EDITORIAL • The Supreme Court chose not to grant leave to appeal in the case where the Hate Speech Investigator Tomas Åberg sued me for gross defamation. For me personally, it means a month behind bars and significant economic costs for Samnytt. However, the most serious aspect is that Sweden is now taking a step away from a liberal democracy with freedom of the press, and moving towards the ranks of authoritarian dictatorships where journalists are thrown into prison if their investigative journalism offends those in power, and where the rest of the media establishment, which should be outraged, instead chooses to remain silent.

The background is that Samnytt’s journalist Mattias Albinsson wrote a couple of what we considered ordinary crime journalistic articles, where we covered the developments in other legal proceedings initiated by Tomas Åberg, including against freelance journalist Joakim Lamotte, as well as an article where we outlined the far from flattering background of why he chose to try to silence his critics through lawfare.

Åberg willingly participated in interviews with us before the publications. When the articles were finally printed, we received no negative response from Åberg, such as requests for a right of reply, changes, or unpublishing. There was therefore no reason to believe that Åberg was so offended that he would take legal action. The lawsuit came as a bolt from the blue.

We believed and still believe that Åberg is an interesting figure to shine the journalistic spotlight on. For a long time, he has been dedicated to reporting individuals who have expressed primarily immigration-critical views on social media to the police. This activity has been praised from a left-liberal perspective, but has also received harsh criticism for restricting freedom of expression and opinion in Sweden. Åberg himself has admitted that this was the purpose – he has reported a broad spectrum of people to the police, understanding that few reports would lead to prosecution and even fewer to a conviction, but that most would be silenced by the discomfort and fear of getting the police involved.

The apostle of goodness was morally bankrupt

In his role, Åberg has portrayed himself as an apostle of goodness. Heavyweights, including previous red-green governments, have vouched for him as such. It therefore became uncomfortable for both Åberg himself and his well-known supporters when the facade crumbled, and it emerged that the good Hate Speech Investigator has a shameful skeleton in the closet that in many people’s eyes makes him morally bankrupt and hardly fit to sit on any high horses to judge his fellow human beings.

When more and more people began to notice Åberg’s shortcomings as a person, his lawfare activity shifted to being about himself. Now, it was instead those who revealed the ugly truth about Åberg’s past who needed to be silenced. One of those displeased was the prominent freelance journalist Joakim Lamotte. At Samnytt, we believed that this legal duel between two public figures had significant public interest, and that there were important democratic principles to highlight.

Difficult not to see the verdict as political

We still believe this, even though I, as the responsible publisher, am now considered to have committed a serious crime by the judiciary. It is difficult not to regard the verdict as political – a decision was made in advance for a guilty verdict, and then the reasoning for the verdict was put together with mistaken assessments, overinterpretations, and legal jargon.

If one looks just a bit broader and removes any ideological glasses, it quickly becomes clear that the verdict is a judicial murder against me and, in its precedent-setting extension, a threat to press freedom in Sweden. There is nothing in the articles in question that goes beyond ordinary news coverage and investigative journalism that all media engage in. The dividing line between who is a publisher and who is a criminal instead lies in who is scrutinizing and who is being scrutinized.

If Samnytt had been a left-liberal newspaper and Åberg a “right-wing extremist” who had tried to silence left-wing voices on social media and individuals who had delved into his dirty laundry, then I would not have been sentenced to prison today, the legal process would have been met with harsh criticism from a unanimous media establishment, and Åberg would have been branded as the anti-democrat he is.

One chooses a short-term gain in tarnishing an inconvenient media competitor rather than safeguarding the spirit of freedom of the press in the long term. One fails to realize that by selfishly dallying with freedom of the press, one legitimizes others to do the same in the future against entirely different media actors.

The desperation of authoritarian left-liberalism

It is a frightening realization that within authoritarian left-liberalism, one no longer hesitates to violate basic legal principles such as equality before the law. At the same time, it is a testament to how desperate they actually are. With 50 years of experience of how their policies have ravaged Sweden, they lack arguments against their social conservative critics. All they have are ugly ad hominem attacks and repressive censorship.

Remarkable is the, at best, media-compliant silence, but in several cases, outright deceitful reporting, about the verdict from the left-liberal media lackeys of the establishment. TT, which uncritically and automatically echoes the majority of mainstream media, has deliberately and misleadingly claimed that Samnytt has made defamation allegations about Åberg, despite being fully aware that all we have done is sparingly report in news coverage articles about what the court disputes have been about, to make them understandable for the reader. Samnytt has not produced any personal opinions about Åberg.

Especially piquant is the stance of the mainstream media, its umbrella organizations, and Reporters Without Borders in light of the fact that for over two decades, they have continuously and loudly lamented the case of the Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak, a Swedish citizen, who in his communist homeland has been imprisoned for his oppositional journalism. Without wanting to make myself a martyr, it needs to be pointed out that the difference between sentencing an inconvenient journalist to 20 years or 1 month in prison is not qualitative but only quantitative. Sweden has embarked on a slippery slope, at the lower end of which Eritrea stands waiting with a welcoming outstretched hand.

We ask you as a reader to support Samnytt

Samnytt receives no state support and has extremely limited advertising revenue. We are entirely dependent on our readers’ support, and every month we remind you, our readers – through pop-ups and banners on the site – why it is important for all of you who do not support Samnytt financially to start doing so.

Unfortunately, many take Samnytt’s existence for granted, perhaps because they do not have the energy to engage, or because most of the content can be read for free. But in times like these – when the left-wing establishment systematically attacks us with costly and time-consuming lawfare lawsuits in the hope of crushing our economy and limiting or completely silencing our journalism that is inconvenient for them – it is especially important for you, as a Samnytt reader, to get involved.

Help us now to emerge strong from the legal process against the Hate Speech Investigator and resist the left’s other lawsuits that we are handling in parallel.

Support Samnytt’s survival with a subscription or donation. We are grateful for any help we can get from readers who appreciate our work with the newspaper.

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READ MORE ARTICLES ABOUT THE LEGAL PROCESS:

Such administration of justice does not belong in a rule of law

Samnytt appeals to the Supreme Court

Mats Dagerlind imprisoned after journalism about the Hate Speech Investigator

The prison sentence against Samnytt places Sweden in the same league as Russia and Belarus