Øyvind Strømmen - Selected Title Author
We are happy to present our selected title author Øyvind Strømmen. He has written HATE – Stories on the Far Right (original title: HAT. Fortellinger om ytre høyre). The book is one of NORLA’s Selected Titles of the autumn 2025.
What is your book about?
The book is about the far right in today’s Europe, and particularly about how far-right beliefs are being normalized in country after country. It’s also about how ideas that were once considered extreme are gradually making their way into mainstream politics. The core of this shift, among other things, is a longing for a supposed golden past, tied to ideas about national decline and fears of immigrants and societal change.
What inspired you to write this book?
In some ways, the book was born when I attended an AfD demonstration in Berlin in 2018. I felt like I was at some kind of festival of discontent. Although the actual book project came much later, in my mind, I kept returning to that demonstration while working on it – to the anger and frustration I witnessed there, and to the interflow of far-right and extreme-right ideas. At the same time, the book was, of course, also shaped by developments in the United States and by far-right election victories in several European countries in recent years. The United States forms part of the backdrop, but my main intention has been to write a book about Europe that highlights the common patterns and trends that transcend national borders.
Who is this book for?
This is a work of journalism, combining reportage techniques with interviews and lay-friendly presentations of research on the far right. By telling and interweaving a range of different stories about today’s far right, I wanted to create a clear and approachable book for a broad readership. In that sense, it is written for the ordinary, socially engaged citizen.
Read more
See full presentation of the book here
See all NORLA’s Selected Titles for the autumn 2025 here
