Creativity Is Dead – Woke Ideology Has Taken Over the Advertising and Design Industry

COLUMN • After Samnytt’s investigations into the advertising industry and the educational programs that shape its actors, a picture emerges that few want to speak openly about. An industry long associated with creative freedom is today, according to insider testimony, marked by ideological conformity, social pressure, and a culture of silence in which dissenting perspectives have consequences. Samnytt’s journalist and former lecturer at Konstfack, Jonas Andersson, reflects on what happened and what has been lost.

In light of the articles we have published about the advertising industry – and the educational programs that feed it with new creatives – I want to speak plainly.

I know how it works. I have been there. As a lecturer at Konstfack, as head of graphic design at Berghs School of Communication. As a Creative Director and Art Director both in Sweden and internationally.

And now – as a journalist – when I contact people in the industry, old colleagues, employees, people who know exactly how things are – but no one dares to speak. No one.

Except Magnus Fermin – and what he describes isn’t an exception. It’s the norm.

An industry where the wrong opinion doesn’t lead to debate – but to silence, ostracization, and ultimately to being blacklisted. Let us stop pretending. This isn’t about creativity – it hasn’t been for decades. It’s about control.

Those who do not subordinate themselves to leftist ideological frameworks – intersectional tenets, the correct feminist value base, the right enemies – disappear. Not through argument. But because assignments dry up, relationships are severed, and the phone stops ringing. It’s a system. And everyone knows it. I have seen it with my own eyes.

Resumé Called Up Clients to Warn Them

When I started the agency Etablissemanget and described it as “Sweden-friendly,” the industry magazine Resumé reacted. Not by showing interest, but by calling our previous clients.

The advertising industry is now ideologically synchronized with journalism, the cultural sector, and pretty much the entire Swedish film and TV production. Just look at the Swedish Film Institute, a left-wing and woke stronghold for forty years – and no one watches the junk they produce at the taxpayers’ expense. Same perspective. Same worldview.

Jonas Andersson

Before that, I had worked on graphic profile programs and branding projects for the Army Museum, the State’s Defense Historical Museums, the Air Force Museum – and many companies in biotech, real estate, and culture.

The question they put to clients was clear – do you really want to be associated with right-wing extremism? “Right-wing extremism”? Yes, you recognize it, this pathological, tired narrative that anything other than sanitized socialism is fascism and right-wing extremism.

When the reality is exactly the opposite.

The left-liberal magazine Resumé hits back at critics who claim it’s wrong to single out older Swedish women as disruptive elements on public transport. Photo: SL

But that’s how the mechanism works. That’s how the ideological control machine functions. And many of our clients gave in to the pressure. They knew they’d be labeled “right-wing extremists” in the media if they continued working with us, so they distanced themselves.

Yet the myth lives on, that the ad industry would be “bourgeois.” That it’s about market, business, competition – and selling products.

This is wrong.

Today, the advertising industry is ideologically aligned with journalism, the culture sector, and virtually all film and TV production in Sweden. Just look at the Swedish Film Institute, a leftist and woke bastion for forty years – and nobody watches the junk they produce on the taxpayers’ dime. Same perspective. Same worldview.

This is what feminist ideology looks like – and it is taught everywhere from preschools to universities and police academies. We are to learn to hate ourselves, our history, and our culture. We are to learn to hate who we are. That’s how you destroy a society and a civilization from within.

Jonas Andersson

The same boundaries for what can and cannot be said. What’s being promoted is neither product nor art – it is ideological indoctrination and lies about our history and how the political commissars think our world should look.

The fact that we never see any white men with non-white women is completely in line with the image they want to spread – that the Western, white man is the root of all evil. He is an oppressor, and therefore he cannot be depicted with a dark-skinned woman – the group said to be oppressed by his very existence.

This is what feminist ideology looks like – and it is taught everywhere from preschools to universities and police academies. We are to learn to hate ourselves, our history, and our culture. We are to learn to hate who we are. That’s how you destroy a society and a civilization from within.

“Swedish-Sounding Boy Names Were Removed in Admissions”

Advertising, just like the pop culture scenes, shapes people’s perception of reality – every day. And it starts in education. My years at Konstfack were hardly an intellectual environment. It was an ideological training camp. I usually describe those years as one long nightmare journey.

Konstfack Stockholm. Photo: Jonas Andersson

I remember how young, white men with “Swedish-sounding names” were weeded out in admissions processes – against my will – I remember the hatred of the so-called patriarchy, the hatred of white, middle-aged, heterosexual Swedish men.

Men like me. And I even had the nerve not to be a communist.

When experienced people fall silent. When the young learn that a career is built on the right opinions, not on skill. When the images we see, the stories we are fed, no longer reflect society – but try to reshape it. Then we must act, then we must dare to stand up for what is right.

Jonas Andersson

I saw how students learned not to think freely, but to think correctly. It wasn’t creativity. It was indoctrination. And I resisted as long as I could, but it came at a cost.

Years of conflicts, ostracization, a constant pressure to adapt. To bow down. To stay silent. I did not.

But in the end, it comes down to a simple question – how long can one stand alone in a system that doesn’t want challenge and free thinking – only obedience? For me it took five years. Five dark years.

The Times They Are a-Changin

All in all, I do not regret the experience – just as you don’t regret a bathroom visit after a prolonged bout of constipation (I know this well after once breaking my foot and a complicated surgery led to painkillers and bedrest).

It was painful to see this decay and this institutionalized madness – and all the confused young people forced into these dogmas and absurdities. But to leave was an uplifting – and enlightening – leap.

I learned something profound during those years. And it has shaped who I am today – and what I try to do. If only to try to save our country from this destructive madness. Now mainly through writing.

When experienced people fall silent. When the young learn that a career is built on the right opinions, not on skill. When the images we see, the stories we are fed, no longer reflect society – but try to reshape it. Then we must act, then we must dare to stand up for what is right.

And that is where we are now. This is not just about advertising but about power over reality itself. For those who control what people see – ultimately also control what they believe is true. And those who control that no longer need to win any arguments.

They have already won everything. At least, that’s what they believe for now.

But The Times They Are a-Changin.