EDITORIAL • After Jomshof’s statement about Anders Lindberg as a traitor, there has been a heated debate about the “tone” in Swedish public discourse. My colleague Jonas Andersson here at Samnytt has excellently explained why it is not Jomshof or the Sweden Democrats that escalate the tone in the debate, but rather the left-liberals who have caused it for over 30-40 years. So let’s instead focus a little on the word “quisling” or “traitor”. Can Lindberg and the rest of the left-liberals be attributed this epithet?
Calling the left-liberals traitors is something I have done for as long as I can remember. Here at Samnytt as well. In an editorial last summer I wrote:
If we do not resist – actively, loudly, and uncompromisingly – we risk being the generation that let the West fall. Not from enemies outside, but from traitors within.
What Jomshof called Aftonbladet’s political editor-in-chief Anders Lindberg and Social Democratic leader Magdalena Andersson was “quisling.”
Most people probably know the name and what it came to mean, but briefly, the word originates from the Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling, who in 1940 took over the Norwegian government under the protection of Nazi Germany. Since World War II, the name has become an international term for a traitor.
Treason is a concept both in colloquial language and in law. Legally, treason means this:
Anyone who, when the realm is at war,
1. prevents, misleads, or betrays those working for the nation’s defense or leads them to mutiny, disloyalty, or discouragement,2. betrays, destroys, or damages property significant to national defense,
3. provides the enemy with soldiers, property, or services, or
4. commits another similar treacherous act,
As Sweden is not formally at war, neither Anders Lindberg nor Magdalena Andersson can be convicted of treason. But being a “quisling” or traitor is, in common parlance, much broader than the strictly legal definition.
Nor is it an unusual linguistic usage. A traitor doesn’t need to be someone who secretly hands over military defense plans to a foreign power. It can also be someone who betrays the community they are expected to be loyal to, helps its adversaries, or deliberately furthers decisions that seriously harm their own country.
It is in this sense that the question of Anders Lindberg, Magdalena Andersson, and other left-liberals must be discussed.
Not Free from Responsibility
For what is really the opposite of betrayal? It is loyalty. Loyalty to one’s own country, its people, its security, its history, and its future. A politician does not always have to make the right decisions to be loyal. Anyone can make misjudgments. But when the same political movement for decades pursues a policy that weakens the country, sees the consequences, is warned about the consequences, and still continues — then it is no longer enough to speak of naivety or isolated mistakes.
Sweden did not end up where we are because of a natural disaster. Mass immigration, segregation, clan crime, Islamization, shootings, bombings, and the growing insecurity are the consequences of political decisions. The decisions were made by people with names, positions, and responsibilities.
For decades, warnings about these developments were raised. The warnings were not met with factual arguments, but with suspicion and character attacks. Those who wanted to reduce immigration were called racists. Those who talked about Islamization were branded extremists. Those who pointed out the connection between migration and crime were accused of pitting groups against each other.
Meanwhile, the policies continued.
When the problems became impossible to deny, the same people changed their story. Suddenly, they claimed to have been naive. Suddenly, no one could have foreseen the developments. Suddenly, they claimed to always have favored stricter migration policies.
But it is not true. The developments were not only foreseeable. They were repeatedly foreseen — over and over again — by those whom the left-liberals tried to silence and destroy.
This is central. The betrayal is not only in the harmful decisions. It is also in the fact that those who tried to defend the country were attacked, while the policies that harmed the country were defended.
Anders Lindberg has been one of the loudest champions of this position. He did not make government decisions, but for a long time he has used his platform at Sweden’s largest newspaper to legitimize the political direction that brought Sweden here and to attack those who tried to stop it.
Also note that Lindberg is a Social Democrat through and through. He has previously worked as a political advisor to a Social Democratic foreign minister at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for the Social Democrats’ defense committee in Parliament, and as an ombudsman for the party board. He is also married to a Social Democratic party leader and member of parliament.
An editorial writer naturally has the right to advocate whatever views he likes. But a political opinion maker is not immune from criticism for the ideas he spreads, the holders of power he defends, or the consequences he helps make possible.
Cannot Pretend to Be Concerned
Magdalena Andersson’s responsibility is even clearer. She has belonged to the absolute top of the party that ruled Sweden for most of the period when the problems grew. The Social Democrats have held government power, controlled government agencies, and shaped public discourse. They cannot now stand beside the society they helped create and pretend to be concerned observers.
Betraying one’s country does not have to mean loving another country more. It can also mean loving an ideology, a self-image, or a political project more than one’s own country.
That is where left-liberalism ends up again and again. When the interests of the Swedish people have been pitted against their own ideology, ideology has taken priority. When the safety of Swedes has been weighed against the principle of generous immigration, immigration has been prioritized. When social cohesion has conflicted with multiculturalism, multiculturalism has been defended. When the truth about developments has threatened their worldview, the truth has been denied and the truth-teller attacked.
What else should this be called?
The Most Serious Crime Ever
Critics say that words like “quisling” are too strong. But they rarely ask the opposite question. What word is strong enough for people who, with open eyes, continue to support a development that is breaking apart the country they claim to represent?
How many shootings, bombings, gang rapes, humiliating robberies, and parallel societies does it take before we get to use a word that truly reflects the gravity?
And how many times can a political and media elite be warned, dismiss the warnings, carry out the policy, and then blame the consequences on everyone else before the explanation of “naivety” loses credibility?
The word traitor should not be used lightly. It is a serious accusation. But for that very reason, it cannot be banned by invoking “the tone” of debate. Sometimes reality is serious. Then our language must be able to be serious as well. And what Anders Lindberg, Magdalena Andersson, Fredrik Reinfeldt and many more have done is the greatest and most serious crime ever committed against the Swedish people. Ever.
Now Swedes risk losing their country forever.
Their Decisions Made the Word Relevant
Jomshof’s statement was not an accusation, a verdict, or a legal judgment. It was a political and moral assessment. And in that sense, the question is not whether the left-liberals satisfy all the legal elements in the penal code.
The question is where their primary loyalty has been when their own people’s security, cohesion, and future were set against their ideological project.
After several decades of mass immigration, denial, evasion of responsibility, and attacks on those who tried to sound the alarm, it is fully legitimate to reply: Not with Sweden and the Swedes.
That is why I will not be upset that Richard Jomshof used the word “quisling.” I am far more upset by the societal development that made the word relevant.