Subscribe
In the campaign ahead of the Icelandic referendum on 29 August 2026 about EU membership, Icelandic Foreign Minister Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, leader of the Yes Movement, and her supporters repeatedly invoked supposedly sinister foreign forces: Putin supported the No campaign; Icelanders should reject Trump and embrace Europe; the No campaign was imitating the Brexit campaign in Great Britain. These allegations did not catch on. The campaign was largely fought over the question: Did Iceland gain more than it would lose by leaving the European Economic Area, where she was a member of the Single Market, and joining the EU, transferring control over fisheries, agriculture, foreign trade, and monetary affairs to Brussels?
No Contributions to Brexit
One minor item from the foreign press, however, should be corrected because it has been widely quoted in Iceland. It originally appeared on the website Follow the Money a day before the referendum: an assertion that rich Icelanders had poured money into the Brexit campaign. The evidence cited was that, on my initiative, between 2014 and 2018 several Icelandic companies donated to two think tanks, first to the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe (IDDE), which briefly operated, and then to New Direction, which is closely affiliated with the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR, previously ACRE). But as I stressed to the FTM reporters, these donations were unrelated to the 2016 Brexit campaign. They were intended for several projects on which I worked, including books, conferences, seminars and lectures, in Iceland and elsewhere. Detailed information about those projects is available on the website of the think tank RNH, the Icelandic Research Centre for Innovation and Economic Growth, of which I am the academic director.
An Icelandic Initiative?
It is manifestly untrue that Icelanders poured money into the Brexit campaign. I have no idea whether IDDE was involved in that campaign, but the projects I worked on with them (and with others) had nothing to do with Brexit. Nevertheless, the Icelandic government broadcaster, RÚV, published the FTM report the same day under the headline ‘Contributions from Icelandic companies to Brexit Campaign Reported’, without consulting me. There were no such contributions. Yet the timing, one day before the referendum, raises the suspicion that the initiative for this news item came from the Yes Camp in Iceland. It was also immediately and approvingly quoted on the Facebook accounts of many vocal supporters of EU membership, including Professors Thorvaldur Gylfason and Gylfi Magnússon.
Works on Totalitarianism
The most visible project I worked on with IDDE was the republication, online and in print, of works against totalitarianism, translated into Icelandic during the past battle of ideas between democrats and totalitarians. In 2015, three such works were published: Articles on Communism by British philosopher Bertrand Russell; Women in Stalin’s Prison Camps by Gulag inmates Elinor Lipper from Switzerland and Aino Kuusinen from Finland; and Out of the Night by German Comintern agent Jan Valtin, whose real name was Richard Krebs. In 2016, five such works were published: the secret speech about Stalin’s crimes by Nikita S. Khrushchev, with, as an addendum, Lenin’s political testament; El campesino: Life and Death in the Soviet Union by Valentín González, a general in the Spanish Republican army and a Gulag inmate; two books on oppression in the Baltic states, Baltic Eclipse by Professor Ants Oras and Estonia. A Study in Imperialism by Swedish-Estonian journalist Andres Küng; and Service, Servitude, Escape by Ingrian priest Aatami Kuortti, who escaped in 1930 to Finland from the Gulag. I edited and introduced these eight works and had the Public Book Club—founded in 1955 to resist totalitarianism—publish them. They were all identified on the verso of their title pages as published in cooperation with IDDE (and others).
False Narrative
This falsehood seems designed to promote the narrative that Icelandic fishing firms hijacked the referendum. This narrative might enable EU enthusiasts to dismiss the clear result: 52.8 per cent voted against resuming negotiations on EU membership. Although this alleged Brexit connection was certainly a minor issue, with no impact on the referendum, the Icelandic government broadcaster, RÚV, under a legal duty to be unbiased, did its best to support this narrative.