Fighting Fascism Left and Right: Hallgrímur Helgason On The Current Political Climate

Iceland is number one in so many categories. A Nordic social democratic state with a rather happy population, almost a good welfare system and almost no unemployment, a popular overpriced tourist magnet, said to be the best country in the world for women, gay and trans people, with a political spectrum that runs from the socialist left to the nationalistic right. The most serious immigrant problems are their low salaries and invisibility. The big mainstream parties are all in unison about the system. The main debate of the year was about whether the way too rich 0.1 percent should pay a bigger share to their communities or not. The vast majority of Icelanders want their society to be equal, open, tolerant, inclusive and kind.

How do you make yourself heard in such a country? How do you make yourself sound fresh? How do you strike a different tone?

There are two possibilities, it seems.

Either you go left of left and travel to North Korea, praising the country as the only one on earth where true socialism reigns. The comrades back home, the leaders of the freshly robbed Socialist Party (after a coup last spring), will instantly applaud you and voice their envy of not being there with you. Yes, the loony left (vonlausa vinstrið) has gone that crazy: Praising the fascism of Kim Jong Un!

Or you turn to J.D. and Trump and ask them to send you a copy of their script, get your best friend Chat to translate and start quoting Charlie Kirk and printing Freedom T-shirts. Then you make sure you are dissing all things woke, bullying trans people, claiming that the sexes are only two and start whining about women not being pregnant enough, and criticise that the Polish minority is allowed to read Icelandic news in their language, plus demanding that rainbow flags be banned from public buildings and that parliament nominate the MAGA-man for a Nobel (the day after the prize went elsewhere!). And in between, you mention the importance of maintaining “Icelandic culture“ and “our heritage”, all the while you keep ridiculing and bullying the local writers and artists, the very people who actually are working on Icelandic culture, for accepting grants from the state. As you can see, this “political agenda“ is more about plain bullying than an economic agenda or broad social ideas.

For all this you get a lot of press, for the press loves extreme opinions, no matter how witless they are. And for all this crap you get applauded by the rightwingers of the Internet. At the moment there seems to be far more people on the racist right (heimska hægrið) than on  the loony left (vonlausa vinstrið).

The low point of the right-wing rambling came just the other day, on the 50th anniversary of the Women‘s Strike, or The Day Iceland Stood Still, as reads the title of a new documentary, when two of of its most most famous and “best-dressed“ representatives, the twin leaders of the loser lot, appeared each in his own video clip. One reminded our women how many seamen (yes, all men!) were lost at sea in the last century, slapping the feminists with the death of their fathers on their day of pride and joy, while the other one was caught degrading and downtalking all the women of Iceland, including its president, for taking the day off and fighting for equal rights, as well as honouring that historical day back in 1975. Never before had a suit and tie looked so stupid as in those clips. One of those guys comes from a family of feministic heroes and the other used to be a union leader of 20,000 women! It was like watching two-year-olds dissing their mothers.

For too long our mainstream politicians and media alike have tried to ignore the rise of extremism in Iceland. People don‘t want to dirty themselves with addressing those shouters and haters on the fringe of the political spectrum, for, if you do, they all come at you with fire and fury. But we can not allow ourselves to look the other way.

Both these extreme factions, left and right, bear the seeds of fascism, a possible threat to our societies. The left poses a lesser one, even though it sides with Putin at every turn of events, since its wannabe leaders seem to be as many as the opinions within their party. A woke-or-no-woke-debate in the spring (yes, some of the Socialists are anti-woke, believe it or not) led to resignations and an in-house uprising that ended in a famous coup that split the Socialist party in half, cutting a five percent following in the polls down to two percent. The coup was an incredible scene, the looneys managed to steal a whole political party in full daylight, with its name, logo and elected representatives, a feat almost comparable with the recent Louvre theft.

Therefore, the threat from heimska hægrið, the racist right, seems bigger. Here a whole political party came running from centre-right to far-right, just to be able to pick up the Trump-trending bullyboys of podcast fame. (All podcasts in Iceland are run by young men who seem to have more muscles than brains, and who only speak to other young men with their brains in their muscles, with showrunners ranging from sentenced white-collar criminals to the “respectable“ Morgunblaðið-newspaper financed by the 0.1 percent.)

The party in question is Miðflokkurinn, The Centre Party, often referred to as Moðflokkurinn (Moldy Hay Party), or even The Stag Party, with a reference to its infamous call to fame. On November 20th, 2018, four Centre Party parliamentarians were recorded in a bar close to Parliament, all partly or fully drunk, locker-room-talking about female and disabled representatives of other parties, how to seduce them and fuck them, even imitating the sounds of their sex lives, and how to secure oneself an ambassador position in life after politics. It was the most revealing moment about the age-old buddy-buddy system of Icelandic politics, a precious insight into the minds of insecure manboys high on imaginary power, and some of their sayings became household jokes that still are in full use. Never having apologised or even confessed to these blunders, the party leaders made sure their Centre Party is now best known for bullying, sexism, mental abuse, corruption and arrogant ignorance. Shamelessly, they filled Icelandic TV screens with their faces for months this year, filibustering for the 0.1 percent, making sure their harassments were not forgotten, giving the women in question no shelter, not even in their own living rooms.

In recent weeks, the absurdly named Centre Party has been gaining in the polls, attracting young muscular men, at the cost of the more “civilised“ Independence Party, the political powerhouse that has been ruling Iceland for the last 100 years. That overweight giant has now fallen asleep and is even selling his house. Though some of us have already started to miss him, he can hardly be trusted to become a bastion against extremism anymore.

Our only hope therefore is Kristrún Frostadóttir, the young and popular prime minister, head of the centre left Social Democrats. She and her government may not be perfect, but as long as she holds 30 percent in the polls, and hopefully in elections as well, the fascist tendencies will be held at bay.

Dear friends, we can not allow ourselves to fall asleep or keep on pretending the current situation is not that serious, that it‘s normal for “good people“ to wake up every other day with ugly threats in their inbox, barking in the streets or evil eyes in the supermarkets. We have to fight fascism wherever it shows its ugly head, be it on the loony left or on the racist right.

Hallgrímur Helgason is an Icelandic artist, writer and social commentator. A retrospective of his art ran at the Reykjavik Art Museum last winter. His books have been translated into 20 languages, the best known being 101 Reykjavik, The Hitman’s Guide to House Cleaning and The Woman at 1,000 Degrees. His latest novels, the Sixty Kilo Saga, a trilogy, will be published by Norton Publishing in New York beginning next year. Helgason has regularly written about culture and politics for newspapers and magazines at home and abroad.