The virality of Norwegian guilt. How a story of male rape from Norway made international headlines

Abstract

When a young Norwegian man talked openly about being raped by a Somali asylum seeker and for feeling guilty about the rapist’s deportation, the news went viral not only in Norway, but also abroad. Several British and American tabloid newspapers as well as news and opinion websites from the UK, the US, Russia, Poland, Croatia and the Czech Republic reported about the Norwegian “politician” who felt “guilty” that Norwegian authorities sent his rapist back to Somalia. This article closely investigates the mediation of this story with a focus on how the emotion of guilt was staged in a national televised and digital media context in Norway before it reached the international tabloid media and opinion websites like Breitbart.com. It demonstrates how guilt functions as an affective nodal point at the intersection of many dimensions of identity, such as gender, sexuality, race, able-bodiedness, national identity, and political affiliation. The article also shows how a story of male rape from Norway facilitated an opportunity for tabloid journalists to rally against the Norwegian, and by extension, the European political Left, which they constructed as weak, feminine, and raped from behind by the very immigrants it seeks to protect.