By derimot*no - Dan-Viggo Bergtun - July 12, 2025

Democracy is rotting – and we pretend nothing happened. For almost fifty years, I have faithfully turned up for every general election. Time and again, I have cast my ballot, carried by the belief that popular rule matters and that my vote is a building block in a common democratic project.

But that belief is about to shatter. For what we call democracy today is more like a play than a real popular rule. Power has moved out of the hands of the people and into closed spaces, far away from our influence. What remains is a ritual in which we still participate, but which no longer gives us real governance.

I am not just disappointed. I am deeply concerned. Because what was once our common strength: trust, openness and commitment is being suffocated. Not by a coup. But by something far more dangerous: systematic, slow and cold decay, camouflaged as “stability” and “accountability.”

What does it really mean to vote today? How much power is left in the ballot? When I go to the polls, I choose between parties that talk differently but do the same thing. The direction is given anyway. NATO, EEA, privatization, centralization, military buildup, submission to the EU and the US … it all goes together. It doesn't matter if we vote blue, red or green … the machinery continues anyway. This is not democracy. It's theater.

From people's government to market management

Democracy was sold out when we let the market take over society's governance tools. When energy policy, healthcare, education and defense are subordinated to commercial interests, what is left? When public services are packaged into corporate forms and run for profit. Where is the power of the people?

And worse: When our laws are no longer adopted in Norway, but are copied from Brussels and pasted into the Storting's minutes, without debate, then we are no longer the ones who govern the country. Then we are an administrative satellite. An obedient daughter state that nods, smiles and obeys.

Does anyone remember that we voted NO to the EU – twice?

The press has failed and people are keeping quiet.

Where the media should have been a watchdog, it has become a house dog. Where critical questions should have been asked, state-authorized opinion and NATO-friendly propaganda are served instead. Those who try to sound the alarm, whether it is about foreign policy, vaccine profiteering, war rhetoric or the erosion of civil rights, are ridiculed, censored or labeled as “conspiracy theorists.”

Freedom of speech, this pillar of any democracy, is withering. We don't dare to say what we think anymore. Not at lunch, not at work, not in the newspaper, because we fear being pigeonholed, canceled or labeled as enemies of the "community". What kind of democracy is this; Where the fear of speaking the truth is greater than loyalty to the system?

The war machine marches on without the consent of the people

Norway, once a nation of peace, is now a willing accomplice in the US war machine. We send weapons. We build US bases on Norwegian soil. We allow foreign powers to operate freely in our own areas. And we keep quiet as if this is natural, as if we have decided it together.

But we haven't decided that. The people have never been asked. And when someone dares to ask questions, about Ukraine, about Syria, about Libya, about Afghanistan, they are told that they support the "wrong side" and that they are "Putinists", "left-wing extremists", "nationalists", "whiners".

I have seen war. I have been there. I know what it does to people. It is not something we should be trifling with. And it is not something we should pretend is “for the sake of freedom” when it comes to resources, geopolitics, and great power logic.

A people without a government is just an audience.

We sit as spectators in our own society. We watch as decisions are made over our heads. We watch as rights are eroded, as inequalities increase, as the entire globe is militarized and digitalized. So we just nod and say, “I guess that’s how it has to be now.”

No. That's not how it has to be.

A people without control over their own direction is not free. A system where power slips away from the people is not a democracy, it is just a facade.

And this facade is starting to crack. The question is: Do we have the courage to look behind it?

I write this as someone who has voted. Who has believed. Who has spent his life participating. But now I say it clearly: The system we have today is not sustainable. It is no longer the people's system. It is a system of control. A system of obedience. A global market and war system in which we have only one role: to accept, not to govern.

It is high time to say no. No to obedience. No to siding with war. No to letting democracy be reduced to a ceremony.

We must rise up. Not with violence, but with clarity. With honesty. With independent media. With local organizing. With real, brave questions.

We must reclaim democracy before it is completely dead.

The post is taken from Steigan.no

Dan-Viggo Bergtun.

By Dan-Viggo Bergtun, a Norwegian UN veteran and public debater with a strong commitment to peace, human rights and veterans' welfare. He has had a long career in Norwegian and international veterans' work and has been a clear voice on issues of democracy and global security.

The text represents the author's opinion, not necessarily that of www.derimot.no.