Roland Huntford
The New Totalitarians (1971)
Some notes and highlights from the book.
- Download The New Totalitarians
"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."
"All that stands between ourselves and Sweden is a certain protective shell granted by the Western European heritage. But it is fragile, and it is being eroded from within and without. To watch present Swedes may be to watch our future selves."
"The true distinction of the Swedes is not that they have successfully married technology and man, but that they have done so with so little apparent difficulty."
"Even today Sweden resembles some retarded society hurriedly assimilating a stronger civilization."
'The changes in the sexual behaviour of the Swedes was a matter of official direction. Sex had become the vicarious passion of a society trapped in boredom and “engineered consent”.'
- Wikipedia: The New Totalitarians
- Wikipedia: Roland Huntford
This is a fascinating book, especially since I lived in Sweden 2011-2014, bicycled back to the UK via Denmark, taking two ferries.
"Clearly, the Swedish attitude, by creating acquiescent subjects, is more favourable to strong government; it is particularly useful when rapid social changes have to be carried out."
Sweden wanted Catholic newcomers after WW2 to turn Protestant so as "to become good Swedes".
"Today, a Swede will most often show the same reluctance to suffer for an idea as his sixteenth-century predecessor...If any Swedes were anxious for the martyr's crown, their rulers were unwilling to oblige."
Long-term pacing in politics gets the desired outcome! Just like EU.
Until 1970, when adopting a religion was made voluntary, all Swedes were automatically born into the State Church, whatever the convictions of their parents. Until 1952 anybody wanting to leave the had to submit to a personal examination by the clergy who could refuse.
"Liberals of the nineteenth century to the Social Democrats of the 1960s, have been able to execute rapid and often uncomfortable changes virtually unopposed, it is because conformity has been made a cardinal virtue, and dissent a mortal sin."
The duplicitous traitor to Napoleon, General Baptiste Bernadotte ascended the Swedish throne as Charles-John and by switching sides gained Norway. All subsequent monarchs are descended from him, and the present royal house of Sweden still bears his name.
The concept of individuality and the development of personality have been grossly retarded down the centuries. The Swede never emerged from behind the veil of the group & preserved untouched a devotion to hierarchical order & an unprecedented devotion to corporate organization.
"Swedes share with Russians the distinction of undeveloped individuality. Escaping the discovery of the individual, the Swedes continued to think and act in groups. Today a Swedish educational official can say, 'We are not interested in a man's personality, only in his actions'"
"Sweden was, until the 1950s, a mainly peasant land, it was because of a unique form of industrial organization. This was the bruk, an industrial settlement lying away from the towns, out in the countryside. There were hundreds spread over central and southern Sweden."
Within five years of the end of the war, English replaced German as the principal foreign language, and Sweden was thoroughly Americanized. Culture follows the sword. Uncomfortable with metaphysics, the Swedes are genuine materialists in a way that it is hard to match elsewhere.
A planned economy was so obviously successful that, although Socialist policy, it was rapidly accepted by all camps. And therein lies the crucial importance of those years for Sweden. The Swedes were indoctrinated with the ideas of State direction and intervention in the economy.
These extracts explain really well the working culture and mentality of Sweden and why they have been so heavily unionised without the industrial action which plagued so many other countries.
Outside Nazi Germany, Sweden was the first country to subsidize fecundity. Until the mid 1930s, Nazism had considerable attractions for those who favoured a benevolent and authoritarian state...Nazi thought, often incognito, permeated Swedish life.
Reminds me of Gottfried Feder.
Swedish Social Democrats can trace a direct and undefiled descent from Marx himself. It is enough to mention the continuous reference to "progress", as some kind of independent, motive force. A reform is sufficiently justified if it is said to be in line with "progress".'
It is because of the peculiar nature of her political and social institutions that Sweden has achieved things out of all proportion to her size. But perhaps the most valuable asset of Swedish industry is that its workers have been historically conditioned to think in groups.
🇸🇪 Oh dear, what have you done?! 🇪🇺
"The Swedes are jealous of their sovereignty & refuse point blank to renounce one jot of it... Their rulers understand that to open their borders to foreign ideas would be to undermine a unique system that needs isolation for its survival."
🇸🇪 "The Diet did not originate legislation; it passed or rejected measures formulated elsewhere."
🇪🇺 Was this the basis of the plan for The European Union and The EU Parliament?
Sweden - a central planner's paradise thanks to its compliant citizenry.
Another "🇸🇪 Oh dear, what have you done?! 🇪🇺"
'I admire the independence of English bankers,' said Mr Tore Browaldh, sometime managing director of Svenska Handelsbanken, one of the three major Swedish banks, 'but it could never happen here.
Like Fascist Italy, Sweden is today a corporate State. No revolution or coup d'etat was necessary; it grew up with modern Sweden and, to the present-day Swede, appears perfectly natural and desirable.
'Our democracy,' to quote the words of Mr Olof Palme, the Social Democratic Prime Minister, 'is a democracy of the popular organizations.'
Sweden's a small country, and the whole bureaucratic establishment's also very small - not more than two or three hundred rule the country, and we all know each other. In many ways, the network is the real, if invisible, government of
Sweden.
Doesn't the above sound just like Ronald Bernard's experience in The Netherlands when he "overstepped his jurisdiction" with the network and got thrown in jail on trumped-up charges?
- Watch on youtube: www.youtube.com
The business of ruling Sweden is conducted not in parliamentary institutions, but in a kind of secret society. Consensus guides everything, private conversation, intellectual life and the running of the state. "It's the way we like it."
Swedes are afraid of owning up to an opinion against the consensus, and for that reason I find it difficult, almost impossible, to get businessmen to speak out. There is a willingness to turn over most issues to collective treatment.
In Western countries, the security of the individual derives from the rule of law; but in Sweden it is based on social welfare; welfare enjoys the respect & prestige of the judiciary in England. To the Swede the law is not the protector of the citizen, but the agent of the State.
There is a very widespread feeling in Sweden that the judiciary is politically directed, and that it hands down politically coloured judgements. Offences against the State are more serious than
those against the person.
Acquittal in Swedish criminal cases is rare... Almost all trials take the form of a plea of guilt, qualified with a request for leniency on personal, humanitarian or psychiatric grounds.
The function of a Swedish court is not to decide whether a suspect is innocent or guilty, but to put evidence on record and decide on a penalty for guilt established by preliminary inquiry. The function of a Swedish court is not to decide whether a suspect is innocent or guilty.
As soon as a suspect is committed for trial, his relations to his attorney change. Until that moment, they work together in the familiar manner to avoid conviction. Afterwards, the lawyer is required by his instincts and professional ethics to help the prosecution...
As a result of the corporate nature of Sweden, political power is extraordinarily penetrative. Power in this version means not only dominion over the machinery of State, but also direct mastery of the citizen.
- Judiciary has been deliberately omitted; means little to the Swede.
"...the Russians have a word for it: AGITPROP."
- Arbetarnas bildningsförbund (ABF) (the Workers' Educational Association) is the educational section of the Swedish labour movement.
In the last analysis, the purpose of agitprop is that of Orwell's thought police or Huxley's controllers: the control of minds. Under Swedish conditions, absolute control is naturally unattainable, and indeed unnecessary.
Concerned only with economic security, the Swede is prepared to sacrifice most other things in life. In the country of the affluent, ideology is dead, and politics are a matter of economics alone.
- Article on TRYGGHET
Prosperity and standard of living have become words of incantation to invoke the emotions of trygghet. By suitable manipulation, the government has associated a threat to the lesser concepts with danger to the greater one. Often there is no way of expressing oppositional thoughts
By the acceptance of economic determinism, the Swede has somehow forsworn all other values. By the reduction of everything to economic terms, awkward issues may be disarmed or persuaded to vanish.
