Anything Goes: The Swedish Election Bombshell

In the end its still a political class of spinless statists, controlled by the external forces, vs working class. People should read the 1971 book by British author Roland Huntford, The New Totalitarians. Huntford analyzes the political and social climate of early 1970s Sweden, and argues that it resembles a benevolent totalitarian state in the mould of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Summary

At the time that Huntford wrote, Sweden had been governed by the Social Democratic Party of Sweden for over 40 years. Huntford argues that this had led to the complete dominance of socialist thought at all levels of the government; including the bureaucracy and the judiciary; which were controlled by a powerful interconnecting network of Social Democratic labour unions, lobby groups, and partisan organizations. He also points to the fact that these networks had made it very difficult for non-socialists to achieve any position of real power in Sweden, but noted that few Swedes seemed to view this politicization of their state with concern.

The New Totalitarians also analyzes Swedish society in a broader historical context. The author argued that, since the country had bypassed the feudal system and had always been a very centralized state, Sweden had never developed a civic culture that champions individualism like most other countries of Western Europe. He thus argues that the country's political culture and institutions were very much the product of a unique socio-political context, and thus not applicable to otherwise comparable Western nations.

At the same time, he analyses how sex was being "politicized" by design from above. He argued that the changes in the sexual behaviour of the Swedes was a matter of official direction and that sexual liberalism had become the vicarious passion of a society trapped in boredom and "engineered consent".

"The ultimate crime in Brave New World is to deviate from a norm. That norm is innocent of ethics and morality, and decided on grounds of expediency alone. The situation is already a doctrine of Swedish law. Gone is the idea of right or wrong, or the moral content of an action. Crime is now defined as social deviation. The test of whether an offence is punishable, however, is solely whether it has awkward effects on the collective. Analogously, in non-criminal spheres the worst solecism is to be different. Sweden, like Soviet Russia, belongs to that group of countries in which 'individuality' has a derogatory ring.

All this is not because Sweden is so far advanced but because, in all senses except the purely technological, she is so extraordinarily backward. Sweden is a relic of the Middle Ages, a State of corporations and communes, and the Swedes are medieval people living only as members of a group. It is an ideal situation for the incarnation of Brave New World.

Like the rulers of Brave New World, the managers of Sweden have abolished history, in order to cut off the past and, by disorienting their time sense, to make people easier to manipulate. But the Swedish leaders, at any rate, act historically and, like Huxley's privileged Controller, they at least are aware of their historical roots. To understand the new totalitarians of Sweden, then, it is best to start with Swedish history."