Sweden is extreme - no matter what

 Sweden is extreme - no matter what

Åsa Linderborg

This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.

Published at 07:00

Erdogan, Stoltenberg and Kristersson in Vilnius ahead of the NATO summit.

Erdogan, Stoltenberg and Kristersson in Vilnius ahead of the NATO summit.

Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

I have followed the NATO process with both horror and malice.

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Åsa Linderborg

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With horror, because Sweden has so easily proven to be able to draw bold lines over rights we just saw as fundamental. In addition, I am really afraid that escalation of the Baltic Sea area will worsen the security policy situation. The newfound "security" is probably a chimera.

But I have also been filled with genuine schadenfreude, as the hypocrisy has been exposed at the highest level in front of the curtain. No one can claim anymore that NATO is inspired by ideas like "democracy" and "human rights".

Such old-fashioned words start to feel, it's like sinking your teeth into an abandoned ladybug. A kind of sentimental gap.

Global neoliberalism has entered an authoritarian phase. It's not a pretty sight.

Not least of the horrors is the Swedish ability to only have one opinion at a time.

A quiet consensus around non-alignment has been replaced by a dogmatic belief in NATO as the only policy. Everything else is dismissed as treason.

Our foreign policy has not been independent for years, but now we have also kept quiet about nuclear proliferation.

There is so much about us and NATO that is unspoken.

Should we have to send our conscripts out on any NATO missions? What should we cut back on to finance the membership and the refurbishment? The young moderates' proposal is that we abolish May 1. It says so much about the present; militarization must be paid for with an increased level of internal conflict.

The US Marine Corps exercises together with Swedish soldiers during Aurora 23.

The US Marine Corps exercises together with Swedish soldiers during Aurora 23.

Photo: Malin Lövkvist

  It is a myth that Sweden is a middle-milk dictatorship, the "land of Lagom". We are extreme, whatever the issue: deregulation, metoo, the pandemic, freedom of expression, identity politics. The reception of refugees, from one extreme to the other.

Right or wrong, good or bad – we always excel.

The world's most equal country suddenly became a nation with the most billionaires per capita. We thought we were immune to right-wing populists and neo-Nazis, now they are in charge. We thought for a long time that there was something ugly about the Swedish flag, today all party leaders have something blue and yellow on their chests.

Now we are facing a mental militarization that will not be like anything else, because we must always be the best in the class. The blessed NATO will be rubbed and stuffed in the most vulgar and infantile way. And the media supports the brainwashing, always as well-dressed.

Cheer cheer!

Imagine Germany, France, Great Britain, or Norway and Denmark for that matter, in our situation - they would have had a debate and a lot of arguments. They would never have agreed to the ban, that "now everyone must take responsibility for security policy", so therefore we should not talk about what NATO actually is and what membership actually means.

It's an insane world we live in, and Sweden has completely given up the ambition to make it more sensible.