Among the Talibans and gender warriors. Maria Sveland: Hatet (”The Hatred”). A book about anti-feminism, published by Leopard

”Swedish men are Talibans” – Gudrun Schyman

”Men are animals” – Ireen von Wachenfeldt

”Fatherhood is based on inserting the fruit” – Valerie Solanas

One doesn’t obviously need to start a book review by quoting three fools. That I do so anyway is due to the significant and decisive influence the three quoted women have on the author Maria Sveland. Her new book, which for obvious reasons is to be published on the 8th of March, International Women’s Day, is about what she calls ”The hatred against feminism”. If one bases an analysis on female hatred against men, one can obviously become very seriously lost. As a matter of cause, she rejects the notion that any such hatred should reflect other types of hatred – the good feminists are fighting for ”the idea of human rights”, and ”resisting […] hatred against women” is, in her own words, ”loud, physical and organized”.

The book opens with an elaborate account of what happened after the television report by Evin Rubar about the national organization for women’s shelters and the persons participating in that report. The sensational statement came from the Norwegian ”researcher” Eva Lundgren, who with great passion tried to make us believe that Swedish forests were home to Satanist groups sacrificing children. But what possibly had the most profound consequence was the statement by Ireen von Wachenfeldt that men are animals. She had taken a position not far from the author of the ”SCUM Manifesto”, Valerie Solanas. That broadside clearly showed that also Sweden has a feminist movement which does not mind killing men. The manifesto by Solana was explicitly about eliminating men from the world.

Through a tangled account of the rise and fall of Feministiskt Initiativ, (”Feminist Initiative”, a short-lived political party that failed to gain any parliament seats), Sveland ends up dealing with the Assange affair. Like so many before her, she writes as if she had been there in bed with the two women and the Wikileaks founder. But obviously she was not. She chooses – again like many others – to entirely rely on the accounts of the two women, as they have been propagated in the mass media, as if tabloid gossip could hold up in court. Assange himself is of no interest to them except as a media image of the ”woman-hater” and rapist. We who were not there in the bed should perhaps choose a more cautious strategy? In this context, one might rightly state that Sveland dives into the ”Facebook swamp”. Possibly the stack of quotes she throws in from this linguistic and social swamp should be analyzed with more skill and fewer examples? We do know what hateful comments on the internet look like, that they are confusingly similar, no matter whether they are found on left- or right-wing pages, or whether they target men or women. Those of us who are active on the Internet in one form or another know them all too well. It is false and dishonest of Sveland and others to make it seem that this swamp is inhabited solely by one kind of person.

But she takes this question a step further in the following chapter, where she talks about ”the coordinated hatred of the anti-feminists”. In this chapter, she attempts to analyze well known Swedish bloggers such as Pär Ström and Pelle Billing, who are known for their resistance to feminism. Does that position turn them into ”women-haters”?

That is clearly what Sveland is up to, when she writes that they can be held responsible for the ”anti-feminist movement”. In the imaginary world of Sveland, it is suspicious to have a society where a variety of opinions and ideas are expressed in public. One would think that there is no longer an open debate where opinions can not only stand in contrast to each other, but also confront each others, at times roughly, but always in a principled fashion. If one is critical towards feminism as it has developed – in its foundations or as overarching social ideology – one is labeled in the same way that Ström and Billing are targeted. In what sense the ”hatred” is supposedly ”coordinated” is not elaborated upon, apart from references to two bloggers who express similar opinions. That is not much of a social coordination. But it does sound as if an ideological tsunami had washed over the women of Sweden.

One topic that Sveland seems to completely ignore is the increasingly powerful polarization in Sweden and Europe, a polarization springing from the ideology of multiculturalism and from the economic, political and cultural frivolity that has dominated our countries for a long time. The polarization between people comes about when the former common moral and ethical platforms crumble. Multiculturalism implies by its definition a relativization (anything goes, anything fits), and in the wake of this follows suspicion, enmity, and eventually also open acts of violence, ranging from the individual level in the forms of abuse, rapes and robbery to a comprehensive collective level. But rather than analyzing this, Sveland plays her Breivik card. One can do that rightly if understanding that precisely the polarization created a monster like him. His furious and violent imaginary world is the result of a social order heading for its own destruction.

It will not do to talk about offended white men, or casting aspersions at the fathers’ movement, which in its turn is also a result of at social and biological warfare, where the family is made the primary enemy and the divorce culture hailed as the highest norm. The fathers are thrown on the garbage dump in that process. Fathers are automatically considered enemies to the feminist-raised mother and her children. The contempt shown by Sveland towards fathers desiring a life with their children is unmistakable.

”Racism and anti-feminism – a love story” is a chapter heading towards the end of the book. It actually says everything we need to know. To even discuss mass immigration and its consequences is a taboo. Sveland takes issue with a report written by Bert Sundström in Borlänge. As Sundström is soft-spoken, almost surprised by the transformation of his birth town, Sveland becomes the one who has to stir the witches’ brew. This is the proof: Men who hate women are also “racists”. If one as much as indicates to an observer that something wrong in the development in Swedish society, one is immediately swept into that corner. The Sveland book is an example of political literature at its rudest, and mostly works as a self-fulfilling prophecy. You can expect to see this book praised in the culture section of newspapers and on television couches, by a corps of sham intellectuals responding in unison.

By Nils Andersson

Swedish