Porter’s Pensées

Excellent article here, from yesterday’s Guardian, but by an American-born Dagens Nyheter correspondent, Martin Gelin (https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gelin).

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/12/sweden-risbergska-orebro-gun-massacre. – (If it doesn’t come up, try the Guardian website.)

They’re thinking of tightening their gun laws here in Sweden. The shooter in this case had four of them, quite legally (for hunting), including automatics. The Swedish equivalent of the American gun lobby, mostly Right-wing Sverigedemokraterna, is against any limitation; but I imagine the measure will go through.

He was obviously targeting immigrants, by the way. They were on a course called Svenska för Invandrare (Swedish for immigrants), or SFI. I took the same course myself when I arrived, as a sort of ‘refugee’; to little effect, I must confess. But it means that I could have been in his line of fire.

The hero of the Ayn Rand novel I’m struggling with presently, Atlas Shrugged (see https://bernardjporter.com/2025/01/30/ayn-rand/), is a railroad magnate. The hero of the one I abandoned a few years ago, The Fountainhead, was a builder.

Déjà vu? The two men dominating America (and the world) today can be seen as these two heroes’ modern equivalents. One is a technocrat, developing new ways both of communicating and of travelling (to the planets); the other is a real estate developer. They’re both very rich. Beyond this, both of them represent the highest – possibly the last – stage of global capitalism; as did the fictional ‘Howard Roark’ and ‘Hank Rearden’ in Ayn Rand’s time. Post-revolutionary Russia (Rand’s birthplace) is of course following a similar path; which is what makes Putin such a natural ally for Trump. And this is roughly the path predicted by Karl Marx all those years ago. Doesn’t this describe the essence of the situation we’re in today?

Trump’s obscene plan to turf out the Palestinians and turn poor Gaza into a luxury ‘Riviera’ resort for the rich could not have come from the mind of anyone but a modern property capitalist. The way that what is called ‘populism’ has played into the hands of this new plutocracy undermines – if it doesn’t destroy – any hope that Marx’s favoured solution, a rebellion of the ‘people’ against the plutocrats, will come about any time soon.

I’m still not very far into Atlas Shrugged – it really is a very cold and boring novel – so I don’t yet know how it ends. But I guess not well, from my wokeish liberal point of view.

Apparently if you’re an immigrant it costs thousands of pounds and a mountain of paperwork to acquire British citizenship these days. – Just for purposes of comparison: when I got my (dual) Swedish citizenship five years ago it cost me around £50, a few questions about my financial situation and how long I had been with Kajsa, a quick police check, and that was it. No language requirement, even – wrongly, I think, but luckily for me. It took a few months for my application to be processed; but then I was Svensk. (Of course I’m white, comfortably off, and professional; all of which will have helped.)

Sweden, like Britain, is about to make its naturalisation process more difficult; but still it looks as though Britain will remain one of the most unwelcoming countries for the foreseeable future. Of course, that’s what our Rightists want; despite all the benefits that immigrants have brought over the past 400 years. (See my Britain Before Brexit, 2021, chapter 4.)

Incidentally: I once happened upon Karl Marx’s application for British citizenship about 150 years ago. The British police reported that as he had been notoriously hostile to his German king, he was unlikely to be loyal to Queen Victoria. But he was still allowed to stay. (He’s still here, of course.)

Eleven dead, at an adult education centre, including the shooter, a 35-ish white man with no previous criminal record, but a history of school failure, unemployment and solitariness. Thank God he wasn’t a Muslim. (As many of his victims were.) But we need the police to look into his computer before we can surmise his motivation for sure.

This is extraordinary in Sweden. We thought it was reasonably safe here. We’re also currently getting bombs going off all over Sweden – gangland, apparently. No-one hurt.

I’m about to be interviewed by a ‘free’ Russian documentary maker (Redaktsiya) on ‘imperialism’. I guess the subject is more relevant now than it has been for many years, with both Putin and Trump reopening that can of worms.

Next day: more info: https://www.thelocal.se/20250205/orebro-campus-shooter-named-in-swedish-media. And more: https://www.thelocal.se/20250206/multiple-nationalities-among-victims-in-swedish-mass-shooting-police. So it does look like an anti-immigrant motive.

It used to be dismissed as hyperbole. Now the idea of the USA’s being – or shortly becoming – a ‘Fascist’ power is being taken seriously.

Obviously Trump is not gassing Jews, or anyone else, yet. But neither did Hitler until 1941, or Mussolini ever. Those who think that genocide is the test a regime has to pass before it can be labelled ‘Fascist’ are clearly wrong. The ‘final solution’ was the culmination of Hitler’s particular form of Fascism, not essential to it. There are other more characteristic features: including different forms of racism, irrationalism, anti-intellectualism, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, nationalism, assertive masculinism, corporatism, resentment against past national humiliations, anti-‘elitism’, anti-politics… and so on. They must all strike chords today.

As a historian, I was intending to post a blog on the comparison with Trumpism, as well as the differences. But I soon realised that this has already been done a score of times (Google Trump/Hitler comparisons); and so I won’t burden you with my take on it now. Except to say that in my judgment Trumpism is a particular form of Fascism, peculiar to America because of the late-capitalist environment in which it is being born there – vide the very Ayn-Randy and obvious ‘techno’-Fascist Elon Musk – and so not strictly comparable in every detail with the 1930s variety (in which capitalism played a lesser part); but nonetheless sharing many of the latter’s characteristics.

I was reminded of these when I recently watched the TV documentary series Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial. The similarities shout out at you. Among trivial ones, it’s the narrator who compares the Berghof to Mar-a-Lago; so the series must have been made fairly recently, and with Trump in mind. The Nuremberg rallies are another obvious parallel. Then there’s the Austrian Anschluss, raising fears for present-day Canada… and so on. – I recommend the whole series, which you can get up at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32331294/. It must raise some doubts in the minds of those who dismiss our ‘Nazi’ fears as mere left-wing scare-mongering. As of course many did in the 1930s.

Ayn Rand’s ‘philosophical novels’ are supposed to have had a great influence on the American Right, with their glorification of free enterprise and heroic male industrialists. With America now being ruled (once again) by a millionaire property developer, supported by the country’s three leading tech billionaires, and along capitalist lines (The Art of the Deal), I thought I ought to read at least one of them. I’ve tried once before with The Fountainhead, but gave up; it’s a very long and pedestrian book, and bored me stiff. I’m now fifty pages into Atlas Shrugged, and finding the same. I’ll persevere; but I may not finish it.

I imagine you’ll know about Rand: originally Alisa Zinovjevna Rosenbaum; an immigrant from Soviet Russia, whose ‘philosophy’ seems to be to be a marriage between Adam Smith and Friedrich Nietzsche.

(PS. Here’s an article on the modern-day equivalents of Rand’s fictional heroes: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2025/jan/29/silicon-valley-rightwing-technofascism.)

Interesting historical piece by a conservative Canadian/American.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/opinion/trump-mckinley-populism.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Prince Harry’s utter vindication this morning in his High Court case against the Murdoch press (https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/prince-harry-v-murdoch-lawyers-due-back-court-after-last-gasp-deal-talks-2025-01-22/) is a rare ray of light in today’s on-going war between Good and Evil. I’ve not much time for the British royal family, least of all for Harry after the scandal of his wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy-dress party twenty years ago (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jan/13/royalsandthemedia.pressandpublishing); but to my mind he has fully made up for that with the battle he has been waging, at some risk to himself, against our over-powerful and, yes, ‘evil’, Fourth Estate. It will be interesting to see what the Sun – his main adversary – makes of it all tomorrow.

Unfortunately it won’t have as much impact as it would have done in the days when people still read newspapers, before they switched to the social media. (Of course neither is completely evil; you still have the Guardian, and this blog.) In connexion with which it was depressing – even scary – to see our social media lords and masters given second-row seats at Trump’s Inauguration; quite apart from the (allegedly) Nazi salutes that one of them gave to a rally of MAGA Republicans shortly afterwards. I think that even the twenty year-old Harry would have baulked at that.

How many self-styled ‘democracies’ allow their elected leaders to pardon convicted criminals by ‘executive action’, without reference to the ‘due process’ that applies to the rest of their people? (I’m referring of course to the roughly 1600 Capitol rioters whom Trump pardoned yesterday. Of course Biden has done the same, as outgoing President.)

The reason in America’s case may be the legacy of the colonial ties she escaped from in 1776. The new-minted USA ditched its ‘mad’ British monarch then, but not all his monarchical privileges. The American President is essentially a George III de nos jours. In certain circumstances he can do what the hell he likes. In this respect, British leaders, at least, could be said to be more democratically accountable than Trump.

I doubt, too, incidentally, whether any European rulers would be comfortable with their rich backers celebrating their electoral triumphs with Nazi (or ‘Roman’) salutes (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/20/trump-elon-musk-salute).

But you never know what might come. I have to say I’m troubled. I’m almost grateful that, at my age, I probably won’t live to see the final victory of ‘fascism’ (or whatever), in its 21^st-century guise. Looking at the signs now, that guise will probably be late-stage capitalist, and scaringly technological. Look at Trump’s government, and his rich and nerdish backers. And be afraid; very afraid.

Recent studies in both Britain and Sweden have shown that over 20% of ‘young adults’ (18-40) would ‘prefer a dictatorship to democracy’. (For Britain, see https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jan/12/one-in-five-britons-aged-18-45-prefer-unelected-leaders-to-democracy-poll-finds; for Sweden, https://www.icenews.is/2011/06/15/young-swedes-pick-dictatorship-over-democracy/.)

Today’s US Presidential inauguration, however, seems to suggest that you can have both at the same time. Trump, who was democratically elected, has said that he wants to be a dictator, albeit only ‘on day one’. His long list of over 200 ‘executive actions’, to be announced this afternoon, may reveal what he meant by this. Part of his appeal clearly lies in people’s perception of him as a ‘strong leader’, which is halfway to dictatorship. That’s ‘populism’ for you. And a majority of Americans, as well as those 20+% of young British and Swedish adults, clearly prefer this to the indecisive, short-termist, divisive and messy results that democratic systems usually turn up. Vote for the Führer you prefer. (Or, in the USA, the capitalist.) That’s squared the circle; if, that is, your idea of ‘democracy’ is that very simple one.

I’m not sure whether SvT will be covering the US Presidential inauguration, but if not I’ll be following it on my laptop, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2L-knUrFi8. Bring out the Coors.