Socialists on Ice

Our newest Swedish correspondent (see “When is a Swede Not a Swede?”) returns with some thoughts about the history of socialism in Sweden, and its likely future:

Socialists on ice

The rise and fall of socialism

Some might argue that Jesus was the first socialist. Other may pick the thoughts of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as the starting point for this ideology.

When Marx argued for socialism, it was a moral view — the poor were exploited as cheap labor without having any influence over their own situation or society as whole.

The rise of socialism developed across the whole world, both in nations governed by socialists and elsewhere. Everyone benefited from the equality, the abolition of slavery, increased rights for women, better health care, and an education that made the population almost 100 % literate.

After two world wars, the world was divided into a socialist totalitarian bloc and the free world, which tried to manage with different degrees of socialism. The United States evolved into a superpower with a flavor of the free market, and the Scandinavian nations became leading role models for social engineering and welfare states.

During the 1970s Sweden, the country where I live, had completed the project. There were ice-skating rinks, swimming pools, free guitar lessons, great education, and health care.

I was a socialist back then, and many among us were proud of our achievements. We began to work on other challenges, such as improving our ice-skating skills or guitar-playing.

But this was a nightmare for some socialists. They consider themselves to be the true champions of the oppressed, and brave to take up the fight against the establishment.

What happens when socialists are the establishment and the poor and oppressed have all the privileges they could possible want? The high income tax in the welfare state has not only deprived people of the resources they need to voluntarily help others, the government has also wiped out the need for charity.

The global market was the solution. Just as in selling or buying steel, paper and shoes, there are plenty of victims and oppressors in other parts of the world.

Prime Minister Olof Palme selected the U.S.A. as his primary target. The situation in Chile and the war in Vietnam were blamed on Nixon and his herd of capitalist oppressors. This was easy, since there were only two TV channels, both controlled by government, and most of the newspapers were in the hands of labor unions. Journalists in independent media did have the courage to take an unpopular view.

One thing that was totally unexpected by the socialist rulers was that the schools had created a multilingual population with the ability to think for themselves. This wiped out any long-term advantages that control over media otherwise would provide.

While the lies about the war in Vietnam were rapidly exposed, since the war continued after US troops left, other lies were not so obvious.

The apartheid regime in South Africa, the 1967 war between Israel and the Arab states, the civil rights issue in U.S.A., as well as historical events like the Crusades and the American Civil War were poorly covered by the books available in schools and libraries.

Almost all literature available had the objective of inciting guilt among the white population in the Western world. The exception was the Jews, since although they were portrayed as the aggressor in recent wars, they were also the victims of the Holocaust.

Needless to say, the women’s liberation movement made men targets of blame for almost anything that happened to members of the opposite sex.

The well-educated people of Sweden were connected with the World Wide Web during the late 1990s, and the possibility of rewriting history to suite the government’s purposes was lost forever.

The wars in the Middle East, Afghanistan and northern Africa created a large number of refugees of exotic religion, customs, and appearance. They were the perfect targets to receive help. But instead of shipping aid to their home countries, the ruling elite came up with a cunning plan to replace the disobedient population of Sweden.

They began to bring in about 100,000 migrants a year. That’s also the number that Germany brings in, but the German population is ten times as big. Most of the migrants allow polygamy, so their women can still find a husband even if a large number of the men are spending time in jail.

In a welfare state there’s no need for the men to support their families — that is, if you belong to a group that is discriminated against. If you belong to the white population, you have to work even when you are being treated for cancer.

The tradition of these exotic groups doesn’t allow women to work or educate themselves, and kills them if they marry someone of another religion. Polygamy and forced marriage at a young age combined with the benefit of support without work create a high birth rate.

In about twenty years this new population will become the bulk of the Swedish population, creating a majority rule.

The Swedish constitution does not provide any protections for human rights. Anything that is in the constitution can be changed by vote in Parliament twice with an election between the two votes.

So if the Swedish population doesn’t do anything about it now, they will have a totalitarian regime in 2030.

Then there might be the need for a new socialist revolution. Until then, I’ll practice ice-skating.