Editorial: Thank you, Per Svensson, for your monumental ignorance

Published 11/22/2012

• Ingrid Carlqvist

Henry Cavling, one of the foremost pioneers of Nordic journalism

On Monday, November 19 I was invited for a grilling at Publicistklubben Södra (a debate club for journalists). I accepted, of course – never would I miss a chance to talk about my favorite subject, free speech, in front of colleagues who have gone astray.

Up until the last moment it was unclear who was going to grill me. A few days before the meeting, I got the message that Niklas Orrenius, a former reporter with Sydsvenskan and now Expressen’s expert on ”xenophobia, hate crime and islamophobia” couldn’t make it. He travels around the country and reports on how racist and evil Swedes are but carefully refrains from writing about hate crimes against Swedes. Nor can he find time to report on the fact that Muslim youths are behind practically every outrage against Jews in Malmö. Nothing is permitted to blur his big picture: Swedes are racists and immigrants are victims. 

Two days before the meeting, Orrenius suddenly remembered that his daughter had her tenth birthday the very day the meeting was to take place. I sympathize with him: It’s less fun confronting a knowledgeable colleague in a debate than interviewing her in her home and then selecting quotes that fit one’s preconceived angle. (Sydsvenskan)

Not until the day of the meeting was I informed that I was to be questioned by Per Svensson. No problem for me, I owe him my thanks! Had it not been for Per Svensson’s monumental ignorance about free speech and where silence will lead us, I might still have been a disgruntled vice-chair of Publicistklubben.

Due to his decision to disinvite the Danish journalist Mikael Jalving for a meeting where he was to talk about his book Sverige – tystnadens rike(Sweden – the land of silence), which is finally coming out in Swedish, I go so angry that I left Publicistklubben. That led to my being asked to speak to the Danish Free Press Society and to my decision to start a Swedish Free Press Society. It all culminated last summer when Lars Hedegaard and I decided to launch the newspaper you are now reading, Dispatch International.

Per Svensson is perhaps the premier exemplar of the cowardice that characterizes Swedish journalists. He and his cohorts tremble with fear at the mere thought of confronting Islam but never hesitate to poke fun at the Swedish Church or persecute a tiny and obscure sect like the Plymouth Brothers. They get the hiccups if they ever contemplate dealing critically with Sweden’s mass immigration – the greatest change our country has ever been exposed to – and the disastrous consequences it has entailed: explosively rising crime, a galloping increase in parallel communities where the writ of Swedish law doesn’t run and where the fire brigade doesn’t dare enter, the metamorphosis from a safe, secure and homogenous country to the world’s second biggest land of rape, steadily declining schools results, the abolition of housing for the elderly etc. All this is taking place while politicians and bureaucrats are raking in huge amounts of money from their participation in the immigration-industrial complex with expensive housing for asylum seekers, processing hundreds of thousands of people without passports and swelling a immigration bureaucracy, whose objective is to hand out as many residence permits as possible.

Well, during my forty minutes of grilling, Per Svensson started sweating far more profusely than I. It is not difficult to answer insinuating questions if one is truly committed and sticks to the truth. Those of you who are interested can watch the entire exchange here. (the exchange starts after 38 min)

It is my silent hope that I may have reached at least a few among the audience. Surprisingly, there are some indications that I may have. I would also hope that many will go and watch Jan Troell’s new movie Dom över död man (Verdict over a dead man) about the publicist Torgny Segerstedt, which is opening in December. Segerstedt didn’t give a damn that the prime minister and the king alternated between entreating and threatening him to stop filling his newspaper with articles critical of Nazism. Today he is, to be sure, a hero but back in the day he was alone and treated like an outcast by his colleagues.

Another model journalists ought to remember is Henrik Cavling, the man whose name is remembered every time Denmark’s most prestigious journalism award, The Cavling Prize, is handed out. He was the son of poor Swedish immigrants to Denmark (his father never learned to read or write), but Cavling became the preeminent pioneer of the Danish and Nordic press and turned Politiken into Denmark’s largest newspaper.

In 1912 Cavling wrote: ”A newspaperman who turns a deaf ear at justice will rot. He is a hundred times more despicable than the rabble rouser, who may occasionally find himself on the side justice.”

And in 1924 Cavling explained how a journalist ought to conduct himself:

”He must be a thinking, willing and striving person for whom his pen is a weapon of the spirit. A newspaperman with no ideal objective and only looking to increase his paycheck is no journalist. He is pretending be something he is not and he will end up thinking less of himself than will a colleague who considers the press as his calling.”

With models such as Segerstedt and Cavling, one need never bother with the likes of Per Svensson and Niklas Orrenius. They will never go down in history as anything but cowardly fair-weather sailors.

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