middle-class Danish fan of Nationalism applauded Sweden, which had finally recognised the practical value of the national holiday (which had only recently become a holiday) and the national flag. His enthusiasm for Sweden connected him to a movement that distances itself from Germans, who still suffer from post-traumatic stress; after all, it is no great insight to point out that other countries have, because of the Germans, also been held liable for the German trauma.³ He sees the nation-state as an invention whose worth cannot be surpassed and views nationalism as a positive value. He is therefore a typical proponent of Scandinavian exceptionalism, which establishes a hierarchy for evaluating others: Swedes and Germans are less authentic than Danes (and Norwegians) – but now, Swedes are rejoining their neighbours. He overlooks, in his autostereotypical insistance on Scandianvian exceptionalism, that the fundamentalistic defense of freedom of the press in Scandinavia is being put, profitably, in the service of the German dreams of the past (more on that later). His commentary was published on June 6, 2011, and for a full six weeks, his ‘harmless' national world was in order – then came July 22 ...
   
   Danish financial and monetary matters are close to the heart for national populism: in other countries, people pay with ‘bank cards' or ‘EC cards', but in Denmark, people use the red and white ‘Dankort' (the ‘Denmark card'); the brand for this plastic monetary device implies financial sovereignty; the possession of money is national, Danish, not to mention nationalist. However, this self-deception becomes clear in the small print: Dankort is only accepted in international transactions because it is associated with VISA (Visa International Service Association). Also, in this example one can understand that this process is doubtless loaded with the aforementioned loss of national meaning, as Danish monetary policy long been decided in London, New York, and especially in Frankfurt – without including Denmark in the decision process (it is a member of the currency union, but not part of the Euro club). The name ‘Dankort', wearing its red and white colours openly, implying national sovereignty, actually stands for the diametric opposite political and economic reality – it is not a symbol of sovereign national will, but of global hybridity and openness.
   
   The belief that the Nordic countries cultivate a friendly nationalism is one of the polite beliefs about Nortopia that foreign observers hold, and domestic apologists may have gotten a sense of their self-deception after the political successes of right-wing populists and the events of July 22. However, this belief hides, and the European deculturation experience neglects, that nationalism is never friendly – as it declares one's own nation to be superior and exceptional, segregates and excludes, and despises its neighbours. Scandinavia's internal humour culture is an example of this.
   
3. Not last, the successful populist engagement made clear - and this makes the details of the political program obvious – that the ‘welfare state' was a national project. The populist parties advance the argument that the welfare state project is under threat ‘from outside' and is, by now, in shambles because non-Danes, non-Norwegians, non-Swedes and non-Finns are exploiting its social and material accomplishments and marauding the social system. This topic, however, makes it clear where populists get their arguments from – not from reality, as all research has shown that the influx of foreigners does not threaten the social security system and in no way undermines it. A crucial pillar of (right-wing) populist anti-culturalism is not based in empiricism, but is pure propaganda.
   
4. The enumeration of human rights was alien to the constitutions of all Northern European countries before their modern revisions. The first sentence of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, ‘Human dignity shall be inviolable', is a typical passage in the German Constitution, arrived at as a result of disastrous experiences (it even became part of the European Constitution of 2004, which was not adopted). Similar text was not found in the constitutions of the Scandinavian countries. Nonetheless, human dignity and respect for the private sphere is holy to these societies – they have been written into the political culture by the 18th century political maxims of freedom of the press and freedom of expression. In respecting freedom of the press and freedom of expression, all human rights are guaranteed – so go political culture and practice.
   
   Over the past more than 200 years, freedom of expression has become a sacred value, absolutely entrenched in public opinion, which permits absolutely no (or nearly no) restrictions of it. This is, for example, the reason why Nazi, Fascist, and right-wing radical literature is produced in Scandinavia and exported to Germany – where it is forbidden, the distribution is illegal. Naturally, Hitler's ‘Mein Kampf' is available in unedited form and marketed openly and earnestly in the North. Scandinavian societies have watched how right-wing radical scenes in other countries, especially Germany and Austria, have been served by Nazi literature. Discussions with Scandinavians about possible drawbacks to absolute freedom of expression and of the press are almost universally met with bewilderment. Political collaboration between contemporary right-wing groups in Germany and their Scandinavian counterparts is extensive.
   
   In recent years, and strengthened through the domination of public discourse by themes chosen by right-wing populists, a free hand has been conceded to those who speak out against traditional political culture, especially against liberalism, openness, and the culture of compromise: namely, the Danish People's Party or the Norwegian Progress Party. Our Scandinavian friends are confused by the fact that it is illegal in Germany to lie about or deny Auschwitz - but such a legal concept has a place in European traditions of thought: freedom of expression does not mean that one may say what one wishes; boundaries are handled by society, and some are expressed in law; here, Europe distinguishes itself from Anglo-Saxon convention. Even Danish law forbids expressing oneself in such a way as to disturb the social peace.⁴ In Norway, constitutional amendments have, in recent years, done away with even these restrictions: in Norway, everything is allowed.
   
   The bulk of publications in Scandinavia, lead by the provincial newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the largest serious newspaper in Denmark, invoke freedom of expression as a right sui generis. Unfortunately, this noble statement is false. Ultimately, this is true only for the USA: in American legal and political tradition, freedom of expression is limited only to forbid the instigation of hate crimes, and is thus nearly unrestricted. In Europe, this is different and freedom of expression is indeed restricted, in Germany through the Basic Law, figuratively speaking, taste and public morality set these limits. For example, hate speech is a criminal offence in Germany: any who deny Auschwitz or attack the personal honour of another come before a judge – not so in America. This explains the outrageous tone (to European ears) of American media and American politicians.
   
   The political scene surrounding the Danish People's Party and their mouthpiece, Jyllands-Posten, has tricked the public into thinking that Danish political culture has no concept of restrictions on freedom of expression – as one can pick up from discussions in that country, they were very successful with their strategy. As a result, reputable and politically independent advocates in Denmark have also come to the conclusion that these confrontations are not about freedom of expression – but about a different political issue, a different democracy.⁵

Public discourse and the challenges of freedom of the press and expression

It would be absurd to make talking about stupid things illegal. If stupidity becomes socially dominant and there is no sustained public debate on it, and limits aren't negotiated, then it becomes a danger to public safety. When, as happened on July 22nd, 2011 in Norway, a mass crime emerges from political, and as discussed above, absurd normalcy, this is certainly dangerous. Norwegian society seems to have gotten the memo. In this respect, an imagined idyll has come to an end. The question of how it could come to that end remains.

The stubborn defence of freedom of expression in Scandinavia – and other countries – would be worthy of unreserved endorsement, if there were a lively discourse in that society about political order and disorder. However, this is not the case. A few years ago, Hans Magnus Enzensberger observed that the Norwegian media was in deplorable shape, as no political or intellectual discussion – public debate – happened in its forums. He reaped furious protest. His judgment has general applicability, as the Swedish press is little better than the Norwegian; in Danish media one finds at most disagreements over political developments (desirable or undesirable), as Danish political debates are harder to pick out than in neighbouring societies. Finally, Horace Engdahl, long-time Secretary of the Swedish Academy and ‘first Swedish thinker', in a recent episode of a Norwegian-Swedish talk show, expressed his concern that there was no intellectual elite in Sweden, and that the country was undergoing a process of dulling of the mind.

This should not be taken to mean that intellectuals do not debate with and against each other. But if one searches for a broad political discourse in Northern Europe on a topic, that has, for the last decade, been a highly recognisable feature of these societies, one must diagnose what is missing: nationalism, xenophobia and right-wing populism, joined by EU scepticism are not topics of broad, sustained discussion, or objects of study in academia. Among them, publications on national identity, the state of the nation, and, naturally, Islam, stand out. This (relative) speechlessness arises from widespread public acceptance of political deregulatory concepts: they are hidden in the dogmatically entrenched concepts of freedom of the press and of expression, which bestow such respect upon political and intellectual elites that they avoid confrontations – they shut their eyes to political reality. The diagnosis is one of incapability of conflict. In the press and in politics, discourse over populism, risk assessment, and Europe is a hardship. If one opens the newspapers, or watches television news, one could come to the conclusion that there were no ‘world' or ‘Europe', just ‘inland', ‘neighbourhood', ‘village', and ‘region'.

In relation to this general, public speechlessness it is not surprising that it first became clear, with the massacre of summer 2011 that terrorism, fundamentalism, and outbreaks of unprovoked violence come from the heart of society. If Scandinavians looked in a mirror, they would have to admit that evil didn't come to them from outside their borders, but was their own offspring. Every society needs a political organisation in order to tame this evil. A society that does not strike a balance with this taming must deal with its victims; more police can help but little here. The Norwegian tragedy shows that this strategy, of projecting evil outside, can calm people's minds for a time, or even be used to run a society, but does not suffice for actually solving political, economic, and social problems. The culture of xenophobia is not the remedy, but the symptom of the fragility of modern society.

The history and development of media is, in modernity, indispensible to the exercise of violence, terror, and power: the Italian Red Brigade, the German Red Army Faction, and today's mass movements would be less than nothing without media involvement. The rise of Fascism and National Socialism cannot be explained without the invetion of the radio and their domination over print media. On the day of his mass murder, Anders Behring Breivik made it known that his excesses were part of a marketing strategy for his electronic ‘manifesto'. Obviously, this gives freedom of the press and expression a new dimension: it camouflages – not only conditionally – violence; it is the well-intended, generally opaque curtain, which obscures – and justifies – naive beliefs, private interests, and even justifications of violence.

Freedom of the press, freedom of expression is of extreme worth, without it a democratic society can't function. But freedom of the press is nothing without responsibility, the sense of responsibility is necessary and limits the freedom.

¹ Hein, Till: Operation Hornochse. Unser Wikingerbild hat viel mit Richard Wagner zu tun. http://www.mare.de/index.php?article_id=3113 [21.01.2012]
² Orwell, George: The principles of Newspeak. In: id.: Nineteen eighty-four. A novel. Harmondsworth 1962, pp. 241-251. - In the world of 1984, the War Office is named ‘Ministry of Peace', and the Ministry of Information is named ‘Ministry of Truth'.
³ Böss, Michael: Svenske og tyske traumer. In: Berlingske Tidende, 8.6.2011 http://www.b.dk/kommentarer/svenske-og-tyske-traumer [12.6.2011]
⁴ Koch, Henning: Ytringsfrihed, MEN: Respekt, tolerance og social fred. In: Chris-tofersen, Jonas, Mikael Rask Madsen (eds.): Menneskerettighedsdomstolen - 50 års samspil med dansk ret og politik. Kopenhagen 2009, pp. 321-335.
⁵ Koch, Henning: On Character and Caricature. Freedom of speech or freedom to scorn? In: Koch, Henning et al. (eds.): Europe. The New Legal Realism. Essays in Honor of Hjalte Rasmussen. Copenhagen 2010, pp. 317-350.

Bernd Henningsen
Professor für Skandinavistik/Kulturwissenschaft sowie Kultur und Politik Nordeuro-pas und der Ostseeregion am Nordeuropa-Institut der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; seit 2010 pensioniert, Honorarprofessor am Nordeuropa-Institut.

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