Immigration is a problem for any country, not because of the immigrants being a different colour, but because of the cultural clash. Let me draw up an analogy here;

My first day of high school, I had gotten accepted along with a number of my friends from my old school. What the school leaders did was they did not allow any person from the same school to go to the same class (classes in Norway are groups of people who follow each other in every mandatory subject). This was a very scary thing, and I was certainly panicking worrying about not having any friends close. I would have chosen to go with my friends, of course. However this was the best thing that could happen, I was forced to make new social contacts, outside of my own community (which you know was the tiny island called Mosterøy), and that in turn lead to me learning more about urban life and what city people were like, and it taught me how to relate to them.

I’m sure you know where I am going with this; the other parties have had a sloppy integration politic where they have allowed immigrants to group together and given them every point in the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need (which is a general problem with Norwegian welfare for certain groups, including child services which I wrote a paper on after having researched and interviewed govt. workers), including the self-realization part; through welfare. Which is great. But this takes away all incentive to go out and mingle, make friends, etc. Often coming from societies with older, stricter laws and moral codes, this creates much friction in society which hurts both immigrants and Norwegians. Having befriended several 2nd gen. immigrants from Africa and the middle east, they all seem to be in agreement and agree that their parents (first-gen. immigrants) severely impeded their and their childrens’ lives by ‘sticking to their own’.

This is part of one of the good things I have seen FRP arguing in a manner that none of the other parties do because of being scared of the ‘racist’ label. It’s 2010, it’s Norway, racism isn’t a majority issue. It’s an issue, yes, but not a majority issue.

Not being an FRP voter myself, I do admit that they have gotten unfairly treated in the biggest Norwegian tabloids. I believe this is generally what have made them so unpopular, and that whenever people get into arguments about the policies of FRP, it always seems to turn emotional for the opposition. Being a follower of the Popperian tradition, I tend to agree that emotion does not do much good in debating, and often means that there is no foundation for a good debate anyway.

Carl Hagen, while not overtly racist believes in creating an ethnically homogenous state because ethnic minorities create “disharmony”

They often use bogus statistics from nationalist organizations like Den Norske Forening.

They have repeatedly been infiltrated by neo-Nazis, much to their embarrasment, such as the scandal in 1996.

Some of their party members campaigned against Sami interests, such as in local Finmark elections in 1999.

The party also supports such outdated cultural essentialist nationalist projects like the 1999 formation of the Norsk Kultur culture organization.

They are against expanding homosexual rights, against gender neutral marriage, the list goes on….there is hardly a right-wing cause they don’t support…

I’m sorry….but no matter how they try to remake themselves, they are the party of the right-wing, the party of xenophobes, born in the fires of rascism, supported by all of Norway’s racists, and is the closest thing that Norway has to a fascist movement.

As for the progress party, I have several very rational libertarian minded friends who support it and there are many moderates to who support it. However, the fact that the party has gone mainstream doesn’t change the fact that it also shares its support with the most right-wing, xenophobic, nationalist, and mindlessly populist forces in Norway.

And yes we are spoiled silly in Norway by all the oil money, so we have great welfare. Only problem is the govt. is trying to make up for our country’s small place by hosting idiotic events like the Oslo peace deal between the terrorists and israel. Another thing we do is pour out money to poor countries, without checking where it goes. Intelligent leaders in Africa curse us for making their population lazy by providing welfare for them so they can sit on their butts and not help the country progress. +++. Norway also has an increasing amount of poverty, while you would not believe there would be many people living below the poverty line in this country. Also we have a super crappy health system, americans I know don’t even believe me when I go into detail about it. And still we pay an insane amount of tax here, over half our income goes to taxes, no I’m not kidding.

Anyway, you are right about the correct translation from Fremskrittspartiet would be “The progression party”. “Frem skritt” can be translated directly to “forward step”, but “Fremskritt” is translated as “progress”. These folks are not in any way extreme right wing as their socialist counter-parts often describe them as. I could give a whole speech about this party, but I’m going to save you the boredom!