SATAN RULES! The Shocking True Story Behind Obama’s Nobel Win

by Daniel Kalder

Like any halfway sentient member of the human race I reacted to the news of Obama’s Nobel win last week with disbelief, soon giving way to scorn and ridicule, before experiencing a nasty sinking feeling.

Just a week after the naughty boys and girls at the IOC had delivered a blow to the president’s majestic ego, some idiots in Norway had decided to puff that balloon right back up again. And lo, there was Mr. Obama on TV, floating about in front of a podium, chin held aloft, doing the old mock humility routine as he wittered on about his daughter and his dog: just a regular guy, doing my best to save the world. Aw, shucks.

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Since that moment of world-historical absurdity a great deal of commentary has been produced. As even Mr. Obama admits he does not deserve to stand in the company of earlier laureates such as Mandela or Mother Theresa, the focus has thus been on the ulterior motives of the Nobel Committee. Was this a late snub to Bush? Condescending encouragement to America for electing someone all right-thinking Norwegians approve of? Victor Davis Hanson offered this elegant piece, anatomizing social democratic Norway and its pathologies. However the one factor which nobody has discussed, and yet which I think is central is-

SATAN.

Wait- don’t run away. I am not suggesting that Satan himself, Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies was sitting on the Nobel Committee, instructing his diabolical Norwegian minions to hand the prize to Obama: far from it. What goes on in the bowels of hell is ‘above my pay grade’, as a certain Nobel laureate once said. But there are one or two things I do know about, and when it comes to Norway those things are: they have a lot of oil, they used to be Vikings, and they love Satan.

Now as visitors to a serious political site such as this you are perhaps unaware that Norway is home to the world’s most extreme, satanic music, known to aficionados as Black Metal. As the name suggests, the lyrical themes are dark, frequently referencing evil, murder, rape and Satan, screamed over a backdrop of distorted guitars, crashing drums, etc. Unlike American bands however who are content merely to growl a bit and collect the check, some Norwegian groups have actually followed their lyrical themes to their diabolical conclusions and committed actual acts of suicide/evil/murder. In the early 1990s Euronymous of the band Mayhem is reported to have made a stew with the brains of his friend Dead after the latter had shot himself. Then there was a spate of church burnings of which Samoth and Faust, both of the band Emperor, were subsequently found guilty. However these acts of wickedness pale in comparison to the willful malice of the legendary Varg Vikernes of Burzum. Good old Varg actually murdered Euronymous (that’s the chap who ate Dead’s brains) in 1993, following which he was sentenced to 21 years in a luxury resort. Sorry, I mean a Norwegian prison. In prison he reportedly changed his name to Varg Quisling Vikkernes in honour of the notorious Nazi collaborator and minister-president of occupied Norway, then switched his allegiance from Satan to Odin, and so on. He was released in May after serving sixteen years.

Now the question I am sure you are asking is: why Norway? I’ve often wondered that myself, and my own theory is very simple. Every year, Norway is placed at the top of the best places to live in the world list. As everybody knows, this is actually a list of the most boring countries in the world. And so, confronted with a society that is wealthy, homogenous, lacking in any great tension and where the government supplies everybody with generous benefits, certain elements of Norwegian youth yearn for an element of risk or danger in their lives. They used to be Vikings after all. In an effort to shock themselves into feeling something, they escape into an ‘evil’ musical subculture, which a few participants have pushed to great extremes. There is another attraction: Varg and Euronymous attracted international attention to a country whose culture is deemed irrelevant by the rest of the world, and thus the best way for an ambitious young Norwegian rock band to have their music heard outside Norway is by embracing ‘evil’ and jumping onto the Satanic bandwagon. In Denmark we see a similar phenomenon in the career of film director Lars Von Trier, whose entire ouvre is predicated on shocking an imagined bourgeoisie with a radical aesthetic and scenes of rape, genital mutilation etc. Anaesthetized to the point of unconsciousness by life in his social democratic paradise, and yet craving attention and sensation like an adolescent boy Trier lashes out with peacocking displays of ‘rebellion’, like those Norwegian Black Metal types. He too formed a school of like-minded aesthetes who tried to ride his coat tails into the international arena.

So where am I going with this? Ah yes. Well basically, I am wondering whether the ageing, posturing non-entities on the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, ensconced in safe, dull, mind-numbingly boring Norway do not also suffer from feelings of boredom, irrelevance and invisibility. Who cares after all about the opinions of Thorbjorn Jagland? Not me. However as they are too old to thrash about on guitars or drums, have no directorial talent like von Trier, and do not want to go to prison like Varg they instead opt to shock us by handing out millions of dollars as a ‘peace prize’ for frivolous reasons.  Give the prize to someone who actually deserves it, such as Dr. Sima Samar or Dr. Denis Mukwege and the world’s media will not talk much or remember long. Give it to Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama on the other hand and the world, especially America will sit up and take notice. For a few days Norway, and more importantly the Nobel Committee, will matter. They will exist in the eyes of the world.

I don’t know. Is this too simple, too frivolous a theory? Frankly, who cares? If it is, then I’m in good company. It was also frivolous of the Nobel Committee to hand the prize to someone whose accomplishments are so meager, and it was equally frivolous, I think, of Mr. Obama to accept. Has he not had enough of the world’s adulation already? Are there not other individuals who deserve recognition more?


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Posted Oct 13th 2009 at 8:28 am in Culture, News, Obama, Political Humor, Politics | 85 Comments