Why I have repudiated my family

It is said that you learn who your true friends are in times of hardship. One of the few things I am actually grateful to the cops for is making it abundantly clear who are and are not my friends. In my experience police interrogations are an excellent litmus test for who your true friends are and who are your enemies, or at best, naive authoritarian police-state sycophants with whom you should not associate at all for your own safety.

Suppose you are arrested, jailed and charged with bullshit crimes, whereupon the police interrogate family and friends in order to build a case. The results can be very revealing indeed, since of course you are entitled to read the transcripts of all these interrogations (although I am not sure the interrogatees were mindful of this fact). Out of all the 10 or so people the cops talked to (and they made reports detailing what was said on the phone too, so I got a good impression of the attitudes of those who declined a formal interrogation as well), only my girlfriend passed this test of true friendship. The rest revealed themselves as utter scumbags. It was shocking, really, as I had not expect quite such an exuberantly bootlicking display of kowtowing to authority. My father was the worst. At his interrogation he initially expressed relief that I was imprisoned and said he hoped I would receive a punishment that even Breivik was spared -- psychiatric coercion. And then he proceeded with badmouthing me for 13 pages, volunteering bizarre and erroneous reasons largely manufactured by his imagination for why he thinks I am "sick." All this despite not being obligated to say anything at all, as even in authoritarian Norway no one can be forced to testify against close family members. Other family members echoed my dad's sentiments, albeit with slightly less extreme embellishments. They all wanted to see me attacked by psychiatry. My opinions and stature as a public men's rights activist bother them, so they think they can conveniently make it all go away by fantasizing about mental illness.

The interrogations influenced the cops to order a psychiatric observation in the hope of declaring me unaccountable and provided grist for the mill for further imprisonment. The entire second court hearing was basically built around my alleged mental instability. The police lawyer even called me mentally unstable in the media before I had been evaluated by a psychiatrist. And in court he had the audacity to request closed doors in order to cater to my family (secrecy is often requested in Norway when the prosecution has something to hide) and make their lies less uncomfortable for them (we objected and secrecy was not granted).

I wish I could publish all the interrogations as well as the psychiatric report in full. My family tried to hurt me and they do not deserve secrecy. Due to egregiously unjust laws I am only allowed to read these transcripts at my lawyer's office. As I see it, all this secrecy is another feature of institutionalized corruption in the Norwegian justice system. These documents were presented to a court (actually three courts) in order to get me imprisoned (and successfully so for three weeks), and so they should of course be public. Secrecy serves accusers and the cops but it does not serve justice.

I could write more about the oddities of the Norwegian system. In Norway at pretrial hearings there are two separate games played: one in the courtroom and one in the media. Since the press is barred from quoting what is said in court even when they are allowed to attend (we demanded to get this limitation overruled as well but was denied), what is said publicly by lawyers on both sides as well as the defendant often does not correspond to what actually takes place in court. Different things are said to each when it is tactically advantageous. It quaintly felt like fighting in two separate arenas with different rules, and though I enjoy a good media circus as much as the next guy, I was frustrated by the lack of simple public illumination of the actual documents in the case, all of which I would have been well served by publishing.

So unfortunately I am limited to quoting the interrogations from memory, much of which I have forgotten. To get a flavor of it, my dad said things like I spend all my time isolated in my room behind dark curtains, so I must be sick. It is a false, and he doesn't even have any way of knowing what I do with my time since I haven't lived with him since 2005. And even then it was not true. For one thing, I marched in the Global Marijuana March five years in a row and even helped organize it in Bergen. Being the leftist that he is, my highly social activism against the drug war (as well as for men's rights) does not count. Since I choose to do other things than whatever he thinks would be proper, he has decided I am "sick" and need "treatment," and everything he told the cops was meant to substantiate that claim. Absurdly, much was made of the supposed dimmed lights in my room and the fact that I don't open the curtains much. Evidently you need the sun shining in your face while viewing your computer screen in order to be sane in his opinion? What a moron. There is a time to be out in the sun (which I do every day when I go running and other things) and a time to work at your computer, and combining them isn't terribly convenient.

He may have been able to fool the cops, but luckily the forensic psychiatrist was not so gullible. It was a tough call whether I should agree to talk to the psychiatrist they sent to Bergen prison at all, but I decided that since I have nothing to hide, it would be best to be completely open and get it over with, which is what was bound to happen if the psychiatrist was accountable himself. And he was. We can laugh at it now, but it got really tense at the time. The situation was a matter of life or death. Just imagine how you would feel if psychiatric coercion was brought to bear in an attempt to change your ideology. Would you sacrifice your integrity, allow yourself to be poisoned by toxic chemicals, and pretend to change your mind in order to eventually get out, or would you fight it to the death (and lose your mind in the process)? Facing this situation was a real possibility and if my family had had their way, I would not be here today. I have stated in no uncertain terms that in the event that I should fall victim to psychiatric coercion, then the outcome will be lethal not just for me, and I stand by this 100%. I would feign docility (fighting at every stage is most honorable, but let's face it: resistance is futile and inevitably leads to psychosis as you are strapped down and caged indefinitely) and emerge as a violent activist (i.e. suicide attacker, since I wouldn't let them capture me alive again) against psychiatry after however long it would take to get out, even if it would take decades. And since that blog post was already entered as evidence in the case, I had basically signed my own death sentence. It is doubtful that I would ever get out. I even reiterated my resolve to avenge psychiatric coercion in court, and upheld violent activism as the most ethical way for anybody to relate to psychiatric coercion if you are a victim of it. I feel very strongly about this and no technology exists to change my mind. They can torture you and kill you, but thankfully there is as of yet no way in psychiatry's toolbox to change a person's ideology into whatever they consider politically correct. Opinions cannot be coerced. At least not when your ideology is not based on any delusions but represents your full moral and political conviction. Yes, you would have to kill me in order to kill my ideology, because such is my concept of identity that the opinion cannot be separated from the man. And if I forfeit the integrity of my mind, then I shall consider myself already dead and act accordingly as described in my cognitive liberty blog post. If ever victimized by psychiatry, the remaining energy in this body shall go exclusively towards a bloody revenge.

People like my father do not respect my having an independent opinion. They think they can coerce me into adopting whatever opinion they see fit. It is bizarre and cruel, and mind-boggling that anybody can be so deranged, really. Personally I would not entertain the notion of coercing opinions on even my worst enemies, even if it were possible. You do not, if you are a decent person, settle disputes by pathologizing your adversaries. That would be an infantile worldview. The world is not some cozy place where you are right about everything and anyone who disagrees is sick. True heartfelt hatred exists in this world and whichever views you hold, somebody is going to hate your guts for it. They are entitled to their opinion. Irreconcilable differences exist and they may legitimately lead to violence and war, but never psychiatry. The struggle I am attempting to usher in against feminist sex law is motivated by real moral indignation, and no amount of psychiatry can or should change that even if you are on the opposite side. Feminism versus MRA is an irreconcilable difference that can only be resolved by violence; indeed that is how it is resolved as we speak. Currently, normal male sexuality is suppressed by state violence and men don't fight back. The MRA mission is to thwart the state-enforced violence that feminists wield today, and I was a political prisoner of this war. This conflict is real and has nothing to do with mental illness, nor can I be brainwashed by psychiatry to relinquish my agenda.

Fortunately, and despite the psychiatrist being selected by the police and thus biased accordingly, he saw through the foolishness of my family and pronounced me sane. His report was conclusive enough and so favorable I almost could have written it myself, but it was still a close shave. The Breivik case revealed that forensic psychiatry is rather like playing Russian roulette with your mind. If I had not chanced to be seen by a fairly reasonable psychiatrist, but rather some scumbags like Torgeir Husby and Synne Sørheim (it is still not clear to me if they are psychopaths or just plain incompetent, but either way they will ruin your life) who will declare you insane for no good reason, then my life would have been over, and it is no thanks to my family that it ended well.

In Norway, the convenience of the cops trumps everything. It is routine to keep in all likelihood innocent suspects in solitary confinement for months just so the cops can check out some distant lead or attempt to break you down in order to extract a confession; say if someone dumps a corpse in your garden and you seem like a shady character. It is really scary how easily the police have their way and how nonexistent is any movement for civil liberties. Suspects are also jailed based on fabricated evidence, or in my case highly distorted evidence (e.g. textbooks on explosives I received as a conscript in the military were used to paint me as a dangerous terrorist). I now fully realize based on personal experience that no matter how convincing evidence presented in court by the prosecution may appear to a spectator, it may well be total bullshit.

It boggles the mind that Norwegians put up with such police methods. It is as if they think police can do no wrong and should have unlimited powers. Pretrial detention is standard operating procedure. In Norway you are presumed guilty and jailed on first suspicion, frequently in full isolation, and then only released if the cops fail turn up any convincing evidence after months of investigation at their leisure. Foreign readers should take note that the Norwegian system is profoundly more oppressive in certain ways than what you expect, at least prior to trial. Where American suspects get to bail themselves out, Norwegian suspects get solitary confinement. Solitary confinement is torture and here it can happen to anyone for many months based on some vague suspicion and the flimsiest of pretext that you might otherwise spoil the (nonexistent) evidence. Yet this does not seem to bother most people until it happens to them. Norwegians are truly an authority-loving sheeple. In the face of such a totalitarian state, can you at least trust your family not to side with the cops and jump to the conclusion that you are maximally guilty from the outset? One would hope so, but I found that I cannot. My family showed their true color as world-class scumbags, and so for my own safety I have resolved never to talk to them again.

Good riddance. I consider myself fortunate to have tested this in a real situation. Others might take a moment to reflect if your family are liable to cooperate with the police, or even worse, sell you down the river to psychiatry. If so, you might want to remove them from your life. Such persons are a deadly liability and not worth the risk of associating with, even if they are your parents or siblings. This is not meant to be mean; just basic self-preservation.