IKEA Founder not left in peace

IKEA founder not left in peace

The Swedish press can be merciless. So a while ago it was revealed that Mr Ingvar Kamprad, the founder and CEO of the furniture retail empire IKEA, as a young man was involved in Nazi activities. Kamprad had years back conceded some involvement in his “innocent youth days” but recanted and admitted to wrongdoing, even asking for forgiveness. Should this not be the end of the story?

Sweden certainly was complicit in the evils perpetrated by the dominating world power at the time, the Nazi regime, even though in a passive way. Norwegians cannot easily forget, even though it may be difficult to say what the Swedes should have done instead, the fact that Sweden allowed multiple German goods trains with arms passing through her territory up to northern Norway in the early 1940s.

In media 2011 it seems as if it is fairly easy to judge whether a person is morally beyond reproach or not. The reason for the Swedish press going for Kamprad again was his comments about one of the Nazi leaders in Sweden, Per Engdahl, dead since about ten years (no related to me as far as I know), that he always had admired this Engdahl as a person. Even if this comment in his recent biography is embarrassing still, one also has to ask the question whether there is forgiveness for a person like him. The press wants to make sure that there is no closure, and no forgiveness, and in addition such news makes for more readers.

From a South African perspective it would be senseless to repeat the perpetrations of people in a public way in absurdum, so as to make sure there is no closure. It would in fact amount to the flair up of new hostilities on basis of old ones. If you are in it, you cannot afford such journalism, for you somehow have to take responsibility. If you are not in it, it may be different. If your perception as a Swedish press representative is that Sweden is outside such crimes basically, that we are not part of any scandalous behaviour, that we are more or less clean, that we have stayed out of wars ever since 1809, etc., then it might be justified to hunt down all perpetrators mercilessly. But this is not Sweden. Sweden is part of the world, also of the dirty things that happen there, and that seems to be the perception already at least by the younger generation here.

As for the founder and CEO of IKEA, Ingvar Kamprad, he should be left in peace, as a citizen in his own right. I do not write this to favour IKEA; on the contrary. While the humble beginnings in a shed in Småland, south Sweden, are proof of quite some ingenuity, today IKEA is a giant comparable with Walmart, and therefore also part of a troublesome globalization.