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Olav Thon and the Norwegian Progress Party

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COMMENT: We have dis­cussed Nor­we­gian mass mur­der­er Anders Breivik, a Nazi who held mem­ber­ship in the Progress Par­ty. In a recent elec­tion, the Progress Par­ty gained mem­ber­ship of the Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment for the first time.

Olav Thon, one of Nor­way’s rich­est men, gen­er­at­ed pub­lic­i­ty for the par­ty by tak­ing out ads on its behalf in the Nor­we­gian media.

A crit­i­cal biog­ra­phy of Thon alleged that he built his fur empire through col­lab­o­ra­tion dur­ing and after World War II with inter­ests sym­pa­thet­ic to the Ger­mans. We won­der if his post­war suc­cess might derive, in part, from links to the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, the eco­nom­ic com­po­nent of the Under­ground Reich?

“In Left-Lean­ing Nor­way, Its Wealthy ‘Fox’ Glee­ful­ly Swings to the Right” by Steven Erlanger; The New York Times; 2/8/2014.

EXCERPT: . . . . But he [Thon] caused a stir when he took out large adver­tise­ments in the news­pa­pers sup­port­ing the anti-immi­gra­tion Progress Par­ty before September’s elec­tions, which brought the par­ty into the gov­ern­ment for the first time, as a junior part­ner to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty after eight years of coali­tions led by the Labor Par­ty. . . .

. . . . And he fierce­ly denied sug­ges­tions made by a soci­ol­o­gist and writer, Dag Ellingsen, who wrote a crit­i­cal biog­ra­phy of Mr. Thon in 2008, that he prof­it­ed from insur­ance cov­er­age for fires in build­ings he owned in Oslo, allow­ing him to rebuild more mod­ern and prof­itable struc­tures.

Mr. Ellingsen, whose book also point­ed out some of Mr. Thon’s deal­ings with the Ger­mans, said he has moved on to oth­er top­ics. . . .

“Olav Thon: Cor­rupt Nazi Col­lab­o­ra­tor?”; Kon­rad’s Think Tank [Nor­way]; 9/10/2008.

EXCERPT [Trans­lat­ed from Nor­we­gian by Google]: The book “Fox — Olav Thon and His Meth­ods” is out, much to the delight of some, to the vex­a­tion of Thon itself. The offi­cial sto­ry of Olaf Thon is the sto­ry of the dili­gent and sober boy who trav­eled to Oslo to sell fox skin and end­ed up own­ing half the town. The unof­fi­cial told by Dag Ellingsen’s tale of a smar­tass who ran the busi­ness with the occu­pa­tion forces after the war con­tin­ued coop­er­a­tion with the Nor­we­gians who clear­ly was on the wrong side dur­ing the war. The book claims Ellingsen that Thon laid the foun­da­tion for his first for­tune dur­ing World War II with the sale of reve­pels to Ger­man sol­diers, and that the busi­ness led to a dossier of Trea­son Archives. But the case was dis­missed and Thon was nei­ther ques­tioned or inves­ti­gat­ed by the Trea­son police after the war, in Accord­ing Dagsavisen. . . . .

Discussion

2 comments for “Olav Thon and the Norwegian Progress Party”

  1. Sounds like Olav could be a char­ac­ter in a Stieg Lar­son Book.

    Posted by GK | February 13, 2014, 9:45 pm
  2. There is a small facual error in the com­ment here: You prob­a­bly meant to write that the Progress Par­ty had entered the gov­ern­ment for the first time after the last elec­tion — they have actu­al­ly been rep­re­sent­ed in par­lia­ment for over 30 years.

    Also, while the Progress Par­ty may be far right by Nor­we­gian stan­dards, in a US con­text they would hard­ly be more extreme than your aver­age Repub­li­can...

    Posted by GM | February 16, 2014, 8:12 am

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