From New Order to the Millennium of White Power: Norwegian Fascism Between Party Politics and Lone-Actor Terrorism

Abstract

By analysing the conception of history expressed in different textual material, this article traces the evolution of post-war fascist ideology in Norway. By focusing on the first real attempts at establishing fascist parties in Norway after World War II, Norsk Front (1975–1980) and Nasjonalt Folkeparti (1980–1991), and the later attempts in the 1990s by the first leader of both parties, Erik Blücher, to re-calibrate fascism outside of party politics, it argues that the present case study can be used to advance the understanding of fascism both specifically and generically. Specifically, because it traces the evolution of Norwegian fascism all the way up the present terrorist turn of right-wing extremism. Generically, because the case study both shows how a distinct fascist conception of historicity survived, yet mutated, after World War II, and how two related narrative structures or tropes have shaped the ideologies of the extreme-right, both past and present: the rebirth myth and the trope of a coming apocalypse.