Since October 2008 there has been no shortage of demagoguery but now it seems like some lite version of facism is becoming en vogue.
The organization New Iceland (Nytt Island) has caught the attention of the media by gathering people to honk their horns outside the buildings of banks and financial institutions to protest against the currency car loans plagueing so many Icelanders. It makes for great TV and great news reports so the limp media of Iceland has come along to broadcast the noise.
But the agenda of this organization is really curious. Its website is a conundrum of assorted articles, seemingly only written in exclamation points about the corrupt government and rotten banks. So far so good but what do they want instead? Well, they want unemployed people to enter into a civic duty where they are supposed to work for the government for free for starters. And they want a secret service! Well, that is when their agenda is online, which it sometimes is and sometimes isn‘t. For example when the head of the organization was being interviewed on a radio show yesterday it wasn‘t. And when blogger Teitur Atlason started criticizing this organization harshly he suddenly found himself ridiculed as part of the organization‘s agenda!
My personal favourite is closing down all Icelandic embassies abroad. At a time when Icelandic insularism has done the country so much harm, this organization wants to take it a step forward.
Just like the InDefence group feeds on blind justice and paranoia, New Iceland does too. Unfortunately the credible organization Homeowners‘ Association has allowed this wacko group to join them in organized protests on Saturdays outside the parliament. The reasoning is a typical well intended folly whereas the Homeowners‘ Association claims it does not want to fight anyone who is willing to support their cause.
Those who are easily hypnotized by demagoguery and propaganda are at risk of lending credibility to forces that are finding the soil fertile for its sinister causes. That is why you will not find me and many others outside Althingi protesting as I would like. Unfortunately the noise makers make for a great TV and are therefore likely to see their credibility rise in the coming months.
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Lino
1 year ago
“My personal favourite is closing down all Icelandic embassies abroad”
that makes sense: an embassy costs lots of money
Even without one, you are not cut from the world: other states have their embassy in Iceland’s capital.
In the age of the phone, internet and fax (and throw in videoconference if you must), a physical embassy is just luxury to benefit Iceland’s diplomats.
The rise of ultranationalist factions with fascist tinges, whether of the red or black kind, is not that strange: it’s one of the likely evolutions of icelandic society.
Entire portions of your institutional reality are crumbling down discredited and “something” has to fill the void. And that “something” will. Nature abhors emptiness.
Since no “acceptable” answer to the problems of Iceland will come from traditional providers, i.e. institutions and present political forces, new providers even with strange flavours offering theoretically (and who knows really?) something “different” or “alternative”will have an audience. Ad acceptante. A breakout from paralysis. A hope. An illusion. Whatever, out of grim desperation.
After all, it’s like going to a supermarket, when leading brands leave you unsatisfied , wouldn’t you try something different that chimes with the mood?
This New Iceland is quite innocent at the moment, but is an attractive vehicles of discontent and more so in the future.
History may be repeating itself… who knows, sooner or later extremist groups, from abroad could come to Iceland to simpathize with New Iceland…
Lino
1 year ago
typing mistake: “An acceptance” instead of “Ad acceptante”, sorry.