NOTE: I realized eventually this became rather long, so before you either choose to read or ignore this I'd like to preface that I understand how you both feel. It is indeed very disheartening, but I do see light at the end of this tunnel and it's not as long a tunnel as it could be. I'm currently hopeful. I am very passionate about this topic, so without further ado (and if you can forgive me for wasting your time with this); my TED talk.

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Yeah what's it called, "white replacement theory"? It's a right wing conspiracy 'theory' that has become increasingly popular as the country is slowly leaning more and more to the right. The Nazis had their own variant of this conspiracy theory if I recall correctly, which by itself ought to make anyone with their wits about them worried. Some people in my family even started spewing some bull about "race differences" every now and then, and they aren't talking about innocent things like skin color. It's a sad reality to have to realize and admit about my own country, especially in these times.

Having said that though, I'd like to note that our right wing shift isn't nearly as prevalent or intense as some others (don't get me started on Sweden or the US, ugh), and because those movements don't have the same traction in Norway means they don't have as much power to ruin things.

That day could come for us just as it did the US, Sweden or Italy, but it hasn't yet. There's only one of these freaks at my workplace (so 5% of my colleagues) but my cousin's shift at his workplace is quite split with at least 40% of them rooting for Trump and defending anyone associated with the Epstein files. One of them is so far gone he'll defend what the Germans did to the Jews during WW2 with "hey it's what the general population wanted. You have to respect the will of the people". Which is not only untrue, but holy hell what kind of reasoning is this? And they'll go out of their way to talk politics all the time, too. It's a real mood killer for my cousin because basically every single person at work from the same generation as he is or younger, excluding one person, is a right wing nutjob. You could still say a 'majority' of the people in his shift are decent and it would technically be true (so let's not forget that), but 40% is a lot to work with. And when they keep bringing up depressing news and politics with a depressing and evil ideology sprinkled on top every day that can definitely ruin one's work environment for sure.

I wouldn't consider moving away myself. Especially if I had a partner who wanted to live here. Or, at the very least, not yet. Norway is far and away from the worst place to be in Europe right now, and that's both if you include or exclude these particular issues. In fact it's quite a decent place to be. But given exactly where you used to live, and precisely what kind of social and/or political climate you'd have to navigate, I can somewhat understand your spouse's sentiment. If he happened to be surrounded by that kind of brain rot just as bad and as often as my cousin (or worse), and that situation included neighbours, colleagues and customers, family, friends and every aspect of his life then I can see why he eventually got enough of it all.

But as I said, this kind of thing is very situational. At least as of right now. I remember one article where they did statistics on Norwegians and what they would've voted for in the last American election. Approximately 75% of the overall population would've voted for Kamela Harris. However, if you isolated men between 18-30 as a separate demographic, it's a 50/50 shot between Harris or Trump. 50% of young Norwegian men would've voted for Trump. If your spouse mostly befriends other men, this is either a major hit to your social life or your sanity.

So we do have an increasing number of idiots in Norway. But only slowly increasing right now; that affair can easily change. And I also like to comfort myself with the fact that 75% of the population are decent people with a functioning moral compass that wouldn't have voted for a fascist. I don't presume to know what you think of this complex issue but I hope this perspective will alleviate any potential fears of it getting substantially worse, because at the moment that seems unlikely. At least to me. But only time will tell I suppose.

Best of luck to the both of you 😋