Rev Left Radio - Riding the Wave: Sweden's Integration into the Imperialist World System

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

Torkil Lauesen returns to the show, this time to discuss his newest book "Riding the Wave: Sweden's Integration into the Imperialist World Order". Pushing back against the narrative that Nordic countries like Sweden are socialist paradises who don't engage in colonialism and imperialism like other western countries, Torkil dives deep into history to deconstruct this rather naive perspective and offer a historical materialist account of Sweden's actual place in the history of colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism.  Henry Hakamaki from Guerrilla History joins Breht for the interview as well!  Check out the book here: https://www.leftwingbooks.net/book/content/riding-wave-sweden Read more of Torkil's work here: https://anti-imperialist.net/author/lauesen/ Outro Music: "I'm the Echo" by DARKSIDE ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, we have back on the program Torkel Lawson to talk about his newest book, Writing the Wade, Sweden's Integration into the Imperialist World System. It's a fascinating history of a core country in northern Europe that has a reputation as its neighboring countries do as well. of being this sort of, you know, almost socialist paradise. Every social Democrat, the world over, especially here in the U.S., love to points to not only Europe, in Western Europe, and Germany and France, etc., but particularly love to point to the Nordic countries and countries like Sweden

and their robust welfare state as an example of what they themselves want to build here in the U.S. or whatever country doesn't have that advanced of a welfare state yet and that reputation is often naive overly simplistic and separated from Sweden and other Nordic countries interactions with global imperialism history of European colonialism etc even the slave trade and we discuss all of that so we understand where these you know welfare states these robust welfare states where they actually come from and what their geopolitical and economic roots really are. And I think that's really important to understand that history. So we can kind of push back on some of these simplistic narratives that these countries are

wholly innocent and their welfare states do not come from, you know, the assistance of or the direct plundering of countries in the global south and victims of European imperialism and colonialism. So this conversation will definitely get into that, and the book itself is really, really in-depth, detailed dive into exactly that. And I love it. It's also published by our friends over at Kersbbedeb, who have published many books that we've had on the show, and they're a wonderful little publishing company. So check them out in their other works as well. But without further ado, here is my episode with Torkel Lawson. on his book writing The Wave

and I also have my friend and co-host from guerrilla history, Henry Hakamaki on to help me host this episode. He loves the book. He wanted to jump on for this one. We'll probably try to release it on both guerrilla history and Rev. Left's feed to get the conversation

out there to more people kind of see it as a collab. But thank you to Henry for coming on and helping me with this conversation. He really made great contributions as well. So without any more adieu. Here's our episode with Torco Lawson, writing the wave, Sweden's integration into the imperialist world system. Enjoy. Hello again and thank you for this invitation to talk about my book on my book on

Scandinavia and Sweden in particular. Well, who I am, I'm an old ancient capitalist activist and researcher, and I live in Copenhagen in Denmark. That's about it. I think we should start to talk about the book. Absolutely. Let's do it. The book is titled Writing the Wave, Sweden's Integration into the Imperialist World System.

And I think a good way to start this conversation is just to ask you generally, can you please tell us why you decided to write this book, kind of what Sweden's general reputation is and why you focused on Sweden in particular? Sure. Well, I have noticed that the welfare state of Sweden and Scandinavia in general served as a role model for what a working class can accomplish within the framework. of capitalism. And Scandinavia and Sweden is considered progressive countries, and their welfare state is kind of a step towards socialism. Bernie Sanders and the United States have mentioned this. But it's also a very common perception in Scandinavia. There is a strong feeling of complacent in Scandinavia that we have established this super

welfare state and democracy. And that's the kind of Scandinavians are very proud of their system. What is left out of this story is that the construction of the welfare state was only possible due to colonialism and imperialism. And it's still running on the exploitation of cheap labor in the global south. The construction of the welfare state was suddenly done by the effort of social democrats and trade union struggle. But it was only possible because Scandinavia was part of the imperialist center.

This is due to the success. You can see there's no capitalist welfare state in the global south, because they don't have any periphery to exploit. Another reason to write the book was that, well, there's a lot about German imperialism and English imperialism and the connection to the rise of what we call labor aristocracy, but not very much about Scandinavia. And someone has to write this history, I think, and, well, there's not a lot of people who have this position on the left in the Scandinavia, so I think I had to do it.

And I had, through the years collected a lot of interest in small stories about Swedish and Nordic colonialism and imperialism. And the book consists of a row of these short stories and examples which should illustrate how we have been writing on the way of the major. in various powers. Hi, Torkel. Picking back up, and as I come in, I just want to thank you for writing this book. Sweden's role in the imperialist system is something that I've talked about on guerrilla history periodically. So having this book out now really does help further my knowledge of the subjects that I can continue to speak on it.

So thank you for that. The question that I have for you is that in the book, you say that the Swedish model is the idea, ideal type of capitalist welfare state. And as you mentioned, it's held up and lauded by certain American politicians or, as you say, it's called the folk helm. What role did trade unions, the Social Democratic Party, and the Second International play in its construction? I know that that interaction between the Social Democratic Party and the Second International is a very interesting story that you told in your book as well. Yeah, sure. A lot of the inspiration for the Swedish folk home, which is, or Polk Emmets, which is the Swedish edition of the Social Democrat welfare state, came from Germany and the, from the Germany social democrats in the last part of the 19th century, Kowski and Bernstein, and the social.

called the Goet program. But there was also an inspiration from a conservative nationalism also in Germany. Bismarck created curious enough the first step to welfare state. So the inspiration came a lot from Germany. And the idea of the Germany socialist was that first, First of all, the struggle for socialism, they left the position of an international struggle. The struggle had to be national because the nation was the political framework, because they didn't believe in revolution anymore.

They thought that they could improve the living condition and the wages and the rights of the working class within the capitalist system. So the struggle has to be mainly political and through the parliament. And that meant that the working class began to have national interests, not only class interests, but actually national interests, which resulted in a support for German colonialism. And also support for the German national state in the insia imperialist struggle. We all know about the strategy of the First World War, where all the socialist parties voted for the war against their fellow class comrades.

So it was this change from class solidarity to citizenships, which is important. nationalism instead of class solidarity and cooperation and diversion and diversion of power with capital, a kind of team spirit in modern language. And the social democrats talk about the people more than they talk about the class, the working class. To do this thing, they also have to distance themselves from the communist, which was not compatible to this line.

So the Swedish social democrats have always been a strong enemy of the communist, while the communists always have tried to court the social democrats, and they still do, but the social democrats have always hated the communists. I'm just going to briefly follow up here, because one thing that I think is really interesting is how some of these dynamics worked as you laid out in your book. So you write that in the 1890s, basically the introduction of industrial capitalism in Sweden created many new jobs. And at around the same time, there was this mass emigration event from Sweden, which drained the reserve army of labor. And that caused wages to double

throughout the 1890s. Can you just briefly talk about that? Because I think that many of the listeners of Rev. Left, like me, are interested in the dynamics of some of these interrelated components. Yes. Sweden was not a traditional colonial power. They never got any big colonies. But they certainly became settlers. And I think it's around between 15 and 20 percent, actually, of the Swedish population immigrated out of Sweden during the 19th century. And Up until the first World War, it was 1.2 million Swedes left the country out of, I think, 6 million people. So it's a huge part of the population which left the country. And this was the poorest people living in the countryside and also in the cities, but mainly poor agricultural labor.

and they were really poor people. Actually, there was hunger in Sweden in 1860, 62. Really, people were dying from hunger. So it was very hard. But these people, they left for the United States, many, but also for Canada and also for Denmark, actually. The situation was much better in Denmark. But the main part became settled.

in the United States. Actually, Chicago was the second largest city in Sweden because it posted, I think, more than 100,000 Swedes in 1860. So there was really many Swedes going to the states. And they were integrated in the... United States settler community on a very high level because of their ethnic background. And they more or less doubled their income and rope back home that their family should follow. But this, of course, also made the conditions for the working class much better in Sweden

because the reserve army have left, and there was actually not enough labor in Sweden during the Industrial Revolution. So they could raise their wage level in Sweden also, and they could easily organize the labels and both in the trade unions and in the social democratic parties. So this settler colonialism has a double benefit for the Swedish working class. Yeah, I think that's incredibly interesting in something that's not thought about a lot or realized. There's this huge influx of Swedish immigrants into the U.S. as settlers. And then that participation in initially British, but an American settler colonialism more generally back home has the effect of reducing the amount of workers overall. which puts workers in Sweden in a better position to fight for welfare state, etc. That's a really fascinating aspect of it.

And I kind of want to drill down on that point a little bit more and maybe even broaden it to include more of Europe generally. But as any good historical materialist knows, in order to understand the present, we must understand the past. So can you talk a little bit more about the history of Sweden in relation to early European colonialism and even especially the slave trade? Yeah, but I also want to add one more point because claiming that this immigration from Sweden is colonial secularism is kind of a provocation on the Swedish left because these immigrants are normally talked about as these poor people who are looking for a better life. The other side of this coin that they became settlers and took away the land of the indigenous population in America and also was integrated in a high level and benefited from the slavery in the United States and the exploitation. of the lower part of the working class coming from Latin America or China and so on. It's a kind of provocation actually.

But turning back to other sides of early colonialism, of course, there is the slave trade, which was from back in the 16th century. century. And I would say there that Denmark played a much bigger role because we had Ghana on the west coast of Africa was a Danish colony at the time. You can still find Danish portraits on the coast of Ghana. And I think Denmark was the fourth or fifth biggest slave transporter transporting several hundred thousand. thousands of slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean and to America. The Swedes didn't participate much in the transportation, but they did in other ways, because

at that time, Sweden was a very important producer of iron bars or iron in in general, and it was used in several ways in the slave trade. It was used actually as a currency when the slave traders fought slaves in Africa. They used iron as a currency, and it was of course also used as fast locking up the slaves, and it was used for all kinds of tools. And the Swedes also had a lot of fishing for herons, and this was sorted and also used for food, for slaves, both in the Caribbean for export, but also on the ship. So in that way, they participated in the slave trade. But mainly Sweden, early colonialism was also in the transport.

The Scandinavian countries was a huge maritime power, commercial maritime power in the 16 and 17 centuries. Actually, England was the biggest one. America was number two. And then came the Scandinavian countries' maritime fleet. It was bigger than both Germany and France and Italy and even the Dutch. I think it's around 30% of all the tea and so-called China where from China was transported on Swedish ships in the 17th century. And later it was smuggled mainly to England.

England, which had a high tax level on China where and sea from the far use. Actually, Sweden established, as they didn't have colonies, they established so-called the consulates in all major ship ports in the world. They have around, I think, 80 consulates in China or in Rio, in Brazil. or Singapore, and everywhere they have this consulates, which was kind of shipping agents for the merchant fleet. And even today, the Scandinavian merchant fleet is very important. We have the Danish Maersk, which are one of the biggest container transport in companies.

And they are also trade oil to line in Norway. Scandinavians still place this role as a transporter. And they could do that in this period because they were often mutual countries in the colonial, inter-colonial disputes between England and Holland and Barnes in the period. So they could benefit from their mutual role. I think I should stop here about this story. Well, I'll take those iron bars on the slave ships and use those to segue us into the next topic. So in addition to the iron bars being used on the slave ships, iron also tells a little bit of a story in the relation of the far right in Sweden.

So going forward to the 1930s, Sweden had some interesting relations with Nazi Germany. As you mentioned in your book, in the late 1930s, about 75% of the exported steel iron from Sweden went directly to the Nazis. And Sweden has a very interesting history of far-right movements within the country, relations to far-right movements and governments outside of the country, even talk about in the book, something that I found out maybe six months ago, which was that even the founder of IKEA was a fairly prominent member in some of these far-right groups within Sweden, these kind of ultra-nationalist, essentially Nazi groups within Sweden.

So can you just tell us a bit about Sweden's relationship to fascist movements, both outside of Sweden, as well as the far-right movements within Sweden? Sure. Well, it has both a historical background and also due to its relations to Germany. The Swedish state have been very militarized, and there's a Swedish king. Carl the 12th, who was called the soldier king back in the 17th century. So the military have always had a strong influence in the Swedish state, and it have been, I think, a more authoritarian state than the Danish and the Norwegian states, a little bit like the Prussian state in Germany.

Germany, and Sweden is sometimes called the Trojan of Scandinavia. And Sweden's integration into the imperialist system has very much been riding on the wave of Germany, while Denmark was riding on the wave of English imperialism, because Denmark was an agricultural country, And we sold meat and butter and bacon and corn to England. And this was one of the main factors in the breakthrough of capitalism in Denmark. It was different in Sweden. They were exporting iron and timber and copper, and mainly to Germany. and this was the breakthrough of Swedish industrial palism.

And it's true that they supported Germany with steel and machines, especially what is called ball bearings, what the Swedish speciality. And ball bearings was a very important component in all machines and running stuff. It was kind of the microchip of machines in the 30s. So this was a very important part. And Sweden continued actually with exporting machine and parts to Germany up until, I think it's January 45, that means just a few months before the ending of the world.

So they were very stopping in their export to Germany, which was paid by in gold, actually. So it was hard currency for Sweden. And that is one of the reasons that Sweden continued to have a strong fascist and right-wing influence in its, its country which started back in the 20s and the 30s. And it was not only in the military and in the police. It was also in in culture and in sport and in the school system. It was much more broad than than in Denmark and Norway. Even even the king was suspected to have to have NASA.

his sympathies. And it continued after the second World War. Actually, it was a Swedish white wing, a fascist who organized, reorganized

the fascist movement after the second World War. And if you follow the person and the organizations, you can see that there is a, there is a continuity right up to present-day right-wing populism in Sweden.

It is the same persons and the same organizations which just are shifting names. And in that way, there is a strong connection between Swedish fascism and Swedish right-wing at the moment. it's correct that one of the main persons in the Swedish movement is it's a person called Pierre Ingdail and he was

a close strength to Ingvar Kamrat who was the owner and founder of the IKEA company. So in that way, Sweden is

different from Denmark and Norway. Yeah, that's incredibly interesting. clearly both, as you mentioned, both Sweden and Germany have, you know, still a rising, if you will, far right issue to deal with in both of those countries and to understand that history is fascinating. Also, the connection between large legacy corporations and how they trace back to World War II. And in America, we have some big energy companies that trace back to helping the fascist side in the Spanish Civil War, etc.

You can think of Volkswagen, but IKEA is one that people don't. think about as much. But I'm interested in moving into this post-World War II era, because after World War II, with Germany defeated, Sweden did pivot, as you point out in your book, toward the rest of Europe, and toward the U.S. in particular. So can you kind of talk about this move and broadly Sweden's relationship to 20th century imperialism, more broadly? What happened after the World War was that, of course, Sweden was in a very good position because it had its industrial and completely intact while most of Europe was in ruins. So the Sweden industrial sector developed very, very quickly after the war.

And Sweden established a lot of acute. huge companies, transnational companies in this period, both in car in terms of car manufacturing, in terms of machinery, in terms of household stuff, freezers, washing machines, cooling equipment and all kinds of tools and machinery was developed in Sweden. So they had a very lucrative period also. And they also became transnational in many ways, and many, and fast-offel in cooperation with the big U.S. companies, one of which I mentioned is Lanko, which is a company which is a company which produced iron ore in Liberia on the West African coast, which. was one of the biggest iron ore producers in the in the 60s and a very high quality of the iron was produced there and this was in the cooperation with the US and actually Sweden

Norway and Denmark went into the NATO alliance but Sweden stayed out of the alliance but only on the surface because undercover they were closely related to American military. They cooperated around the Baltic Sea where the Swedes was surveying what was going on on the Soviet side. the Americans help also Sweden with developing their submarines and their missile systems and there are all kinds of listening equipment and surveillance equipment. So undercover, they cooperated very closely and exchanged the intelligence with the U.S. but formerly staying out of the NATO alliance. I'm glad you mentioned LAMCO because it's something that,

is related to the next topic that I want to talk about. So Lamco, as you mentioned, was very involved with mining in Africa. And for listeners who want to have some supplemental viewing, I recommend the documentary Concerning Violence, which is a Swedish documentary about national liberation struggles. In Africa, the name is based off of the chapter from Wretched of the Earth by France Fanon, and they use quotations from it. throughout. Very good documentary, highly recommended. But LAMCO, being the Swedish company,

had a very pernicious role in Africa. But at the same time, Sweden had a very interesting role to play in the national liberation struggles of the 60s and 70s. Can you talk about that? Yes. You can say one of the, I think, mostly interesting thing is that the, the, The prime minister of Sweden or Palme actually was the first western prime minister to recognize North Vietnam. And actually he demonstrated, Palme demonstrated with the North Vietnam ambassador in Stockholm in 70, I think, against the Vietnam War. And Sweden also was very supportive to the African liberation movement, especially the A&C in South Africa and Swapo. And I think it has to do with that. There's several aspects in it.

Of course, at that time in the 60s and the 70s, I think Sweden saw a potential. of being close to all those new liberated countries. They hope to play a big role there, both politically and also economically. And it also has to do with the Swedish self-perception of being particular progressive and humanist. And they wanted to take advantage of this position, I think. But at the same time, at the same time, they don't see the connection between this role and the exploitation of the third world.

They don't see the connection between the cheap wage of electronics and textile and coffee and so on and in our consumption. Even if you can break down the different parts of the price in a cell phone or T-shirt or a cup of coffee and show very clearly the relation between low-wage and cheap prices for the consumers in. in Sweden, they don't recognize this connection. So I think they tried to play this double role. And also I think it was to keep the communist out of influence. But I think if I could take an example of this double position, you can take the example of the Volvo at the moment. The Volvo personal car section was sold, I think, around 2010 to China,

and all Volvo personal car style or passenger cars are now produced in China. However, Volvo is not only passenger cars. Volvo is one of the leading producers of truck and buses and construction machine. Actually, in 2016, Volvo was the second largest producer of heavy trucks and buses in the world. And while the headquarters is in Gothenburg in Sweden, Volvo have production facilities in 18 countries, including China, still, Russia, Poland, Indonesia, India, Thailand, South Africa, and Mexico and South Korea. And Volvo has a special status in Sweden. It is interlinked with the building of the Swedish Gulfholm, and it's which compromised the close

cooperation between capital and trade union, which is blessed by the Swedish state. call it this Volvo team spirit. But if you compare the working conditions and wages in the different Volvo groups, they are very, very different. For instance, if you take the wage of a Volvo worker in Durban in South Africa, they get around $350 per month, while the minimum, while the minimum, minimum wage as for a Volvo worker in Sweden is around $2,500 for a month. And to this you have to add that the South African worker don't have the access to the free

health care and schools and social security and pension and so on. So you can see there's this huge big difference within the Volvo concern. The South African workers are well qualified, and they work with the same equipment as in Sweden. They have the same productivity, but they received only a tense of the Swedish salaries. One of the counter strategies against transnational companies is often called that you should have trade union solidarity across the borders. But this have been very difficult to make within the Volvo concern. There is some Swedish reserve researchers which have talked with the Swedish trade unionists

at Volvo. And I have a quote here where they say, we have some projects in Lazio, in America, and there's a lot of interest there in the Swedish model. But it's difficult, you know, how they are there. They don't know a lot of things, and they go out on strike, and we don't behave like that here in Sweden. And there's another comment here where they talk about if they should support a Volvo strike in India, and the trade unionist in Sweden say,

yes, we have talked to them, but it's difficult, you know, they don't speak English, and they have demands that we cannot fulfill. They have to fight for their rights for themselves. And this is, I think, typical for the trade. unions in Sweden. You know, there is a very strong cooperation between capital and the trade union in Sweden. And here in, I think it was in January 2020, there was even implemented stronger laws that prohibited stripes and that the trade union should uphold peace in the workplaces.

There are very, very few strikes in Sweden, and there are always only these strikes. Yeah, that's incredibly interesting and I think really essential to understand that at general history. You did mention an Olaf Palm early on in that answer. I'm going to get to him next because I think it's an interesting figure and a historical event that we should focus on. But first, sort of chronologically, I just want to talk about neoliberalism and sort of how that manifested. Sweden. So, you know, in the 70s into the 80s, we have the rise of what we now call neoliberalism. Can you

just talk about how that rose in Sweden and how it's shaped Sweden's economic and political system ever since? Yes. You know that the social democrats had been in power, I think, around since

1920 up to the late 70. So it's half a century with social democrats in power. So it was a huge change in Sweden when the first liberal government came into power. And also because of the structure of the Swedish economy, neoliberalism changed a lot, because The economy of Sweden was based on medium and big industries.

There's a lot of big industries in Sweden. If you take the Fortune 500 lists of big companies, there's a lot of big companies in Sweden. So this wave of outsourcing which rolled over the world from the in the 80s and the 90s changed a lot in In Sweden, a lot of workplaces was outsourced. Ikea was completely outsourced. There's no production of Ikea at all in Sweden. And a lot of other companies outsourced half of their workplaces. As I told you, before, Volvo passenger cars disappeared completely and

So, this breakthrough of neoliberalism was a huge difference in a big wake-up call in Sweden and changed a lot. And there was a lot of hard economic crisis later on in Sweden, also a financial crisis in Sweden. So it made a lot of cracks in the people's home and in the welfare state. But I think that in the mind of people and culturally, the people's home is still strong in Sweden and this and the social democratic party is still very strong, especially in the Swedish population by people from, I say, 50 and up to 70 or 80 years. So in the old population, the social democracy is still a very strong path. And also, I think that there was this last dramatic attempt. by the trade unions in the late 60s to not only get a division of the profit from the capsule,

but actually tried to take over the ownership of the production facilities. And this was also turned around by the neoliberalism breakthrough. And this also created a lot of tensions in Sweden. I see, I see. We're going to get to sort of where Sweden is currently in a second. But just to follow up on that Olaf Palm point, can you tell us who he was, how he governed? And I'm really also interested in your personal opinion on the assassination and what your opinion is on that. Well, Olof Palme was actually he comes from an aristocratic background in Sweden.

And many social democrats actually do. And he has also a relation to actually to an ancient part of his family. And that's a famous British communist, which is also named Palme, which is in family with him. I think he was the leader of the English Communist Party during the war. But anyway, Palme made a very quick career in the social democratic party. He had started in America as a young man. And it had made a great impression in the beginning of the 60s he started in the USA. I think he took his master there.

And he became firstly a very strong anti-communist in the U.S. But he was also impressed by the struggle for the black people's rights also. But actually he was recruited by the CIA. at the time he was there because he was a member of many international student organization and he held the CIA by giving names of important communist persons within student movements in Europe. And so in that way he was in the line of Social Democrats being very anti-communist. And he was, as I said, he was quickly as a young man,

and he became a secretary of the prime minister and actually was the right hand of the Tay-Alander, was the name of the prime minister. And when he became prime minister himself, he was a very strong prime minister. He had this problem with the trade unions, which wanted to actually take ownership of the means of production, and that was not Palmas line. He wanted to have close cooperation between capital and the trade unions.

But he could see that you should not try to seize the means of production, because the who's creating too much tension and too much trouble in the society. So he managed to derail that proposition actually and put it into what is called the economic democracy. And Helme was also, you know, I talked about his engagements in the Vietnam War on North. Vietnam's side, he was criticized in the American bombing by B-52 over Hanoy and compared it to the Nazis bombing in Spain, and he was very hard on the U.S. at the time. But on the other hand, he was cooperating with the United States military on the sideline. And my analysis is that they can think that the American policy in Vietnam was stupid and

it was a mistake. But he was certainly not pro-communist. Palme got a lot of enemies within Sweden and also internationally. Due to his relation to North Vietnam, the Swedish intelligence service suspected him to be a spy for the Soviet Union. and there was a completely distrust between the crime minister and the intelligence service. So the Swedish Social Democrats, they established their own intelligence service on the sideline because they didn't trust the official intelligence service. But actually, the Social Democrat in Silicon Service was purely occupied with spying on the left wing and was not spying on the right wing.

And it might have been stupid because if anyone who wants to kill Ulau Palme, it was coming from the right wing, either the police or the military. The murder, there have never been any kind of good explanation or of who killed Old Kalne. They have been claimed that it had been a petty criminal and it was a kind of accident and coincident. They have also been rumors about it. have been people inside the police or the military. Maybe it have been people from the South African far right

because of his interfering with the UNC. And they have also been rumors about it if it should be a person from Kurdistan because he was also involved in the Turkish Kurdish dispute. But it had never been cleared off. he is the murder and I have no, I cannot give any, I don't know who killed Kalmer but it's true that there are, we had many, many enemies both both within Sweden and outside Sweden and the political climate at the time in Sweden was very, was very hostile

in the 80s. So it's, yeah, I cannot, I don't know who gives. Very interesting, nonetheless. I want to transition us towards today and how Sweden's current political positioning is within the world, how Sweden's governing ideology is at this point, particularly with the rise of China, how Sweden is interacting with China on the global stage,

the state of right-wing populism within Sweden, and the many crises of global capitalism that are inherent in all of our societies, not least of which including Sweden. Yes. Well, the position of the far right in Sweden is, if you take it in how big the support is, you can see that I have very, figures here that the Swedish social democrats, they get around 20% or 21% of the

wolves and the liberals get around 19%. And then the Swedish far right get around 17%. So it's the third biggest party. And it's very, I think, very similar to alternative for Deutschland because of this. also has relation to old-time fascism and nationalism. But what is peculiar with Sweden, it's the same in Germany that both the social democrats and the liberals up to now have been keen on keeping the far right out of any influence. No one wants to touch them.

And it's very different from Denmark, where the populist far right is mainstream. They are, everyone wants to cooperate with them if it's possible. They are on television and talk shows and quiz shows, and they are completely accepted and mainstream. But in Sweden, they are, it's not so. They are, they are not touchable. No one wants to touch him, at least up to now. But it's very difficult because they are growing and growing to keep them out of influence. The Social Democrats, I think, will for sure not cooperate with them.

But I think that in the near future, I will think that the liberals will make some kind of cooperation with the fire rights. there is very often a political crisis in Sweden because the governments are very unstated. So it's very fluent if the far right is going to get more influence or if they manage to keep them out. Concerning the more geopolitical situation, I think that Sweden, like the rest of Europe, is squeezed between the pressure from the U.S. to join the U.S. in a cold war against China and Europe becoming more self-assure and trying to have its own foreign policy, which is not so hostile to China. And we can see that in many ways in Sweden, but also in the European Union in a general that they are very hesitating in joining the U.S. in this war against the Cold War, China.

The Trump area had certainly made an impact on the European Union that they can see that America is not a stable ally anymore, that there are, that Trump is not just a bump on the road, but he has a general follower in an influence in the U.S.A. They can see that, for instance, when the Americans left Afghanistan, they didn't consult with its partners. The Danes was very angry on America because they didn't told them anything that they were going to leave Afghanistan. They just did it, and then the Danes were there with their, they were left with no influence on this decision. So they don't think that America is a very nice partner in NATO anymore. So there's a lot of tensions going on on the geopolitical area.

But at least Sweden has also joined the position that the Chinese G5 telecom equipment is dangerous. and they want to survey what is going on by this network. But that I think is because that Sweden themselves are producing G5 telecom equipment and then hope to sell more than the Chinese. So I think this is just an open-tons position in that way. And for Denmark, I think it's one of the more loyal, to the U.S. military. You know, we have a colony left, this is called Greenland,

and there have been a lot of cooperation recently between the U.S. military and the things about more military in Greenland, because Greenland is becoming more and more important due to climate change. You can sail north of the Greenland now because the ice is making in the summer. And it's much more easier also to sail north of the Greenland. So Greenland is becoming more and more interesting. So the U.S. wants to lose Greenland's harbors more for their battleships.

They want to use more Greenland's airport. America have a base already in Greenland called the Tula base, but they want to expand their military presence there, and they want to continue to fly big drones over Greenland and so on. But this is also due to the code. between the U.S. and China and U.S. and the Soviet Union, that we had this re-militarization of Greenland. Yeah, that's incredibly interesting,

and I remember during the Trump presidency, there was that thing he threw out there that he wanted to buy Greenland, and obviously that's not going to happen, but that relationship between the Danes and the Americans, when it comes to Greenland as an increasingly important geopolitical position, is something certainly to keep an eye on. And as climate change melts the Arctic, you know, predictions are saying by mid-century,

there will be full passage through the Arctic for the first time in human history. And that will and already is becoming a new site of inter-imperialist struggle, geopolitical struggle, economic struggle, et cetera. I did not know the view of the Danes in regards to the Afghanistan withdrawal and how little coordination there was. So even after Trump leaves office, there's still this, you know, lingering suspicion of the reliability and stability of the American Empire making its allies increasingly nervous. Another thing to keep our eyes on. But I am interested in the status, because you were mentioning the status of the far right in Sweden, I'm interested in the

status of the revolutionary left, those that would consider themselves to the left of the Social Democratic Party even. Do you have any insight into the status of the revolutionary left in Sweden today? No much. There is, if we go to the left of the social democrats, there are, you can say,

the old 68 left and the old communist, which is called the left wing party in Sweden. And they have around, I think, 8%. But they are completely mainstream.

We're not revolutionaries focusing on parliamentarian struggle. I think if we go to the non-polimentarian struggle in Sweden, they are not very big as far as I know. There is a particular thing in Sweden is that there is, what is it called, a syndicalist trade union, which are very progressive, I think, and which are trying all the time to create trade union struggle along the global production change, and they are making a lot of support for the trade union struggle in the, in the country. global south.

One example which comes to my mind is that, you know, in Sweden there is a strange monocry of selling alcohol. It is the state which has the monopoly of selling alcohol. And there are special stores in Sweden with sell alcohol. You cannot just buy it in the supermarket. And there, together with the employees. employees in these stores and the South African workers on wine farms, in the wine production, they are trying to, because there have been terrible working conditions for people on the

wine industry and wine farms in South Africa. So there had been pressure from this workers on the stores which sell wine in Sweden and cooperation with the workers in South Africa. It's just one example. And another example is that they are trying to organize Filipino workers in Sweden. And there's many examples, I think, which is a very progressive. And there's also small circles of ancient imperialist movements, especially working with Palestine in Sweden.

And then there is also this radical environment movement in Sweden, of course. But they still, you know, they are very radical, but they still appeal to the ruined power to redirect their policy to save the climate. They don't have their own alternative strategy to implement the necessary steps. But I know that my friend Gabriel Kearn is at the moment writing a book on the Swedish left and what is happening on the Swedish left,

which will be published on and Chris in this spring. Excellent. So the last chapter of your book is titled Towards a Transnational Anti-Systemic Movement. Can you summarize your arguments from that last chapter? And can you also tell us how class analysis plays into this? Because I know that there's some people who have read this that have been wondering about the class analysis of your conception

of a transnational anti-systemic movement. Well, first of all, I think that that it's important to re-vitalize, I think, the international solidarity and international struggle against imperialism. I think that nationalism has been a Trojan horse that have divided the global proletariat. I think that to avoid this, I think that any national struggle have to be based on a global perspective. Production is organized on a global perspective now in this global production change. And commodities are traded in a world market. And we have a global economy.

And so we have to organize, of course, globally also. And this global perspective has to entail a clear anti-emptalist aspect, I think, that any defense of the Swedish welfare state and our imperial mode of living and consumption is not a step towards socialism. Our struggle has to be coordinated and supported and with the Global South, I think. However, I don't think we can make a new international as the Comunteren was in 19. We don't have the same situation. We don't have this Bolshevik revolution and the backing of a new state which actually gave world revolution a top priority in the 20s, and we don't have this figure of the name.

The socialists and communist movement are very fragmented. and divided into a multitude of political lines and issues today. So I think that a new international cannot be constructed as a master plan from below. We have to build it slowly from above. We have to build it slowly from below. And that means that we have to have this global perspective up in front in our strategies

and develop it in each of our organization and slowly build this international networks up. And they can be built up actually if it's possible in trade union and peasant movement and indigenous people and anti-imperist and climate, many kinds of the struggle. And these sub-internations could merge into a more holistic internationals with the time passing.

And again, focusing on the common action. So I think it should be built from below and focus on action actually. I don't know what you mean about the class analysis. I don't think that the majority of the working class in the global north will be joining this struggle at the moment. But things can change when the crisis are deepening in the global north. And I think that many things are moving very fast now with the U.S. dominance. is falling very quickly, I think, and the rise of China. I think we can have, we're going in for a very dramatic period in the next decade.

Absolutely. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Torkel. It's always a pleasure to have you on. I always learn an immense amount from both your interviews with us, but also the books themselves. This book is writing the wave Sweden's integration into the imperialist world. system. Before I let you go, can you please let our listeners know where they can find you and your work online? There's a website called anti-imperalist.net, and a lot of my materials

are on that website. And my, yeah, there's also a Danish website, but it's mostly Danish stuff there. But there's also some English there, and the Danish website is called snudder state in decode. It's the Parasite state, D.K. I have also put up some stuff on the academic webs like Academica and Research Date. But else, you are welcome to drop me a mail and white what stuff you are interested in and I will send you. Yeah, wonderful. And I'll link to as much of that in the show notes as possible. And we've also had you on the show before to discuss your previous book. I'll link to that in the show notes so people that like this interview can check that out. You also did a recent interview with

our friends over at Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. So if you like this discussion and you want to learn more and hear another interview with some great comrades, check out Millennials Are Killing Capitalism in their interview with Torkel. Henry, thank you so much for coming on the show and co-hosting. Do you want to let listeners know where they can find you and your work online? Sure. And just since Torkel mentioned anti-imperial is Net. Shout out to my friend and comrade, Namanya Lukich, at Anti-Imperialist Net, who is actually who introduced me to Torkel's work. So thank you, Namanya, for doing so. I've really enjoyed it since I have gotten into it. Listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck 1995. That's

H-U-C-1-995. And of course, you should all be listening to Gorilla History. You know, obviously you like Brett. You listen to this show. He's one of the co-hosts on that show as well. And we have excellent guests, everyone from, you know, world-class historians like Gerald Horne to revolutionaries like Hicilliami and Joma C-Sisone. We have guerrilla, we have Rev. Left fan favorites like Alex Avenia and Nick Estes. So if you haven't listened to Gorilla History yet, you should subscribe to it wherever you find your podcasts. And follow us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-I. LLA underscore pod.

Here, here. Thank you both so much for coming on the show. I look forward to talking with both of you soon. Rather walk with fear. And talk and see you. Get up. You find it in a sermon. learning the sun

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