Palme's Sweden Fading Fast
For 20 years I have been following the far right in Sweden, and this week marked the point where it became completely and utterly mainstream. There is no normal conservative party in Sweden any more.
The Things People Say
For the guts of 20 years now I’ve been writing about the normalisation of racism pretty much everywhere, but particularly in the Nordic region. It’s something that picked up speed after 9/11 when Muslims became, in the eyes of racists at least, a common enemy.
The race to the bottom began then, and recently it has snowballed, coursing through the hateful rampage of Anders Behring Breivik and culminating in the Christchurch massacre and Donald Trump and QAnon and the various burgeoning white supremacist movements around the world.
What is interesting to watch is how the boundaries of what is acceptable are pulled and stretched until calling brown people cockroaches is no longer an issue. The jump to hyperspace, from the dark corners of the internet to the mainstream discourse happen much quicker these days, and just as America saw off the threat of Trump, Sweden is teetering on the authoritarian edge.
This week has illustrated just how much racist dialogue has seeped into the Swedish discourse, rotting it from the inside. With a member of the “Christian” Democrats (believe me, there isn’t a single one of them that Christ would recognise as an ally) trying this week to convince the Swedish Twitterverse that the Nazis were actually a left-wing movement (“But they were National SOCIALISTS!”), the next election - due to be held in September 2022 - is likely to be the most openly racist in years.
Then there is the “Liberal” party which, in calling for language tests for citizenship, is dog-whistling its merry way towards the lads with the swastika tattoos and a coalition government with the Moderate Party (not moderate at all), the Liberals (not liberal at all), the Christian Democrats (not Christian at all) and the Sweden Democrats (not democrats at all, and founded by neo-Nazis).
That they will take power is all but inevitable, because this is what people here now want, and more and more they are telling us who they are.
This week, a soccer coach named Kim Bergstrand was asked about leaders and people who inspired him. Somewhat surprisingly, he chose the Nazis.
You can say what you want about some horrible people who lived in Germany in the 30s and 40s, but they got people to do things in a context. Methods and the like can be discussed, but there are certainly things that they also did that you can learn from. Or not to do. But I think you can look for leadership everywhere.
Needless to say, there was uproar, and to be fair to Bergstrand he did apologise, but that’s not the point - at the time he was asked the question, his mind immediately went to the Nazis and their style of leadership, and even before he offered that original answer he qualified it by talking about “horrible people” - but there was a “but”.
This, in other words, is not an accident. This is what he thinks, and his only regret is most likely saying it in public.
I lifted the issue in public on Twitter, only to have fans of his club Djurgården send me abusive messages (hell hath no fury like the scorned soccer supporter) - they seem to think his apology means the case is closed. It very much isn’t.
With the best will in the world, one tried to excuse or qualify his remarks and “put them into context” by noting that Bergstrand also mentioned that he had read four biographies of Winston Churchill - not realising, of course, that Churchill was another notorious racist.
This is where we are now - it has to be pointed out that there is no context in which the Nazis displayed the kind of leadership that can - or should - be learned from. Under no circumstances do you “have to hand it to them”.
The club, of course, has since said that the coach has their full support.
In such a banal incident lies the kernel of a political truth that no-one wants to see or hear and that no-one will acknowledge until it’s too late - Finland have had the far right in government, as have Norway and Denmark, and soon it will be Sweden’s turn.
The so-called “Moderates” are whingeing because the Covid vaccine will in some instances be given to at-risk immigrant groups before it is given to white, middle-class middle managers who have been working from the comfort of their homes for the last year.
In a few weeks it will be 35 years since Social Democrat prime minster Olof Palme was shot dead on a Stockholm street. The solidarity that he worked so hard to create in his political life is drawing its last few laboured breaths, soon to join him in the grave.
Selfishness is the new order of things, and the winners will be the people who always win. And the losers? We know who they are too.
The Climate
There is nothing like Stockholm when there’s a foot or two of snow and the temperature drops to well below freezing. After a while you can tell just from the feel of the cold on your face or the chill of the air in your lungs if it’s zero or minus five or minus ten.
After a few years of “green” Christmases, winter has made a welcome return this year. It snowed on Christmas Day and there has been a white covering on the ground almost ever since.
The heavier, more concerted falls cause a few accidents and tailbacks until the authorities manage to clear and salt the roads and pathways, but once that’s done it’s pleasant enough.
The snow swallows the echoes, and while taking a walk in a pair of solid winter boots all you will hear is the soft crump under your footsteps. Soon the snow will melt and life will burst forth again, but for now, in a time of uncertainty, the silence is welcome.
The First Few Pages
This week I made a decision that I didn’t want to reach 50 years of age without having given reading James Joyce a good go.
I’ve tried to read Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses before and failed within a few pages - none of it made sense to me, and no-one wants to read books that make them feel incompetent and ignorant.
I always thought of Joyce’s writing to be a bit elitist, but that was just my way of admitting that I couldn’t understand what he was trying to do.
This week I bought his combined works for a whole euro on my tablet and started reading Dubliners, and I was immediately disgusted with myself that I hadn’t done it years ago. Not only is it accessible, the pictures he paints with his words on the page are extraordinarily vivid.
I still want to read Ulysses as soon as possible, but for now I’m content to walk before I can run.
The Hardest Question
A few weeks back a young man who had recently moved to Stockholm named Eoghan O’Connor asked me if I’d like to take part in his podcast about books, and I said yes. Then he asked my what my favourite book of all time was and it is without a shadow of a doubt the hardest question I have ever had to answer.
It’s not because there are so many great books out there that have had a massively profound effect on me - there are, but in particular there are two, amd I find it almost impossible to choose between the two.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is sa most remarkable piece of writing. The first time I read it I did so in one sitting - the richness of its language and how she uses it to wrestle with the most deeply human themes is stunning, and I still can’t understand how it came to be seen as a horror story (even if parts of it are quite horrific).
In the end, though, I settled for Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy, which I first read in my late teens and which formed pretty much everything I feel about everything as an adult, from the idea of a united Ireland to the uselessness of the Catholic church to the relationships we have, especially with other men, and how that kinship and understanding is vital to our ability to function in society.
You can listen to the conversation here.
The Podcast
This newsletter (and indeed the podcast) have been concerned with the subject of face-punching to an almost unfeasible degree lately, what with my trip to Abu Dhabi and so on.
This week a BBC documentary about boxing and crime boss Daniel Kinahan led to another conversation about fighting, this time with Kieran Cunningham, who is the chief sports writer with the Irish Daily Star.
Both of us love boxing, but despise what it has become; if you want to find out why, have a listen.
The Sign-off
I hope that opening salvo about Sweden and the far right didn’t put you off your breakfast, and that your Saturday or Sunday morning is still looking good. I’d love to bring that little bit of sunshine into your life every week but sometimes the stories I have to tell aren’t all that positive, and this was one of those weeks.
That said, I don’t let it get me down. I was talking to a friend in the music business here last night and he was asking if I needed any help publicising two books that I have written together with another mutual friend and that are due to be published on March 4 - in return I was promising him that he will be providing the soundtracks if ever the books are turned into films.
The novels are in Swedish and about a fictional soccer club that we dreamed up, and are aimed at young readers. The first one, a page-turner about match-fixing, was first published by another imprint, but it closed soon after; luckily one of the biggest publishers in Sweden has now picked us up and we’re soon publishing that one, plus its successor, which is about bullying.
It’s nice to know that whoever is in power, there are always some people who have your back. All we can do is to continue to create, to keep telling our stories, to keep showing those around us that there is space for us at the table, even if we have to elbow our way in there.
Be good to yourselves, and each other.
A chilling read on a couple of fronts. I will check out Frankenstein and The Dubliners, in response I offer The Short Stories of Mark Twain and any PG Wodehouse, neither of which were big into bloodiness or frights. Though Mark Twain does touch on cannibalism and shooting editors at some stage. Good luck with the YA books in March.