In February 2017, after U.S. President Donald Trump's
statements
about events in Sweden, the journalist Tim Pool travelled to Sweden to
report on their accuracy. What Tim Pool concluded is now available for
everyone to watch on
YouTube, but what is really interesting is how the Swedish public broadcasting media described him.
On Radio Sweden's website, one of the station's employees,
Ann Törnkvist, wrote an
op-ed in which Pool and the style of journalism he represents are described as "a threat to democracy".
Why is Pool "a threat to democracy" in Sweden?
He
reported
negatively about an urban area in Stockholm, Rinkeby, where more than
90% of the population has a foreign background. When Pool visited
Rinkeby, he had to be
escorted out by police. Journalists are often threatened in Rinkeby.
Before this incident, in an interview with Radio Sweden, Pool had
described
Rosengård, an area in the Swedish city of Malmö heavily populated by
immigrants, as "nice, beautiful, safe". After Pool's negative but
accurate report about Rinkeby, however, he began to be described as an
unserious journalist by many in the Swedish media, and finally was
labeled the "threat to democracy."
One might think that this was a one-time event in a country whose
journalists were defensive. But the fact is that Swedish journalists are
deeply politicized.
In most democratic countries, media are, or should be, critical of
those who hold power.
In Sweden, the media criticize those who
criticizes those who hold power.
In March 2017, the public broadcasting company
Sveriges Television revealed the name of a person who runs the Facebook page
Rädda vården
("Save Healthcare"). The person turned out to be an assistant nurse,
and was posting anonymously only because he had been critical of the
hospital where he worked. Swedish hospitals are run by the local county
councils, and thus when someone criticizes the healthcare system in
Sweden, it is primarily politicians who are criticized.
Sveriges Television explained on its website why it revealed the identity of the private individuals behind Facebook:
"These hidden powers of influence abandon and break the
open public debate and free conversation. Who are they? What do they
want and why? As their impact increases, the need to examine them also
grows."
It is strange that
Sveriges Television believes that an
assistant nurse who wants to tell how politicians neglect public
hospitals, is breaking "the open public debate and free conversation".
This was not the only time that the mainstream Swedish media exposed
private citizens who were criticizing those who hold power.
In December
2013, one of Sweden's largest and most established newspapers,
Expressen,
announced that it intended to disclose the names of people who commented on various Swedish blogs:
"Expressen has partnered with Researchgruppen.
The group has found a way, according to their own description, without
any kind of unlawful intrusion, to associate the usernames that the
anonymous commentators on the hate websites are using to the email
addresses from which comments were sent. After that, the email addresses
have been cross-checked with registries and authorities to identify the
persons behind them."
The term "hate websites" (hatsajterna) is what that the mainstream media uses to describe some of the blogs that are critical of Islam or migration.
It is one thing to be critical of bloggers who you may consider have
racist opinions. But exposing the people who have written in comments
sections of various blogs in one of Sweden's biggest newspapers is
strange and terrifying.
Researchgruppen has clear links to Antifascistisk Aktion (Antifascist Action), a group which, according
to the Swedish government, consists of violent left-wing extremists.
For their efforts to expose private individuals in the comments section,
Researchgruppen received the Guldspaden, a prestigious journalistic award in Sweden.
Jim Olsson was one individual exposed in
Expressen simply
because he wrote something in a blog's comments section. A 67-year-old
docent in physical chemistry, Olsson received a home-visit from
Expressen
with a camera and microphone present. A private citizen with no
connection to any political party or organization, he exposed by
Sweden's media because he had
written the following in the comments section:
"The Swedish asylum system rewards swindlers with a
permanent residence permit. There are, of course, swindlers flooding
Sweden."
The Swedish newspaper Expressen
accessed databases of website commenters, targeted critics of
immigration, and confronted them at home. The above screenshot is taken
from a video on the Expressen website, published under the headline "Jim Olsson writes on hate sites."
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Another private individual, Patrik Gillsvik, with no political links,
was exposed and fired from his job because, in a blog's comments
section, he
wrote:
"I would like to join the structural prejudices of the
majority in society and state that gypsies are inventive and witty
entrepreneurs who can enrich our culture -- yes, and then they steal
like ravens, of course!"
Although the statement can be criticized for being unacceptably
racist, what is unique is that the mainstream media in a Western
democracy can expose private individuals because they wrote something in
a blog's comments section. Criticism is not aimed at the people who
hold power, but against private citizens who according to the
journalists have the "wrong" ideas.
Moreover, each of these private citizens, who have had their lives
ruined because they wrote something distasteful in a comments section,
serves as a warning, so that others will not dare to make the mistake of
posting something politically incorrect on a blog.
It is shocking that in a democracy, the media acts this way, but that
is how Swedish -- and, increasingly, other Western media -- operate
these days.
In addition to punishing private individuals who, according to the
them, communicate "wrong" ideas, the media celebrate and support people
who have the "right" ideas.
On May 1, 2017, Sweden's Prime Minister
Stefan Löfven was interrupted by a number of hijab-wearing activists who
were protesting a verdict of the Court of Justice of the European Union
that employers are entitled to prohibit staff from wearing a hijab.
Given that Sweden's prime minister cannot directly influence the Court,
and that one should not interrupt the country's prime minister when he
speaks, one would think that these "hijab activists" might be criticized
in the media.
TV4, a national TV-channel and one of the first media outlets to
report this incident,
refused to say that those who interrupted the prime minister were
wearing the Islamic veil. The title of TV4's clip was "Demonstrators
Interrupted Löfven speech". The sub-headline read as follows: "Female
protesters screamed out their anger against the prime minister and
wondered where the feminist government was."
From the text, it is not clear that these activists demonstrated
against the verdict of the Court of Justice of the European Union; that
all activists wore a hijab, or that they screamed, "Stand up for Muslim
women's rights!" However,
information
that these activists were wearing hijabs and protesting the verdict of
the Court of Justice of the European Union was on their Facebook page
and YouTube. Nevertheless, TV4 and all other media refused to report
that those who interrupted the prime minister were Muslims who were
interrupting the prime minister because they seemingly wanted to force
Islamic values on the Swedish workplace.
The day after their protest, in an
interview
with Radio Sweden, these activists had the opportunity to explain why
they protested -- but were not asked any critical questions. The next
day, an
Expressen columnist, Maria Rydhagen, compared one of the
hijab-activists glowingly with one of the founders of the Swedish Social
Democratic Party, Axel Danielsson. Rydhagen wrote the
following about Jasmin Nur Ismail:
"Then, on Monday, the protest of the girls was perceived
as only an incident. But imagine if it was the start of something big?
Perhaps history was being written, there and then? Imagine if Jasmin Nur
is the Axel Danielsson of 2017. Hero and rebel. In that case: Was it
not a pity to remove her with the help of the police?"
As the media refused to write anything negative about the protest
against the prime minister, this author began to investigate the matter.
It took half an hour to find out several important
things
which were never mentioned by the Swedish mainstream media. Jasmin Nur
Ismail had written about the incident on her Facebook page shortly after
the protest. Who was behind the protest was not a secret.
The demonstration had been organized by the Hayat Women's Movement
and a network called, "The Right to Our Bodies". The Hayat Women's
Movement was founded by Aftab Soltani, who in March 2017 was one of the
speakers at a much-criticized annual Islamic event in Sweden,
Muslimska Familjedagarna (Muslim Family Days). The event was blamed by both the
left and the
right
for inviting hate preachers, anti-Semites and Muslim radicals as
speakers. Another speaker at this Islamic event in March 2017 was Jasmin
Nur Ismail, a heroine of the Swedish media.
Muslimska Familjedagarna was organized by the
Islamist Ibn Rushd Educational Association, the Islamic Association of Sweden (
Islamiska Förbundet i Sverige) and Sweden's Young Muslims (
Sveriges Unga Muslimer).
Jasmin Nur Ismail, hailed as a heroine in
Expressen, is a public figure. Southern Sweden's largest newspaper,
Sydsvenskan,
described her in an October 2016 article as an "activist, anti-racist and writer". According to
Sydsvenskan,
Jasmin Nur Ismail's political role-model is Malcolm X. During the
Swedish Forum for Human Rights in 2016, Jasmin Nur Ismail was, in a
panel discussion, the representative for Malmö's Young Muslims -- in turn, a subdivision of an
Islamist organization, Sweden's Young Muslims.
Swedish newspapers did not write a single word that the person and
organizations behind the protest against Sweden's prime minister had
links with Islamist organizations. When the Swedish media reported about
the event, the public were told that these hijab-activists were
completely unknown Muslim girls who only wanted to wear their veil.
THE MALMO MOSQUE
Mainstream Swedish media outlets simply do not report some things. When the largest mosque in Scandinavia was opened in Sweden's third largest city, Malmö, the news about this was first published in the Qatar News Agency and The Peninsula
on May 3, 2017. The reason that Qatar's media wrote about it was
because Qatar financed a large part of the mosque. On May 5, an article
about this mosque was published in Breitbart.
On May 6, one day after Breitbart reported the news and three days
after the Qatari media reported the news, the Swedish terrorist expert
Magnus Ranstorp sent a tweet
about this mosque, but he linked it to the Qatari media. At this time,
there are still no Swedish media outlets that have reported anything
about the largest mosque in Scandinavia.
On May 8, the Swedish blog Jihad i Malmö wrote about the mosque and its Qatari financing. On May 9, the Swedish blog Pettersson gör skillnad wrote about the mosque. At the same time, the Norwegian author and activist Hege Storhaug, who is critical of Islam, wrote about the mosque and noted that the Swedish media had not yet written about it:
"I had expected that the Swedish media at the very least
would mention the opening of Scandinavia's largest mosque with positive
words. But no, not a word in Swedish mainstream media, as far as I have
noticed. You have to go to the English version of Arabic media to get
some limited information, like Qatar News Agency."
By the time I tweeted about it on May 10, the mainstream Swedish media still had not widely reported it. On May 15, I wrote an article on it for the news website Situation Malmö,
run by the Sweden Democrats party branch in Malmö. With one hour's
research, I managed, through what the mosque had published on Facebook,
to discover that one of the leading Social Democrat politicians in
Malmö, Frida Trollmyr, a municipal commissioner with responsibility for
culture, recreation and health, had been at the mosque's opening.
Representatives of the Qatari government also attended, but the
mainstream Swedish media still had not reported anything about it.
On May 17, two weeks after the Qatari media had written that
Scandinavia's largest mosque had been built in Malmö, twelve days after
Breitbart had written about the event, and two days after my article,
the Sydsvenskan newspaper wrote
about the mosque opening. You could not read the article, however, if
you had not paid for "premium-membership" to this newspaper.
One can see this omission as an unfortunate coincidence, but it is
strange when Breitbart succeeds in communicating more information about
Malmö than southern Sweden's largest newspaper, Sydsvenskan,
headquartered in Malmö. Why would the Swedish media not write about the
mosque? It was certainly not a secret. There was no explanation from the
Swedish media or anyone else. Yet, these media outlets did not hesitate
to expose the names of private citizens who wrote inappropriate
opinions on a public commentary page.
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There are journalists in Sweden who change their views as soon as the
government changes its opinion. Göran Greider, a journalist and editor,
active in the public debate in Sweden for more than 30 years, wrote the
following in August, 2015, about migration policy:
"The European governments who say no to increasing the number of
refugees received not only show a shameful lack of solidarity. They are
also silent when they decline to rejuvenate their populations."
In November 2015, only three months later, when the Swedish
Government was forced to change its position in migration policy because
of the migration crisis, Göran Greider
wrote:
"But even the left, including many Social Democrats and members of
the Green Party, have sometimes been characterized by an unwillingness
to discuss the great challenges that receiving refugees, in the quantity
we have seen lately, implies for a society. No one wants to be a
nationalist. No one wants to be accused of running the errands of Sweden
Democrats, or racism. But in this way, people on the left, who are so
broadly for bringing in refugees, have often locked themselves out of a
realistic discussion."
There is nothing wrong in reconsider one's opinion. But it has become
common for Swedish journalists frequently to have opinions that favor
certain political parties – often the Social Democrats, the Left Party
and the Green Party. The issue is not even about values. People who work
for the mainstream Swedish media are ready to reconsider their values
so long as it helps certain parties to stay in power. This is far from
what is presumably the media's main task in a democracy.
How is it that no newspaper is rebelling against this order? It would
be a good business proposition; such a media outlet could potentially
gain financial benefits. The Swedish establishment is,
after all,
not popular. Well, we can look at the example of someone who tried.
In
February 2017, a financier, Mats Qviberg, bought a free daily newspaper,
Metro, usually distributed in subways and buses in Sweden. In May, he gave an interview to the newspaper
Nyheter Idag, considered by the Swedish establishment to be "right-wing" or "populist". In his
interview, Qviberg gave a slight playful hint that
Metro might in some way cooperate with
Nyheter Idag.
The
consequence
of the playful statement was that the Green Party in Stockholm County
Council threatened that Stockholm County would stop handing out
Metro in Stockholm's subways. A columnist stopped writing for the paper. Other media outlets started to wonder out loud if
Metro were becoming a racist platform. Before the month of May was over, Qviberg had
sold his shares in
Metro.
That politicians would punish an owner of a newspaper who had "wrong"
views did not surprise anyone in Sweden; the situation was not worth
mentioning.
In Sweden, even owners of newspapers are supposed to follow
the political order.
In June 2017, the leader of the Sweden Democrats (SD), Jimmie
Åkesson, spoke in Järva, a district in Stockholm dominated by
immigrants. The Sweden Democrats is a social conservative party in the
Swedish parliament; it supports, among other matters, a restrictive
migration policy. While Åkesson was speaking, there were protests
against him; and among the protesters were various placards. In a
photograph of Radio Sweden's van, inside it was an anti-SD placard. On
it, one could read "Jimmie = Racist". The
explanation from Radio Sweden was:
"Someone put a sign on Ekot's (a news program on Radio Sweden) car in
Järva on Sunday evening. It was taken down and put into the car and
then thrown away on the way from there."
You can have a discussion about why Radio Sweden spends its time
discarding placards that left-wing protesters use. Is that what
journalist are supposed to do when they are covering a story? In the
end, however, it does not matter. The people's confidence in the
mainstream media in Sweden is being eroded as we write.
A new study from Institutet för Mediestudier shows
that 54% agree, or partly agree, that the Swedish media are not telling
the whole truth about problems in society linked to migration. Instead
of the media accepting that they are biased and starting to change their
ways, the media continue to attack citizens who appear critical.
In June 2017, the editorial writer of
Aftonbladet, Anders Lindberg wrote an
editorial
titled, "Hitler did not trust the media either," in which he equated
the critics of the Swedish media with Nazis. Anders Lindberg, after
working 10 years for the Social Democrats,
resigned as the Communications Ombudsman for the Social Democrats in 2010, to start operating as an editorial writer for
Aftonbladet.
He is so well-known for what his critics view as unusual versions of
the truth that he has the privilege of writing for Sweden's largest
newspaper. In 2015, he
described
the issue of organized begging, a visible problem in northern Europe,
as "legends and folklore". Today there is no party that denies that
organized begging is a real problem.
I have often difficulties explaining to many of my American friends
and colleagues how the Swedish media work. Often, there may be clear
examples of antisemitism and other unsavory behavior. The first question
I always get is: Why is the media not writing about this? The answer is
simple.
The Swedish media are politicized to the extent that they act
as a propaganda machine.
It may not be a propaganda machine in the
traditional sense of the word, with propaganda ministers and an official
Ministry of Propaganda. In Sweden, many of the journalists and editors
are either old established political party employees, as Anders
Lindberg, or simply ideologically indoctrinated and therefore extremely
biased. The Swedish propaganda machine punishes those who have the
"wrong" opinions and celebrates those who have the "right" opinions.
What happened to Tim Pool was a part of how media works in Sweden. As
long as he said the "right" things, the Swedish media gave a positive
picture of him. When he started to have the "wrong" opinion, the
propaganda machine started doing its work and Pool became "a threat to
democracy".
There are of course more examples that show how sick the Swedish
debate-and media-climate has become. In such a negative environment,
there are many casualties. The first is obviously the truth. When people
start to understand that the mainstream media are lying, they turn to
alternative media. Alternative media outlets, however, also usually have
political agendas. A democracy cannot survive well only on biased
media. A democracy desperately needs mainstream media outlets that
inform its citizens and criticize people who hold power. That is
something Sweden does not have today.
A large portion of the Swedish population are apparently aware of
this and do not trust the media. Through its lies, the Swedish media
have created possibilities for "post-truth-politics" in Sweden.
Instead
of being a neutral party, the mainstream Swedish media have lied to
uphold certain "politically correct" values.
The result is an atmosphere
where many people believe that everything that the media says has a
political agenda. When the mainstream media in Sweden lie shamelessly,
where can one go to find the truth?
One wonders what lifestyle and
political stability Sweden will have when no one can know the truth
about what is really going on.
Nima Gholam Ali Pour is a member of the board of
education in the Swedish city of Malmö and is engaged in several Swedish
think tanks concerned with the Middle East. He is also editor for the
social conservative website Situation Malmö, and is the author of the
Swedish book "Därför är mångkultur förtryck"("Why Multiculturalism is Oppression").
