Two weeks from now, 25 years ago, Norway voted NOT to join the European Union, and to this day I'm still resentful about that. And in 80 days, the EU country I decided move to instead is due to actually leave the European Union. No matter where I turn, fascists make the calls. https://twitter.com/MalmstromEU/status/1194527693506781184

I'll say once again, though, that at least, because the result was so close - 52% no, 48% yes - the Norwegians decided that the mandate imparted by the referendum was obviously to get as close to joining as possible without actually joining, to reflect the will of the people.

And ever since June of 2016, saying that fills me with bitter contempt for the Tories and their own particular interpretation of an identical result.

Sorry, I appear to be sad tweeting after midnight.

Another fun fact I like to repeat: the Norwegian No to EU movement was led by a man called Kristen Nygaard, and if you recognise that as the name of the co-creator of the Simula programming language, which pioneered the idea of object oriented programming, you're absolutely right

In case you were wondering why I ended up firmly in the functional programming camp.

I should mention, btw, that Nygaard was more of a Labour Lexiteer type than a hard right nationalist, lest you assume he was a monster rather than just accidentally getting in bad company. Probably at least half of the Norwegian anti-EU movement was leftist.

Surprisingly, the Norwegian right was largely pro-EU. The right wing anti-EU thing is fairly new, they used to be as convinced the EU was a capitalist enterprise as the anti-EU left were, and so they were naturally for it. Even the fash Progress Party was pro-EU in 1994, iirc.

The Norwegian No vote was split in two: leftists concerned about the neoliberal flavour of the EU, and, more dominantly, the nationalist vote, with a slogan basically saying Norway must be governed by Norwegians only - basically like the prevailing UK Leave sentiment.

In 1994, even in Norway, nationalism wasn't the dominant trait on the noninal right. The local "Tories" were business focused capitalists, even the Progress Party, though definitely anti-immigrant, was more the Free Booze Party than the Nazi Party back then.

(The big populist topic in Norway, before it turned to Eurabia panic this decade, was the abolition of the restriction on alcohol sales by non-state actors - the "Wine Monopoly," a Prohibition style Puritan institution that lingers into the present day.)