Pål Steigan

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.

During his leadership of AKP (m-l), Steigan traveled to countries under communist regimes, such as China, Czechoslovakia, Albania and Cambodia (Democratic Kampuchea).[1] He met Mao Zedong, Enver Hoxha and Pol Pot.[6]

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]

Steigan founded the self-proclaimed "anti-globalist" alternative news site Steigan.no that has been widely criticized for promoting Russian propaganda, conspiracy theories, racism and transphobia.[4][5] The website has been described by extremism researcher John Færseth as a platform of conspiracy theories and pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda,[3][12] and as an example of "red–brown convergence" with links to the alt-right.[13]

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]

Steigan's memoirs En folkefiende (A public enemy) were published in 2013.[6]

Steigan, Pål, Veiskille: finnes det noen vei ut av miljøkrisa? Oktober Forlag, Oslo, 1990, 244 s.