Commentary, Cato Litangen, head of Mimeta.
(Based on generative AI tools and retrieval-augumented real time data search)

The Trump administration’s withdrawal from key digital‑rights and cultural‑governance bodies marks a deliberate clash of visions with countries such as Norway, which invest in the same institutions to protect artistic and cultural freedom. While the United States frames these organizations as threats to sovereignty and vehicles of “progressive ideology”, Norway sees them as essential multilateral infrastructure for safeguarding human rights in both digital and cultural spheres.

Sovereignty versus multilateral norms
At the heart of the US move is an assertion of unencumbered sovereignty. The presidential order labels 66 organizations, including the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC), the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE), ICCROM and IFACCA, as “wasteful”, “ineffective” or “harmful”, and as components of a “sprawling architecture of global governance” that allegedly constrains US policy choices. Senior officials argue that these bodies no longer serve US interests and have been captured by a “progressive” agenda detached from national priorities.

The logic is simple: any forum that produces shared standards on internet governance, cultural heritage or arts policy is suspect if those standards can later be invoked to criticize US behaviour.

Norway’s stated foreign‑policy line is almost the mirror image. In its international strategy for freedom of expression and UN policy documents, Norway explicitly commits to strengthening international norms and institutions as a way to protect free expression and cultural rights. Where Washington sees constraining “global governance”, Oslo sees necessary rule‑based frameworks that buffer individuals, especially artists, journalists and minorities, against arbitrary power. The same multilateral constraints that the US seeks to escape are, for Norway, the main protective architecture.

Digital space, control versus rights‑based governance
This divergence is sharpest in the digital field. FOC and GFCE are portrayed in US rhetoric as redundant, ideologically skewed and “anti‑American”, and they are lumped together with climate and development bodies slated for defunding. The implicit concern is that multistakeholder processes will lock in human‑rights‑heavy language on surveillance, content moderation and platform governance, language that could be turned back on US domestic practices.

Norway uses the same platforms very differently. Speaking on behalf of FOC at the UN Human Rights Council, Norway and partners underline that human rights must remain at the centre of digital technologies and insist on a global, free, open and secure internet. By hosting the Internet Governance Forum and engaging in GFCE‑type capacity building, Norway seeks to align cyber‑resilience and security with democratic values, rather than against them. In effect, the US treats these fora as dangers to regulatory freedom, while Norway treats them as tools to prevent states, its own included, from sliding into digitally mediated censorship.

Cultural heritage and arts, depoliticising versus politicising culture
The same pattern repeats in cultural governance. ICCROM and IFACCA are not powerful enforcement bodies, they are technical and policy networks that disseminate standards on heritage protection and cultural policy. Yet they are swept into the US narrative about “unaccountable” international elites and progressive cultural agendas. Withdrawal lowers external expectations on how the US deals with cultural property, heritage in conflict and publicly funded art, precisely at a time when culture is heavily contested in domestic politics.

Norway, in contrast, is doubling down. It funds ICCROM’s World Heritage Leadership Programme and frames this as investing in inclusive and participatory heritage governance, linking cultural protection to sustainable development and community rights. Through Arts Council Norway’s engagement in IFACCA, it aligns itself with global debates on arm’s‑length arts funding, cultural diversity and artists’ rights. For Norway, these institutions help depoliticise decisions about which art and heritage deserve support, by embedding them in professional and rights‑aware frameworks. For the US administration, loosening those frameworks creates more room to use culture‑war criteria in funding and preservation decisions.

Implications for artistic freedom
Analytically, the same set of institutions underpin two opposing projects. The US withdrawal strategy aims to re‑nationalise control over information, culture and the arts, and to minimise multilateral scrutiny and norm‑based constraints. Norway’s participation strategy aims to internationalise protections for artistic and cultural freedom, by embedding them in shared standards and collaborative mechanisms. For artists, cultural workers and digital‑rights defenders, this divergence is not abstract, it shapes whether rights claims can be grounded in robust international frameworks, or are left to the shifting preferences of national governments.

How US Retreat and Norway’s Engagement Shape the Future of Artistic and Digital Freedom

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