Refugees and a United Nordic State

Socialist immigrant policy and a Nordic state

The leader of the leftist party, the socialists, Jonas Sjöstedt, is perhaps the only party leader at this time who has a well thought through policy on immigration and who sticks to it all the way. His argument is simple and straightforward. Those fleeing from conflict and war are welcome. It is a moral obligation to receive them. We have to trust people’s own stories but at the same time we have mechanisms by which we can deal with those who are extremists or  have come to abuse our welfare state (this latter statement is implied but seldom spelt out). We will eventually manage even the influx of a great number of people. Whatever we do, we must avoid putting up fences or stopping people at the border.

He is in fact an advocate of a humane, refugee politics. In a discussion between him and the Christian Democrat leader, he is the more consistent one while she comes out as clearly populist, possibly just taking chances to score short term political points.

What Sjöstedt here says is very much on par with Christian conviction regarding what should be a humane way of dealing with people in such a dire situation. I also recall how Sjöstedt (I have no idea of his own personal convictions, but that is here absolutely secondary) once applauded the work done by Church of Sweden in Stockholm running a home for the aged. He did it publicly and with emphasis. I do not forget it because that kind of comment you seldom or never get from any of the party leaders all of whom know what it means to be politically correct; one does not give credit openly to what the church does, just like that.

However, having said all this, the dream of a socialist society, with no doubt some very strong Christian roots (just think of Acts 4.32-37, on living in community of property [egendomsgemenskap]), has its limitations. History tells us, probably more than anything else here, that the working out of such splendid ideas is difficult. I would like to add my own understanding of this dilemma. In order to achieve what you want to achieve you need people to toe the line. Equality requires this in order to fulfil this dream, but that is the same thing as to say that you bring in a fatal element of coercion. If you do a number of other side effects come in, perhaps due to the sinful nature of all of us. You feel bound to build a society civil society is curbed and the state more and more will tell you what to do, and eventually those privileged in the Party will form their “nomenclatura”.

Interestingly, exactly the same element is conspicuously present in the new party Feminist Initiative. For example they would, if they came into power, institute compulsory education for men so as to make them conform to the feminist ideology.

With this one reservation then, I am still encouraged to draw up a scenario that is too far-fetched ever to be experienced by any of us, not even the younger generation would probably never come near it; too bad, too sad.

My point is that the thrust made visible in Jonas Sjöstedt’s comments could be made use of in a Nordic set up. Let me explain. On one level it is very simple. The Nordic states plus the Baltic states (it works out as a formula 5 + 3) would be a geo-politically very exciting and constructive prospect. It would be big enough to play a weighty role in the wider politics. But why even mention it now as it is not a realistic option any longer? We cannot move the clock back more than one hundred years.

And yet, it could be worth the while to envisage such a country, not least in our present predicament.

I am here tempted to use a few stereotypes. It is perhaps unfair, but we still live in a free society where I can say quite a number of things. Denmark and Norway seem at this stage, at least from a Swedish perspective as quite egotistic, sometimes with a tinge of Schade Freude. Regarding Denmark it is exactly the issue of immigration that is at stake. Denmark has since 10 – 15 years embarked on a much restrictive immigration and refugee politics and at this moment there is quite a sharp divide in the Öresund, the straits going between our two countries. Norway is different. They always were the small brother and the poor one too. This is now changed, a gradual post Second World War phenomenon, so that, thanks to the North Sea oil findings not least, today the situation is in reverse: Sweden is the poorer one, while Norway has everything. For example, today, a young Norwegian in the capital Oslo would be used to being served coffee at any of the bars or cafeterias there by a Swedish young man or woman.

Iceland is just aloof, and to the average Swede Iceland might be an exotic place but not much more. Finland, again, very close to us by the sheer fact of a longstanding large group of immigrants from Finland in our midst, and yet quite different. Fewer and fewer Finns want to learn Swedish and Finnish is to a Swede a very difficult language. We have a centuries’ long history together with Finland (it was then an integral part of Sweden) but they also have a century together with Russia, a co-existence far more in the positive than the average Sweden likes to think.

A lot could be said about the Baltic states, but I have to leave that out at this time. There are very strong sentiments in favour of Sweden and the other Nordic countries as well, but it would be premature at this stage to talk about coming together towards something more like a federative relationship.

I nearly forgot the Swedes. It must be that I also stereotype ourselves. And it scares me because I think it is not even a stereotype but a truth. It is our unassuming gullibility and naiveté. If people say something we believe them. If the refugee says that he lost his passport on the voyage between Turkey and Greece, the Swedish immigration officer believes him, literally, just like that. This gullibility is going to cost us a lot. It is perhaps good that we are not suspicious in the first place but rather give a newcomer the benefit of the doubt, but liars, fraudsters, criminals and other corrupt people have to be found out, where ever they come from.

So there we are; never before, in modern times, have we been so far apart as Nordics. Even an EU commissioner the other day called for more of co-operation in the whole Nordic region.

There is a movement in favour of a Nordic state, even though you don’t hear much about it. One of the proponents is Gunnar Wetterberg, a leading scholar at the union Swedish Academics’ Central Organization, a well-known historian, also a member of the Royal Academy of Science. Historically there have been two problems: the Danish and the Swedish remained adversaries through the years, could never see eye to eye and at the same time Russians were a continuous threat from the east. The Nordic nations have lived in piece with each other ever since 1809. For about 20 years the Russians have not been a threat (1990 – 2010), otherwise they have and they are.

Wetterberg has a thought provoking explanation as to why the Nordics never got their act together into one great nation. The cause of this not happening has not been the internal strives after all. The main reason is external. Other neighbouring nations (and I here leave out all the details) early on saw clearly that a Nordic nation would be to their disadvantage and simply a threat. So there were many ways in which each Nordic state could be manipulated into the one alliance after the other, one more unholy than the other.

I now want to put Sjöstedt’s scenario of how to receive and treat people coming in, whoever they are, together with the notion of a Nordic state, encompassing at least Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden. With some long term planning such a nation would have an enormous capacity to take in more people. There is infra-structure and there is space. There is a common understanding of a religious tradition undergirding the common life of the people. At the same time there is enough of differentiation between the various population groups that incoming people would from the start find it possible to some extent to remain in their own self-understanding while gradually adapting to the new situation. And that goes for everything, language, religion, culture, traditions, etc.

The intake of migrants into Sweden during 2015 will probably end up with more than 140 000, half the number was predicted and it is the highest number in Europe per capita.

It may seem irresponsible to start dreaming under the circumstances, but as Olof Palme once said, “politik är att vilja” (politics is the will [to do something]): “Politics is to have a will to change because change gives promises about improvement, feeds the imagination and the action power, and is a stimulant to dreams and visions” (Speech at the congress of the Social Democratic Youth Organization, Stockholm 12 May 1964).

It is a shame on us as Nordics that the level of co-operation is at its lowest for many years, and I think it is good to be reminded that this state of affairs comes at a cost.

We have enough of managers in politics these days. Many of our party political leaders are groomed within the party apparatus and know little else. They certainly are a disaster when it comes to the requirements of leadership in a time of crisis. We are there now. Löfvén is our Prime Minister (Statsminister sounds much more elegant) and he is not a “broiler politician”, but he does not seem to get the bigger picture at this time round.

So, what I say here remains a dream, but leadership more often than not has to do with ideals and dreams (for the sake of the people) that seem completely unattainable. Maybe the Nordic region has been too peaceful for the last two hundred years. One would just have hoped that we could learn more directly from giants such as Nelson Mandela, who has been held so highly here in the Nordic countries, who said at the height of his and South Africa’s crisis,

not knowing whether he would get the death sentence at the socalled Rivonia trial in 1963: “During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die”. (Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom. London: Abacus, 1995)

This unbending (political) will is what we need now. Miracles may still happen.