Pål Steigan (born 31 May 1949) is a Norwegian writer and politician, best known as founder of the newspaper Klassekampen and the website Steigan.no. He was leader of the MaoistWorkers' Communist Party, AKP (m-l) from 1975 to 1984, and co-leader of the Red Electoral Alliance (RV) until 1979.[1][2] Both parties were small fringe parties that were never represented in parliament during his tenure. He co-founded Klassekampen as a monthly periodical in 1969, and during his leadership AKP developed the periodical into a newspaper in 1977. He later founded the alternative news website Steigan.no that is described by mainstream Norwegian media as a platform of Russian propaganda, conspiracy theories, racism and transphobia.[3][4][5]
Workers Communist Party, AKP (m-l)
He co-founded Klassekampen as a monthly periodical in 1969, and during his leadership AKP (m-l) developed the periodical into a newspaper in 1977.
After meeting the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in 1978, he began to support the regime,[7] later admitting his support for the genocidal Khmer Rouge was a mistake explaining that he now believed it was not Marxist.[8] He has continued to be criticised for bearing a personal responsibility for his political support to the regime.[7]
In 1978, he told an interviewer from The Call, the newspaper of the American Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist), that since the foundation of the party five years earlier "we have been waging a struggle against two brands of revisionism" in Norway, "the Brezhnevist, Moscow revisionist type party, which is the old so-called Norwegian Communist Party, and a newer Eurorevisionist party."[9] According to Steigan in the same interview: "[I]t’s obvious that the Soviet social-imperialists are planning to take Norway in the initial stages of a war over Europe."[10]
He is a critic of capitalism, writing that it "has inflicted so many defeats upon the working class and people all over the world that it’s hard to give an account of them."[11]
According to the fact checking website Faktisk.no, Steigan is part of an alternative and far-right echo chamber that also includes Document.no, Rights.no, Resett and Lykten.no, and where individuals linked to Stop Islamisation of Norway play a prominent role.[14] In 2022 Faktisk.no wrote that Steigan is the main promoter of Russian propaganda among alternative media in Norway.[15][16][17]
The secretary-general of the left-wing Red party Benedikte Pryneid Hansen said the leadership of the party shares the view that Steigan is a platform of "onesided Russian war propaganda, conspiracy theories, racism and transphobia",[5] and that the blog is increasingly characterized by "extreme conspiracy theories."[18] Anne-Marith Rasmussen, the president of Red in Troms and chair of the party’s LGBT committee, said Steigan is a "blog that promotes racism, homophobia and transphobia" as well as Russian propaganda, and that is a threat to democracy.[19]
Steigan was denied membership in the Norwegian Association of Newspaper Editors (Norsk Redaktørforening), with the rationale that Steigan.no is not a journalistic medium, but rather an activist website that disregards accepted journalistic principles.[20]
Some of the blog's writers include prominent Norwegian anti-semite[21] Hans Olav Brendberg and Swedish anti-transgender activist Kajsa Ekis Ekman.[22]
Books
Steigan's memoirs En folkefiende (A public enemy) were published in 2013.[6]
^"Ap-Raymond om Rødt-bråket: Kast ut Steigan-tilhengerne!". Verdens Gang. Retrieved 30 April 2022. Faktisk.no skrev i mars i år at steigan.no skiller seg ut som den aktøren som sprer klart mest russisk propaganda blant norske alternative medier. [Faktisk.no wrote in March this year that steigan.no stands out as the outlet that is by far the largest promoter of Russian propaganda among Norwegian alternative media.]
