University awarded research center for rightwing extremism – Dagbladet.no

(Dagbladet Today it was announced that the University of Oslo awarded the new research center on right-wing extremism. With the battle for the research center, the University of Bergen and Oslo and Akershus University College. 50 million is allocated to the center, money that was allocated in the revised state budget for 2015.

Since the early 2000s there have been no major research on right-wing extremism in Norway, after the 1990s were less research on area. Since then there have only been some extremism researchers in various schools and by various institutions. Now scientists and their research to a greater extent gathered in one place.

– More extreme right now

Tore Bjørgo, professor at the Police Academy, will head the new research center.

– In Norway we have really two major ideological and terrorist challenges, militant jihadism and rightwing extremism. Norway has strong research groups within militant jihadism, but today we also see a growing threat from right-wing terror and hate crimes, says Tore Bjørgo Dagbladet.

He emphasized in particular Anton Lundin Petterson murder of a teacher and a pupil at a school in Trollhattan, and “Kebab murders” in Germany, as examples of the ideologically motivated crime Europe will increasingly become affected by now.

– Should ensure basic values ​​

It was in the revised national budget for 2015 that plans for the new research center was clear. Where Storting allocated funds for a center for research on right-wing extremism and related fields, because that one by 22 July 2011. More knowledge of the extreme right, but also the dissemination of such knowledge.

– Knowledge and insight can help in the fight against extremism. Research and prevention are important to ensure basic values ​​such as democracy, human rights and security, says Minister Torbjørn Røe Isaksen in the message.

Bjørgo mean center including appropriate because of the refugee situation in Europe, but also of the terrorist attacks in Paris Friday November 13th. Dagbladet he says that the center will focus on four main areas: høyreeklstrem ideology and extreme-right movements, patterns of right-wing terrorism and hate crimes, the prevention of right-wing excesses and violence, and how extreme right relate to their friends and enemies, for example in the media and political parties .

More research

– Refugee flow has led to hate crimes, violence and arson fires at asylum centers in Sweden and Norway. In addition we have terror, which for more than a week ago struck Paris again. It was about jihadist terrorism, but we reckon that terror will also lead to more right-wing violence, writes Bjørgo in a statement published on the UiO website.

The center will be headed by the University of Oslo, in cooperation with the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI ), Peace Research Institute (PRIO) and the Center for Studies of Holocaust and livsynsminoriteter, Police Academy and Defence Research. Also, several international groups should be included.

Prior to the award, the Bergen newspaper that the University of Bergen had great faith in getting the research center, while terror researcher Lars Gule, who wished that the center should be attached HiOA, it criticized the center’s monetary appropriations’d pop Research first.