My first memory of Johan Forssell

A bit of Sweden-specific news, but maybe interesting anyway 🙂

The Nazis never got 50% of the vote in Germany. They cooperated with the Conservative party. And wherever you are in the world, you need to boycott parties that give the fascists a helping hand. In Sweden that means the Conservatives, the Christians and the Liberals (which I was a member of myself for 1.5 years, but left as they started giving the fascists power – which they still do, as of today).

Similarly, if I lived in Finland in 2010 (or whenever it was, I’m too lazy to check), I would have avoided the Social Democrats who started treating the Finnish fascists “True Finns” as a “decent party” as soon as the later got enough political support. I don’t remember exactly how that happened; my point is just that whether you’re left or right, your first friend should be democracy, and once you have made a list of democracy-liking parties, you can be as left or right as you feel like (so in Sweden, that’d mean the Farmers Party if you’re on the right side, since the other right-wingers are toying with the fascist Sweden Democrats (funny name btw, like any old Eastern Communist dictatorship)).

So our little local scandal right now is that the minister of migration, Johan Forssell (conservative), turns out to have an extreme-right son who has been organized into rather fascists organizations (BBC article about it).

My personal first memory of Johan Forssell was roughly 20 years ago, when I was studying economics at Uppsala University. I attended a meeting about some economical issue (I forgot which one) and one of the speakers was Johan Forssell. The event was being held at Stockholms nation, the most upper-class-linked of all the nations. What surprised me was that the evening turned into an internal club for Conservatives, and I almost felt like being an intruder for being there. Instead of the speech being about economics, Forssell felt that he was inside a group of well-known friends, and he talked about all the things he had to do for being a politician (he was the leader of the Conservative youth organisation at the time). His shocking news, which made the audience laugh at the craziness:

Once he was on the first page of the gay magazine QX. (I couldn’t find it, but they typically have articles about “handsome heteros” so I guess that was it.) The audience laughed, “haha, gays!”. The other was that he had to take a photo shaking hands with Chileans. The audience laughed “haha, Chileans”.

I was flabbergasted. It was 2005 (plus minus one year). How can gays and Chileans be a funny thing, something that “normal people” should keep distance from? That’s all that I can remember from that evening.

So when the Conservatives cozy up to the Fascists, the Forssell family is a perfect illustration. Disrespecting speech about others from the dinner table, coupled with some lack of presence, some violence perhaps, and you have given birth to a Nazi boy who needs some group protection from the dangers of society: gays and Chileans.

The rest of the government, including our prime minister, has defended Forssell. I wouldn’t vote for them anyway, since they’re cozying up to the fascists, in addition to increasing Sweden’s CO2 emissions by 7% last year. But neither should you.

And if you study in Uppsala and wants some connection to Stockholm, then Stockholm is divided between two historical landscapes, Upplands and Södermanland, so you can choose any of those 🙂 I’m a lifetime member of Uplands for example, so see you there!