Hanne Nabintu Herland

Reading a somewhat sensationalist article in The Times of Israel, I come across the name of Hanne Nabintu Herland, who at first reads like she might be simply the usual leftist European-hater, judging from the (admiring) remarks of the author (though in truth, the attitude of Norwegian officials towards Israel, as I've heard it expressed on and off in the news, has often seemed to me to be shall we say rather unfortunate), so I go to her entry in Wikipedia.

A rather different picture is revealed, with surprisingly common-sense positions on a number of topics, including the unintended consequences of creating a welfare culture, the presumably (though one can never be too sure) unintended consequences of feminism, and the poisonous, institutionalised white-hatred of the Norwegian elites (her position on and the latter must be especially painful for those on the receiving end, since she was born and brought up in Africa).

So a good report card overall, but I'm blown away when I read (in the context of her criticism of Norwegian antisemitism, as referred to by the original Times of Israel article) her succinct summary of something that I've believed for a long time, but only ever expressed to instant derision from those hearing it (i.e. my sadly plonk-socialist friends):

Instead of supporting the only real democracy in the Middle East, namely Israel, we blackmail the Israelis in a manner as though we were still in 1939 at the time the socialist Hitler «sieg heil» was shouted in Norway. For the Nazis were Left Wing, and came out of Germany’s Socialist Labour Party, they were not right-wing. The individuals in the Norwegian politically powerful positions that have pushed for these solely negative attitudes for so many years, are responsible for creating a politically-correct hatred towards Israel that has made Norway the most anti-Semitic country in the West.

Yes! She's spotted that the Nazis were left-wing! I don't know why that seems like such an achievement (after all, the clue is in the name!), but whenever I point that out to people the usual look is one of incredulity. To me, it's one of the most amazing triumphs of the left that it has succeeded in painting Nazis as being on the right, when they were clearly a socialist organisation and their methods were simply another version of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Methods that, incidentally, the left continues to employ to this day (Saul Alinsky, anyone?).