This picture, posted to a Facebook group for Norwegians critical of immigration, showing six empty bus seats, was mistaken for a group of women wearing burqas.
A group for Norwegians critical of immigration, called “Fedrelandet viktigst” or “Fatherland first,” reacted very sharply to the image of the empty bus seats. This group is 13,000-strong, for people “who love Norway and appreciate what our ancestors fought for.” Johan Slattavik, who calls himself “Norway’s worst web troll and proud of it,” posted the controversial photo just “for a joke.” The image encapsulated the problems with discrimination Norway has been facing after an influx of Muslim immigrants over the past few years.
Slattavik told Nettavisen and Norway’s TV2 that he wanted to “highlight the difference between legitimate criticism of immigration and blind racism”, and was “interested to see how people’s perceptions of an image are influenced by how others around them react. I ended up having a good laugh.” He said about the reaction to the picture: “… I would say that has also been educational … I have thought about the differences between legitimate criticism of immigration to Europe and blind racism and xenophobia. I wanted to look into these differences: something I think I have achieved by setting up this practical joke and watching the reaction.”
It went viral in Norway after Sindre Beyer, a former Labour party MP, published 23 pages of screenshots of the group’s outraged comments. “What happens when a photo of some empty bus seats is posted to a disgusting Facebook group, and nearly everyone thinks they see a bunch of burqas?” he asked in a post shared more than 1,800 times. “So much hatred against empty bus seats certainly shows that prejudice wins out over wisdom,” Beyer said.
“It looks really scary, should be banned. You can never know who is under there. Could be terrorists with weapons,” was just one of the comments, according to a translation from the local website. Others described it as “frightening” and “tragic.” Other comments read: “Ghastly. This should never happen,” “Islam is and always will be a curse,” and “Get them out of our country – frightening times we are living in.”
Norway’s right-wing government recently proposed a law that would ban some forms of dress worn by Muslim women in schools and universities — the first Scandinavian country to do so. The comments suggested the vast majority of the anti-immigrant group’s members saw the photo as evidence of the ongoing “Islamification” of Norway, although a small number pointed out it was in fact a picture of bus seats.
The head of Norway’s Antiracist Centre, Rune Berglund Steen, told the site that people plainly “see what they want to see – and what these people want to see are dangerous Muslims”.
Photo Credits: Patheos
