Eivind Trædal and Lan Marie Nguyen Berg must be stupid if they really thought that all of Norway would either hail or remain silent about the announcement of their yet unborn. They are not, however. By announcing something private to everybody, they have all the artillery they need to stain society even browner than it is.
On social media, the married couple wrote, «Next spring we will be THREE. A tiny chap is growing n my stomach! It’s magic. Right now, our little boy or girl is no bigger than a troll. In April he will be far bigger, I suppose. Then we will have another reason for fighting for fresh air and secure ways to school in Oslo».
I cannot grasp the need of people to expose their children to the media; least of all an unborn child. Wishing to have a child is a beautiful and private act. It becomes personal after the birth; it concerns more people, family and friends. It is a universal event, one that must be protected from the general public until the child itself wishes to be the centre of interest. Trædal and Berg are no better than Anna Rasmussen, known for the blog, Mamma til Michelle («Michelle’s mother»). It does not pertain to people in Norway that celebrities are having babies. Also, one is not to become more of a celebrity by having a baby.
Furthermore, the unborn child is used in a campaign fronting the politics of Miljøpartiet De Grønne («The Environmental Party The Green»). «Then we will have another reason for fighting for fresh air and secure ways to school in Oslo». They have a clear insight on this. They must hope he or she will vote for MDG, if the party still exists in 2037.
With their background, Trædal and Berg knew perfectly well that the usual shit would beyond doubt appear on social media from a few people with verbal diarrhoea. Next, the opinions are regarded as utterly significant because they are spread on the Internet and the media. They themselves need not respond.
Trædal, of course, does manage to remain silent. He fires from Twitter, even after he has declared that he will not make any statement. «Sorry for the smiles and lack of modesty regarding our pregnancy! Here the routines have simply failed», he remarks. Presumably, he is preparing a long text which will soon be published in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet; there he has already published several chronicles.
Over 25.000 times, the issue in the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang about the insult has been shared. What a start for a still unborn child! A pregnancy is a vulnerable, intimate, and risky process; now, it is also publicly known long before it should be.
Trædal himself is one hater on the Internet, firing accusations about a person’s characteristics faster than his own keyboard. He sets the bar of labelling somebody a racist so low down that most keep their mouths shut. He ridicules people in screenshots, accompanied by the usual, «Deleting you now, you racist», at the end. For being one carrying blinkers and a confined worldview, he seems to know fairly well what to expect in response to his own initiatives. The man is the King of Twitter in Norway; he knows the rules of the game.
Presently, he has used his own unborn child fronting a campaign to attract attention and sympathy. This is rude, cynical, manipulating, and callous.
We live in a world in which there is distasteful vomit in the outskirts of the opinions on social media. This does not disappear over the night just because the married couple of Trædal/Berg becomes parents. They know that perfectly well. Therefore, ask once more, «What did they expect?» Maybe exactly what they got.
The married couple of course does not deserve to be insulted; nobody does. It is easy to disapprove of the worst remarks. Hereby done! Then, it is just words. And the married couple are fairly used to it. Confrontation is not something that they shrink from; one might say that they disarm it by making Trædal into the bold knight on Twitter while the more profiled Berg always addresses counter-arguments and press with a feigned smile. The tactics works; it annoys. They themselves do not respond to constructive criticism. Trædal’s method is to block and thus stigmatise people in the public debate as racists; the worst thing ever to be labelled. He is an inaccurate hater/shooter.
The private persons, Trædal and Berg, do not belong to the public. They deserve peace in their new, sensitive, and intimate situation. However, they have themselves mixed the private and the public together. And they have done so without asking the him or her who is still not present in this world whether it was all right.
Translated to English by Lars Hoem