Red Youth (Norway)

Red Youth
Rød Ungdom
Leader Linn-Elise Øhn Mehlen
Deputy Leader Tobias Lund, Tomine Sandal
Secretary General Anja Ariel Tørnes Brekke
Founded 1963
Headquarters Oslo
Ideology Revolutionary socialism[1]
Communism[1]
Feminism[1]
Mother party Red Party
Website
Official Website

Red Youth (Bokmål: Rød Ungdom, Nynorsk: Raud Ungdom, shortened RU) is a Norwegian revolutionary youth league. It is the youth organization of the Red party, a merger of the former Red Electoral Alliance and the Workers' Communist Party. The current leader of Red Youth is Linn-Elise Øhn Mehlen.

Politics

It is an organisation with three main principles: socialism, feminism and anti-racism. Their goals are typically communist; they aim to organise the working class in preparation for an eventual overthrow of the capitalist system. RY got 29 local groups all over Norway.

RU wants to increase democracy in Norway by banning far-right parties that attack democracy from being formed while distancing themselves from the Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. The Red Youth is active on several political fronts, supporting the Palestinian resistance and opposing racism, sexism, and the European Union.

Since the election of the Red-Green government in 2005, Red Youth has been working to push the Labour Party (Norway) and the Socialist Left Party in a more leftist direction. In August 2008, a faction of communist dissidents left the youth organization to form Revolutionary Communist Youth, the youth affiliate of Serve the People.

School Politics

Red Youth wants to abolish homework and exams. They want to set the focus away from grades, and focus more on individual students.

Activism

Red Youth is an activist organization and has performed political actions and media stunts directed towards Norwegian politicians. One of the more well-known actions of the Red Youth, in support of gay rights, interrupted the Christian Democratic Party' national meeting in 2004 in an attempt to expose and highlight what they perceived as the Christian Democrats' homophobia.[2][3] Also in 2004, they tried to arrest the Conservative Minister of Education, Kristin Clemet, for crimes against Norwegian students.[4]

Several members of the Red Youth were arrested in 2005, after trying to charge the Parliament of Norway in what was up until then a peaceful anti-racist action. The Red Youth also built a refugee asylum in the garden of the Conservative Minister of Local Government Erna Solberg in 2008, as a protest against her immigration policies.[5] They have also drilled for oil in Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen's garden as a protest against oil drilling in the northern parts of Norway. In 2010, the Red Youth launched a campaign to collect 100,000 NOK to offer Siv Jensen, party leader of the Progress Party, to leave the country in response to her own party's proposal to offer immigrants the same sum to go back to their own countries.[6]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Rød Ungdom". Store norske leksikon. 7 December 2014.
  2. Tveranger, Ingveig; Hadland, Wenche Lamo (30 January 2004). "Ballettdansende rebell" (in Norwegian). Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 25 December 2009.
  3. "RU aksjonerte mot KrFs landsmøte" (Press release) (in Norwegian). Red Youth. 30 January 2004. Retrieved 25 December 2009.
  4. http://www.aftenposten.no/jobb/article851671.ece
  5. Viseth, Ellen Synnøve (2 August 2008). Dagsavisen (in Norwegian) http://www.dagsavisen.no/innenriks/article362004.ece. Retrieved 25 December 2009. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  6. Lilleås, Heidi Schei (15 October 2010). "- Vi gir 100.000 kroner til Siv om hun forlater landet" (in Norwegian). Nettavisen. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
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