The Mechanics of Nationalism

This Saturday, a gaggle of demonstrators, a few hundred strong, gathered in the Swedish capital Stockholm. They scurried around from site to site as the municipal police tried to disperse the demonstrators in the least confrontational way possible, due to the fact that the protest violated Covid restrictions.

Which might have been the whole point, seeing as the disparate demonstrators where complaining about said restrictions. And to some extent, even protesting the very concept of Covid as a government hoax.

At the end of the gathering, as cops carried away people who refused to disperse, one could audibly hear “we are Sweden” from a handful of chanting voices in the pretty tame civil liberty exhibition.

Which lead me to the question as to why nationalism seems to be one of the strongest common denominators of the cognitively deficient?

Now, this Saturday’s demonstration wasn’t in itself anything comparable to the storming of the Capitol on January sixth. To equate the two would be a grossly fraudulent. This Saturday in Stockholm, no one died (except for in the coming weeks when some of these cretins will invariably be tested positive for Covid-19). No government offices were ransacked. No one showed up dressed like a nipple-exhibitionistic buffalo dude. There is no comparison of the two events…

Except for the intellectual capacity of the people that were involved in them. While Qanon isn’t a… mainstream movement in Sweden (like what it is in the US), these demonstrators sounded quite like what you might expect from some Qanon crackpots: Flailing to justify their convictions that the pandemic was a hoax. That vaccines are the same as mind control. That the Prime Minister is a traitor. And that the notion of the nation state is somehow a sacrosanct concept that binds a fictive ethnic group together in unholy matrimony.

Let’s talk about nationalism. No, not the socialist kind. I’m not getting into discussing the tenets, ramifications, and subsequent fallout from NSDAP. No, let’s roll it back further and discuss the imaginary notion of The Homeland as a unifying force. This notion of a nation that some of our least mindful citizens seem to hold so dear.

From a cursory glance at history, we can make out that nationalism grew out of the centralization of power from the old feudal states. The aristocracy waned and the Crown waxed during the 17-hundreds. And while previously, a human might identify more with the county it came from, as the dominion of the monarchy grew, a new identity of its subjects needed to be molded. Where once a subject may have thought of itself as from a town, a district, or a region, now it should consider itself a part of a nation. So that the King or Queen could better assume control and loyalty.

Nationalism is a tool to homogenize and control the population. It’s a shared identity meant to constrict deviation. And sadly, the idea took root. So much so that by now, the national identity has turned into the variable mortar of society.

It is a shame that it has also turned into a cornerstone of identity for the least imaginative and independent of us. That it has become a counter-weight to globalism and multiculturalism. Concepts that nationalism was engineered by the autocrats of old to counteract, but that have become the new norm in modern society.

Where nationalism was once a strong tool for a centralized power to mobilize a country, it has become instead a dead weight without a master. A function programmed into the population to make it perform for the glee of the high and mighty, has now become a thorn in the side of any serious democracy that value humanist privileges as rights.

Nationalism is a relic of control. A vestigial spark of loyalty, a reptilian remnant from a time when the general population was supposed to be uneducated, willing to die at a leader’s whim, docile until unleashed, and willing to believe any dumb notion that an authority pumped into them. In return, the population would receive an identity preset, a sense of community in an expanding world, and the false promise that they could accomplish great things if only they did what they were told.

In essence, nationalism isn’t that far flung from organized religion.

Which brings us back to the question at hand; how come nationalism has become the strongest common denominator among the least cognitively proficient people in our modern societies? Well now that question pretty much answers itself. Because nationalism was specifically designed for just such a group of people. People that are incapable of sufficiently navigating such a massive flow of conflicting information as we suffer today. People that feel unfit to survive in a world of diversity. People that behave as if incapable of constructing an individual sense of self and would prefer a neatly packaged preset to use as a crutch.

In short, nationalism was manufactured for stupid people. Little wonder that the idea is popular among them still.

/Sebastian Lindberg 9/3-2021

A Morally Solved Issue

The Black Lives Matter-movement and it’s protests are spreading. From the Netherlands to France, and finally to little ole’ sheltered Sweden. Manifesting as a protest at the central square of the capital Stockholm. An event that quickly swelled beyond Covid-19 restrictions, and derailed at the end when rioters decided that it was a good idea to block off the central subway station. Things turned a bit violent, with pepper-spray and terrified teenagers, though not nearly to the extent that we have seen from US paramilitary police forces deployed across the shattering republic.

And of course there’s outrage. Plenty of it. But surprisingly not predominantly because pepper spray was used to disperse rioters from the busy commuter centre. No, the outrage has had a different focal point; namely that a singular police officer, that found itself surrounded by rowdy protesters, decided to get out of her patrol car, hold up a BLM-sign, and take a knee amidst cheering activists.

Which got a real good rise out of Swedish amateur pundits and politicians alike. “The Police should never express political opinions”, one politician declared. “She’s just as guilty of breaking the law as the protesters, and she’s participating in a political movement on her job”, another remarked, referring to the fact that it is currently illegal to gather in groups larger than 50 people in Sweden, due to the pandemic. “What’s the name of the cop? She should be fired.”, some other joker demands, followed by some helpful fucker exposing the cop’s name, age, address, and personal information to all the world.

It’s a… weird reaction, one should think. Should the opinion that “police brutality is a bad thing” really be considered a political opinion? Isn’t it more of a request for common fucking decency in a world that’s lost its soul? Should such a simple, elementary stance be considered akin to questions about fiscal priorities, foreign policy, or citizenship? Alternatively, is it not an inherently political position; to be a defender and protector of the stagnant status quo?

You see, Sweden may not be a nation built on a slave economy. Our endemic problem may not be between whites and blacks in some age-old roundabout of dependencies and disparity. But what Sweden does have is a historical superiority complex, colonial ambitions, and the right-wing winds that blow across the world have not spared this little corner of civilization. “The Swedish Democrats”, nationalists and populists, are the second largest party in the Swedish parliament, and gunning for becoming the biggest. Some seventy years ago, contemporarily with the rise of the Nazis in Germany, Sweden was the focal point of 20^th century eugenics. There’s plenty of racism present in Sweden, even if our brand of it leans more heavily on religious frictions.

Would it surprise you terribly that many of the people that rage against this singular cop are often aligned with the nationalist political party “the Swedish Democrats”? Including the politician referred to above, who’s currently representing the party in the judicial committee? No, I didn’t think it would…

A political question is a question without concrete “right” answers. It revolves around priorities, ideology, beliefs. You may value and weigh and come to a conclusion, but your point isn’t a priori right or wrong. Matters that we collectively agree upon are thusly not considered political questions. The weather is plain to see, and not a political question. That up is up and down is down isn’t a political question either. That cold-hearted murder of innocents is widely considered a bad thing is also something that most people generally agree on, and it is not considered a political stance to be opposed to murder. If we can all agree on something, that thing is no longer a political issue.

But as it turns out, some people can’t agree with the rest of us that discriminatory police brutality is a bad thing. There are some people that do not agree with us that an elderly man in his 70’s shouldn’t be slammed to the ground by riot police. There are some that think that 8 minutes and 46 seconds is a reasonable time to choke someone out as part of a non-hostile arrest. Apparently, to some people this is a political question. A question without a clear-cut right and wrong answer. A question worthy of debate.

I don’t think it is. I think the whithertos and whyfors of police brutality is a morally solved issue. And I don’t very much like people who think otherwise.

/Sebastian Lindberg 8/6-2020

The Dumb Defence

In the beginning of August, a 20-year old man with Down syndrome was shot dead by Swedish police in Stockholm. The 20-year old had been waving a gun around. It turned out to be a toy.

”I’m convinced”, the mother of the dead 20-year old said to the state media agency, ”that then and there, in that park, my boy thought that the police were playing a game with him.” Because nothing spells playtime like a drawn and armed firearm.

And so the police are made to feel the burn of public ire. From the vox populi as much as the media. The civic outrage cares not for the fact that this summer has been lousy with gunslinging in the Stockholm area. And before the yanks start rolling their eyes; in comparison to the US’s 120 firearms per 100 civilians, Sweden only has 23. Gun violence isn’t ordinary or pedestrian here.

Nevertheless, in blatant disregard of the gun-hot summer or the ever more constrained police force of Sweden, the public is in an outroar. Baying for copper blood. As reactionary and coddled as ever. So incensed that someone has shattered their privileged porcelain world view. And as further fuel, the family of the dead boy wants to press civil charges against the “responsible” officers.

It’s a tragedy. Of course it is. No one’s walking away happy from this one. But here’s my controversial pitch: This one ain’t on the police.

I know it’s en vogue to rage against the ladies and gents in blue. Especially the Atlantic over, with all the racial tensions, budding fascism, over-saturation of guns, etc. But that ain’t Sweden. Here in Scandinavia, the bois in blue can’t even let rip an ill wind in fear of some tenderfoot taking mortal offence. And yet they’re supposed to defend the public from a surging violence, seemingly with naught but harsh language.

But the outrage is strong, and people cite the Down syndrome as mitigating to the circumstance. Claiming that no one with Down could ever pose a threat to an officer of the law, is if they’re inherently better people than people. Like some sort of morally superior abhuman.

But you know what? It’s not a police officer’s job to stand idly by until given a chance to examine the inside of the barrel of a gun, toy or otherwise. If they take offence to you waving one around the neighbourhood, a neighbourhood mind you that saw a deadly shooting just two months previously, there’s no ambivalence as to what you ought to do. Deflecting the blame to the police by excusing the 20-year old with “he didn’t know any better” isn’t good enough. This isn’t rocket science. If you lack the mental acuity to realize the severity of your situation when cops have pulled guns on you and are shouting at you to put your piece down, then maybe… just maybe, you shouldn’t walk around unsupervised.

/Sebastian Lindberg 14/8-2018