You want a softer FRP that speaks to a consensus on immigration – VG

He also admits that he has a more restrained and less pointed shape than his fiercest competitor to replace Siv Jensen as party leader, Sylvi Listhaug.

In this interview back with VG, the former transportation minister and deputy leader talks about his thoughts about himself and the party’s ambitions and opportunities after living 20 months in Alabama, the state that Donald Trump won by the clearest margin. in 2016.

Ketil Solvik-Olsen in a new book: Opens up to become party leader after Siv Jensen

– Many in Frp support Donald Trump. Do you expect me to win on November 3?

– I won’t say what I expect.

– Why not?

– Because the media debate around Biden versus Trump is so polarized and you’re at a standstill. I do not like that. The image has more nuances. I would never have had Trump as my father-in-law. It had been cruel. You could say that the Americans chose the bully of the class to be elected a member of the union. Proponents see him as a “gatekeeper” who can clean up. The opponents, on the other hand, see the “bully” who goes after everyone who is weaker than him. There is truth in both images. I think a lot of Republicans miss Reagan and a lot of Democrats miss Obama. I miss them both, says Solvik-Olsen.

– Who wins?

– I’m pretty sure Biden will win. In February, I believed in Trump. Then the economic factors spoke in their favor, but that has changed because of the crown. He has handled the crown in a way that has significantly undermined confidence. When even he got sick himself, because he was careless, his own words get the better of him time and time again.

On average, Solvik-Olsen is concerned with how politicians in both the Green Party and the United States communicate with voters.

Babler

– If Trump had stopped tweeting, it would have been easier to understand and discuss his policy. He has put himself in this situation. If he had behaved normally as president, he probably would have been re-elected. Much of the policy that he has followed has been quite good. The problem is that he just stands there chatting and talking as if he were sitting in a pub. This is not how a leader should be.

Solvik-Olsen had been a high-profile Transport Minister for nearly five years when in August 2018 he abruptly announced his departure. He was going to accompany his wife, who had gotten a job as a doctor in a hospital in Alabama. He then resigned as deputy director of Frp.

Ketil Solvik-Olsen: Ready for the American Dream

Internally at Frp, only two names are currently flagged as relevant to succeed Siv Jensen: Solvik-Olsen and Sylvi Listhaug. Today no one knows which of them has the most support.

But everyone agrees that the two are very different types of politicians.

Full return

And now Solvik-Olsen is making a full return: he has agreed to take first place for Rogaland Frp and wants to return to the party leadership.

Already this weekend, he will be elected to the central board during the delayed national meeting in Gardermoen, while the election of the vice presidents will take place at the regular national meeting this spring.

– How did you, as a Norwegian politician, experience what it was like to live in the United States?

– You will find groups of polarized screams and screams, a bit like SIAN and anti-racists here at home. But the regular American you meet has more nuances than you might realize, and most argues with agreement, says Solvik-Olsen.

Much of the American debate has centered on racism, police killings, protests, and the removal of statues that hailed the heroes of the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Ku Klux Klan

– Many of the statues that were demolished in the United States while we were there were installed by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. They were created to support racial division. These statues have no justification, and it was fine that they were dismantled. But when some destroy the Lincoln statues, it becomes a parody, as happened in Oslo, where some would remove the Churchill statue.

The former secretary of state lived in the northern state of Michigan for four years in the 1990s, but the southern state of Alabama is completely different.

– The city of Birmingham has a history of apartheid. What surprised me was how thorough racial politics was in parts of the United States until the 1960s. Especially in the southern states where we lived. The stories I heard from people in the local community were fascinating and terrifying, and broke with America’s ideals of “freedom and justice for all. It was known that blacks were not treated well, that schools were segregated and that they were not allowed to eat in the same restaurants. And it was known that there were forces of evil among the Ku Klux Klan. But the idea of ​​how it permeated the entire public administration, the police, the judiciary, the entire apparatus of power in many cities, was serious and shocking, he says seriously.

Worship

Solvik-Olsen and her family searched for black environments themselves.

– It was heartwarming to experience how welcome I felt when I attended several services at Birmingham’s oldest black church, which in the 1960s was bombarded by white racists. Fortunately, there are many who seek reconciliation rather than ongoing conflict, Solvik-Olsen says.

It also goes a long way toward fully supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.

– I met a taxi driver who marched with Martin Luther King and he told me about it. Those who have experienced something like this have a justified resentment that American society has failed to relate to or resolve.

– Is this what has impressed you the most?

– Yes. I have talked to many, both black and white, who can tell how things went. Racial segregation in the city was not the exception, it was the rule. There are those who burn shops and break windows, like in Minneapolis. I didn’t feel it represented the general attitude between blacks and whites in Birmingham. It’s wrong when that’s the image Norwegians have. It was a night in Birmingham where there were tendencies to riot. But you hear most people say “no, don’t do it.” Very few begin to break windows, it is not representative, he says.

– No one in Frp talks more about immigration than Oslo Frp. Nobody talks less about immigration than Møre og Romsdal Frp. Oslo Frp gets five percent support, Møre og Romsdal gets 22 percent. What do you read about him?

Single track

– It is often more relevant to discuss immigration policy where there is more immigration, and especially where poor integration is experienced. At the same time, I think that if you seem a bit one-sided on an issue, you lose appeal. Most people also need to know what to do with their local schools, kindergartens, and roads. There, I think good FRP counties like Møre og Romsdal and Rogaland manage to have a wider range of problems to play on. Because people care about jobs, the creation of local value, the school path. If the only thing that Oslo Frp breaks through the sound barrier with is immigration issues, then there are a lot of people who think it’s okay, but you have to have something else.

– You wrote in your book that you have a smoother shape than Sylvi Listhaug. Can you specify it?

– I think the FRP should aim to get the prime minister. That we must be the greatest on the bourgeois side. And I think that’s realistic. But then we must communicate so that people will listen to us, understand us and trust us. You can be clear even if you are kind in your voice. If we choose words that are too sharp, we run the risk that many people think that “he is right, but then he was violent”. Therefore, we must be vigilant when we communicate. Is it getting too strong? Will you just vote out? For people who are only moderately concerned with politics, we should avoid looking violent and unadorned. I think many more will listen to you if you speak with more balance. What it has to do with being clear isn’t about yelling as loud as possible to be heard, says Solvik-Olsen.

– For spisst

In 2005, Frp received 22.1 percent. In 2009 22.9 percent. In last year’s local elections, Frp received 8.8 percent.

– I think that if we can speak in a more calm way, but we are still clear about what we want to say, then more people will listen to us. Later, more, both the voters of the Conservatives and the SP, will return to us. And the industrial workers of the Labor Party. Then we can become the biggest party.

– Is today’s Frp too sharp?

– Yes. In some areas, like immigration, we are not as balanced as our policies are. In my book I write that we should have a slightly softer voice, but still clear. If people react to the vocabulary, then it is difficult to get them to listen to the content. Some say that all publicity is good publicity. I’m not there.

Solvik-Olsen arrives for the interview with VG on a bicycle so expensive that he has not dared to reveal the sum to his wife.

He has six more. The eighth was stolen the other day.

Almost every day it runs the 414 meters from central Oslo to Voksenåsen, above Holmenkollen.

Cyclist

– When the Oslo Frp in local elections is reduced to five percent support, what is it about?

– In the United States, I experienced Frp only through the media. I hardly saw positive posts from Oslo Frp about kindergartens, schools or soft road users. For me, as a cyclist, there was little to gain. The times Frp was mentioned in relation to cycling, it was always negative. Are we then sufficiently aware of how a blunt message is perceived by people who do not follow the political debate on a daily basis? It is not good when our politics is perceived differently than our position really is. In the 2000s, we led the breadth of our policy much better than we have been lately, says Solvik-Olsen.