Tron Øgrim place of birth Oslo
Politics and journalism
Born in Oslo, Øgrim was one of the most influential people in Norway's Marxist-Leninist movement in the sixties and seventies. He was one of the founders of the Workers' Communist Party, a party that strongly advocated the Chinese branch of communism. Tron was also central in founding the newspaper Klassekampen and in the publishing house Oktober.
Becoming a journalist after leaving politics in the eighties, Øgrim had a technology column in the Norwegian edition of PC World. He was known for his distinct writing style, where he rejected standard written Norwegian and, instead, wrote as he spoke, in a working class dialect. He also wrote science fiction novels under the pseudonym Eirik Austey.
Tron Øgrim was an early proponent of the Internet in Norway, frequently traveling around the country giving lectures. In 1995, he argued for the Norwegian parliament to establish an Internet presence, claiming: "Without politicians online, there is no such thing as a democratic IT policy." Øgrim was also a supporter of the open-source movement. In his book Kvikksølv, he described Linux as "applied communism". He was a mainstay contributor of the Internet newsgroup Leftist Trainspotters, where he made thousands of posts, many relating to the political developments in Nepal.
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