When I started this blog I mentioned one online discussion I'm going to look into is the recent commentary on ethnicity in Norway by renowned Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen. Since I met with my Norwegian friend earlier this week and talked a bit about the ongoing trial in Oslo I thought I should at least write something about this topic this week. I read Eriksen's summary of all the articles he's written about Breivik's attacks in the past year. And then I read an article called "A Blogosphere of Bigots," written together with Jostein Gaarder and published in The New York Times. Since Eriksen is a well-known researcher of ethnicity, nationalism, and cultural diversity he was in a position to provide educated analysis of the Utoya killings from day one. Labelled "cultural marxist," "spineless multiculturalist," and "nihilistic cultural relativist" by rightwing extremists and Islamophobic nationalists, he himself has been the target of "unpleasant attacks" for several years. In short, he warns that the power of loosely-bound and internet-connected anti-Islamists are a worse threat to Norwegian society than Islamic extremists since focus has been on tracking the latter while not taking the former seriously enough. He points out that it is a challenge to even track who these blogging bigots are and what they have in mind. Today social media plays many roles.
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