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Pål Steigan
Pål Steigan
	Pål Steigan lecturing at Parkteateret at a seminar about author Tron Øgrim in 2007
Leader of the Workers' Communist Party
	In office; 1975–1984
Preceded by	Sigurd Allern
Succeeded by	Kjersti Ericsson
Leader of the Red Electoral Alliance
	In office; 1975–1979
Preceded by	Sigurd Allern
Succeeded by	Hilde Haugsgjerd
Personal details
Born	31 May 1949 (age 75); Oslo, Norway
Other political; affiliations	Workers' Communist Party; Red Electoral Alliance
Residence(s)	Oslo, Norway

Pål Steigan (born 31 May 1949) is a Norwegian writer and politician, best known as founder of the newspaper Klassekampen and the website Steigan.no. He was leader of the Maoist Workers' Communist Party, AKP (m-l) from 1975 to 1984, and co-leader of the Red Electoral Alliance (RV) until 1979.^[1]^[2] Both parties were small fringe parties that were never represented in parliament during his tenure. He co-founded Klassekampen as a monthly periodical in 1969, and during his leadership AKP developed the periodical into a newspaper in 1977. He later founded the alternative news website Steigan.no that is described by mainstream Norwegian media as a platform of Russian propaganda, conspiracy theories, racism and transphobia.^[3]^[4]^[5]

Workers Communist Party, AKP (m-l)

He co-founded Klassekampen as a monthly periodical in 1969, and during his leadership AKP (m-l) developed the periodical into a newspaper in 1977.

During his leadership of AKP (m-l), Steigan traveled to countries under communist regimes, such as China, Czechoslovakia, Albania and Cambodia (Democratic Kampuchea).^[1] He met Mao Zedong, Enver Hoxha and Pol Pot.^[6]

After meeting the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in 1978, he began to support the regime,^[7] later admitting his support for the genocidal Khmer Rouge was a mistake explaining that he now believed it was not Marxist.^[8] He has continued to be criticised for bearing a personal responsibility for his political support to the regime.^[7]

In 1978, he told an interviewer from The Call, the newspaper of the American Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist), that since the foundation of the party five years earlier "we have been waging a struggle against two brands of revisionism" in Norway, "the Brezhnevist, Moscow revisionist type party, which is the old so-called Norwegian Communist Party, and a newer Eurorevisionist party."^[9] According to Steigan in the same interview: "[I]t’s obvious that the Soviet social-imperialists are planning to take Norway in the initial stages of a war over Europe."^[10]

He is a critic of capitalism, writing that it "has inflicted so many defeats upon the working class and people all over the world that it’s hard to give an account of them."^[11]

Steigan.no

Steigan founded the self-proclaimed "anti-globalist" alternative news site Steigan.no that has been widely criticized for promoting Russian propaganda, conspiracy theories, racism and transphobia.^[4]^[5] The website has been described by extremism researcher John Færseth as a platform of conspiracy theories and pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda,^[3]^[12] and as an example of "red–brown convergence" with links to the alt-right.^[13]

According to the fact checking website Faktisk.no, Steigan is part of an alternative and far-right echo chamber that also includes Document.no, Rights.no, Resett and Lykten.no, and where individuals linked to Stop Islamisation of Norway play a prominent role.^[14] In 2022 Faktisk.no wrote that Steigan is the main promoter of Russian propaganda among alternative media in Norway.^[15]^[16]^[17]

The secretary-general of the left-wing Red party Benedikte Pryneid Hansen said the leadership of the party shares the view that Steigan is a platform of "onesided Russian war propaganda, conspiracy theories, racism and transphobia",^[5] and that the blog is increasingly characterized by "extreme conspiracy theories."^[18] Anne-Marith Rasmussen, the president of Red in Troms and chair of the party’s LGBT committee, said Steigan is a "blog that promotes racism, homophobia and transphobia" as well as Russian propaganda, and that is a threat to democracy.^[19]

Steigan was denied membership in the Norwegian Association of Newspaper Editors (Norsk Redaktørforening), with the rationale that Steigan.no is not a journalistic medium, but rather an activist website that disregards accepted journalistic principles.^[20]

Some of the blog's writers include prominent Norwegian anti-semite^[21] Hans Olav Brendberg and Swedish anti-transgender activist Kajsa Ekis Ekman.^[22]