Lex Berge

After Norway's Supreme Court decided my blog is legal, a chorus of feminist pundits opined that the law needs to be changed in order to punish me and other bloggers who express opinions online that would be defined as criminal incitement under the Penal Code of 1902 §140 if they were expressed in print media. The cops went so far as claiming they may charge me again under the new law unless I delete whatever offensive statements from my blog they tried and failed to prosecute me for already. It is still unclear exactly which statements that might be, as the case was thrown out on the technicality that blogging isn't covered by the law because the Internet isn't defined as "public," which is a requirement for incitement to be a crime. Thus the courts never got around to deciding whether my blog actually would be illegal if the medium itself were covered by the law against incitement. While I see this as free speech appropriate for the Internet, totalitarian politicians interpret it as a loophole in the law exposed by my case which needs to be closed promptly, so as to be able to put bloggers like me in jail for promoting men's rights activism and other crimes they don't like.

Now the proposal is ready for changing the law. Whoever spoke of Lex Berge got it right. I thought they might be bluffing, but the government really is trying to change the law in my honor. This is the direction they were headed anyway, but the process of legal reform is accelerated because of me. While it must feel good if you are a feminist or leftist to be able to jail me, keep in mind that this law will at least in theory be applicable to a vast number of feminists as well. My statements are not particularly violent compared to some mainstream feminist writing, not to mention leftist revolutionary tracts. How do you think something like the SCUM Manifesto, for example, would hold up against this law? Do you really want to risk several years in prison for expressing yourself like that if you feel like it? And making the law retroactively applicable to old archives means you can suddenly be arrested for something you don't even remember writing. It is really outrageous if you think about it and I suspect many supporters of this law are blinded by the fact that I am an antifeminist and libertarian. You may feel safe under a leftist regime, but that may change and you never know if your opinions will be the politically correct ones in the future. So I would urge everyone to support freedom of speech no matter where you stand on the political spectrum. I hope the Norwegian people will now stand up against the government and resist this new law. Let us make it clear that we do not want this new law because it represents an unreasonable limitation of free speech. Here is how to respond to the proposed law:

Departementet ber om høringsinstansenes syn på forslagene. Høringsfristen er 26. oktober 2012. Høringsuttalelser sendes til Justis- og beredskapsdepartementet, Lovavdelingen, postboks 8005 Dep, 0030 Oslo. Vi ber om å få høringsuttalelsene elektronisk i tillegg til i ordinært brev. E-post kan sendes til lovavdelingen@jd.dep.no.

While I agree that much of the Internet including this blog is public, I do not agree that §140 should be kept. It is an intrinsically undemocratic law which proscribes a lot of honest and natural expression going on online. We already know the "glorification" of crime part of §140 is null and void and contrary to human rights, so that part of the prosecution's case is sure to be lost from the outset. What remains is the promotion of criminal acts as ethically right, which also ought to be within free speech. A public debate about the ethics of cop-killing or whatever is unduly hampered if the "wrong" conclusion will land you in jail. Or what do y'all think? I think the proposed legal reform is evil and unrealistic and don't plan to delete anything from my archives. I already said I will focus on promoting other, less illegal avenues of men's rights activism than cop-killing in the future, and that should be enough.