Photograph of original Dagens Nyheter article, October 25, 2023.
By Jonathan Michael Feldman, October 27, 2023
The Intramural Split between Dagens Nyheter and the Left Party
This short essay will examine the following editorial published in Dagens Nyheter, October 26, 2023, “Ledare: Kriget i Mellanöstern avslöjar Vänsterpartiet.” The essay begins by noting that “the flared-up war shows one of the Left Party’s dark sides: the inability to maintain a clear view of Israel and its enemies.” The editorial was written by employees of Dagens Nyheter‘s (DN) editorial staff, a paper described as independent liberal. The editorial is predictable and follows the standard algorithm used by Fox News, find limitations of the left and then expound upon them to promote some backward ideas. This formula is so standard, that perhaps ChatGPT could have written this essay, but that program lacks the appropriate level of political sophistication as I have documented elsewhere. I find it hard to read DN because it often leads me to write corrective essays like this one, but—so be it! I will now go through the newspaper’s arguments, point by point, and then provide an analysis. I subscribe to DN. I know many decent people in the Left Party. So how do I make sense of all this?
Point I: The Historical Baggage
“The left party is dragging a heavy historical baggage. In 1987, just a few years before the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the party program stated: ‘socialism as an economy shows magnificent results.’ That quote became a fitting icing on a cake of 70 years of left-wing glorification of mass-murdering communist regimes.”
Analysis of Point I: It is true that this party drags heavy historical baggage, score one point for DN. Yet, this point is half clever. Why? Every single Swedish party carries historical baggage, they all live off past glories, and they all fail to reinvent themselves in a progressive direction. Moreover, some parties go backwards from their baggage and if they were more weighted down by it, it would have been far better (think Social Democrats’ engagement in economic democracy or the Green Party’s hard anti-militarist line). So this argument about the Left Party is somewhat vapid. I don’t know enough about the Left Party’s flirtation with big C Communism, which eventually turned into a huge dystopian disaster. What I do know, however, is that Communism was not really “Left,” at least not the Soviet variety. As my former professor John Gerassi stated, “to be left, you have to trust the people.” The big C Communists did not “trust the people” and often slaughtered them. The word “Socialism,” which I avoid, could mean something else. After all, the Social Democrats are sometimes called “Socialist.” The right to liberal spectrum has also (or often) been silent about the U.S.’s support for murderous regimes, even if Hamas has tortured and killed its own people. U.S. actions have triggered hundreds of thousands of deaths, if not more, in places like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, etc.
Point II: The Revolutionaries are Evil
“Since then, the Left Party has dropped the ‘communists’ from the name and has gone through almost four decades of shedding the party’s many wardrobes. With varying degrees of success. New hammers and sickles persist in jumping forward, regularly new party representatives persist in cheering ecstatically over Lenin, Castro, Chávez or some other left-handed despot from the shame of history.”
Analysis of Point II: There were various documented gains by regimes led by Lenin, Castro and Chávez, with the last elected in actual elections. Lenin was involved in various kinds of thuggery, but did help topple another authoritarian regime. In a statement recorded in 1919, “Anti-Jewish Pogroms,” he wrote: “Anti-Semitism means spreading enmity towards the Jews. When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the Jews. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organised pogroms against the Jews. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jews.” So Lenin nominally opposed anti-Semitism. DN seems to have forgotten about the Tsars and who helped bring them down. That’s part of the context, despite the limits of the Bolsheviks.
Chávez was elected and cannot be reduced to a despot. As Wikipedia reports, he “founded the Fifth Republic Movement political party, and then receiving 56.2% of the vote, was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. He was re-elected in 2000 with 59.8% of the vote and again in 2006 with 62.8% of the vote. After winning his fourth term as president in the October 2012 presidential election with 55.1% of the vote, he was to be sworn in on 10 January 2013.” He may have constrained democracy in some ways, but that’s happened in Sweden now, with its defunding study circles, its vapid response to the lack of economic democracy, and its manipulations of electoral processes divorced from critical knowledge/ethics most manifest in the Nazi-originating party being the second or third largest. At least, Chávez was not associated with an originating ideology of anti-Semitism. Various reports tell different stories about whether Venezuela defined by Chávez and his Chavismo movement was anti-Semitic. In Wikipedia, you can read negative accounts, but an essay published by Monthly Review tells another story. So this is clearly a mixed bag. Roy Chaderton Matos, Venezuela’s Ambassador to the Organization of American States wrote in 2009 that Chavismo was both pro-Jewish and anti-Nazi. It would help if DN explained their objections to Chavismo in more detail. Media and/or political crackdowns have taken place in both Israel and Ukraine, but DN does not always use that information in its analysis.
Point III: Israel and its Enemies
“The flaring war in the Middle East clearly shows another of the party’s dark sides: the inability to maintain a clean view of Israel and its enemies. [Left Party] leader Nooshi Dadgostar condemned the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, but that obviousness was difficult for others in the party to digest. Björn Alling, member of the municipal council in Linköping, called Dadgostar a coward and Israel a ‘disgusting terrorist state’ that must be ‘abolished.’ When the party initiated an exclusion case against Alling, he was supported by several party colleagues who signed a letter of protest. At the same time, [the party’s] education policy spokesperson Daniel Riazat claimed that Dadgostar’s statement against Hamas means that she has ‘distanced herself from Palestine’s struggle for freedom.’”
Analysis of Point III: This is admittedly a lot to take in. Let’s go through it carefully. If Alling wants to “abolish” Israel, he is not going to get very far. That is not going to happen. The most sophisticated peace makers in Israel and Palestine want a two-state solution. Abolishing Israel is some kind of messianic idea for a narrow diehard audience which can’t separate a clear moral critique of Israel, the state’s history, and its various negative actions from the political realities of addressing problems. And if Israel were abolished, it’s just fake news to think that wonderful things will happen to the Jewish residents of that country, even if the country extends colonial actions and there is documented human rights abuse in occupied territories and there is a need for a major civil rights transformation to empower Arab Israelis.
Ailing might have a point if he were to call for abolishing all states, because Sweden like other states, engages in serious malfeasance by exporting weapons and supporting NATO’s ambitions. Yet, given that we cannot abolish all states before we develop more democratic institutions, then abolishing states is a recipe for hyper-globalization which is itself dysfunctional with respect to the global transnational companies that engage in predatory development. Furthermore, if we were to abolish the Israeli state, we have no guarantees that its replacement would be any better. The recent actions of Hamas reveal the justified security needs of Israel, even if Israel itself is implicated in the cycle of violence and support which leads to Hamas (and equivalents).
Yet, Israel is not solely responsible for Hamas and its actions as I have explained in detail elsewhere. For that reason, abolishing states is insufficient and does not work. Any one or two state solution requires a place/institutional space of security for both parties. Now both parties are more insecure than ever. The roots of that insecurity are partially rooted in policy regimes, not simply states. We know that states can be pressured from within (e.g. the anti-Netanyahu protests in Israel) and from without (the U.S. clearly has prevented Israel from doing certain things). The existence of such internal and external pressure reveals the distinction between states and policy regimes.
There are, however, severe constraints on this policy regime’s capacity to reform itself. Eric Alterman in The New Republic writes (October 27, 2023): “it’s a mistake to believe that American presidents can move Israeli leaders to do anything they really don’t want to do. It has almost never happened since the state was founded in 1948. Even the smallest concession by Israel demands a degree of confrontation from the U.S. that is clearly off the table at the moment. The Israelis have understood that American presidents will almost always acquiesce to their demands if they hold out long enough.” So one cannot underestimate the weight of the structural forces that constrain contingency here.
Many will argue that the Israeli state is a zero sum game for Palestinian security. But Israelis argue that same for Hamas, even if Hamas is not all Palestinians. Unfortunately, peacemaking requires deals made between two or more parties which some audiences find deplorable. A hyper-deconstruction of these parties simply reproduces a dead end. One might gain the moral high ground by advancing dead ends, but how high is such ground really?
One counter argument is that Hamas and Israel must both be destroyed because they are terrorist thugs. Yet, eliminating the two major parties in this conflict just by deploying language amounts in part to magical thinking. The attempt by Hamas to destroy Israel has simply led to more Israeli repression (or helped enable it). The attempt by Israel to ignore Palestianian needs and occupy/repress has simply led in turn to more Hamas repression (or helped enable it). One must operate both on the structural and contingent/existential responsibility planes.
Riazat also seems confused at best and mischievous at worst if he really believes that condemning Hamas is a blow to Palestine’s freedom. Rather, Rizat does not understand the fundamentals of the cycle of violence in which militarists generate terrorists and vice versa. It’s the vice versa part that is over Riazat’s head, if this account in DN is to be believed. Many on the left are either soft on militarism or terrorism—take your pick. A plague on both their houses say I. So while some in the Left Party embrace Hamas blindly, DN seems to embrace Israel blindly. Neither position is helpful for Palestinians and Israelis. So, the superificiality here extends to both sides. Israel has supported Hamas, a factor which DN might take note of.
Point IV: The Fog of War
“The left party continues to try to brush away embarrassments. But extremism is deeply embedded in the walls. In an age of disinformation and propaganda, at the same time, another of [the Left party’s] top names, parliament member Ali Esbati, managed to achieve a real low-water mark. On X/Twitter, he wrote that there were no indications that someone other than Israel caused the explosion at the al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza. Almost a week has passed since the incident, and still no one has been able to clarify who was behind it – but most things point to it not being Israel. Esbati’s post remains and he refuses to answer questions about it.”
Analysis of Point IV: Here we have “the fog of war” with conflicting news accounts. These seem to have run in various directions. We do know that Israel has bombed a lot of targets in Gaza, hitting churches and other targets. I would very much agree with DN that we need to be accurate in these claims, however. Perhaps Esbati might say something when more definitive information is available. Yet, DN has to be careful because there are a lot of targets Israel has hit and Israel is engaged in a fool’s mission to eliminate terrorism by bombing and killing thousands. DN should comment on that reality which is based on the limits to military power and the cycle of violence, where bombing begets reprisals. So if I would score one point for DN here, I would also take away one or more points for DN by their “sin of omission.”
Point V: Supporting Hamas
“Add to the revelations of the past few days: The Left Party’s aid organization has supported projects linked to the Palestinian organization DFLP, which has confirmed involvement in the October 7 Hamas attack. The party has also managed to lend its premises in Gothenburg to a pro-Palestinian organization that supports the attack.”
Analysis of Point V: To say that this claim (if true) is very bad would be a superlative understatement. If the Left Party is going to go down the pro-Hamas line, they are surely doomed. Perhaps some Party members are reading Lenin or revolutionary tracks from the 1960s and 1970s and think that this approach works in a non-tolerant of terrorism society like Sweden (although a society that created mass social exclusion which enabled or facilitated systematic ISIS-recruitment and a society which backed NATO’s mission in Libya which similarly gave ISIS a foothold). Sloppy thinking and repressive tolerance of surplus violence—I can’t excuse that. So score one for DN. But, has DN really explained how systemic societal failures encouraged terrorists or their recruitment, from allowing social exclusion grievances to grow to having its military engage in “kill targets” in Afghanistan? I think we have two failures here, so that’s a negative for DN and the Left Party or an even match of incompetence—take your pick. In other words, sorry DN, no knockout blow here!
Point VI: Voters are Wonderful
“In the analysis after the 2022 election, the Left Party found several phenomena that created problems among voters. There was, among other things, the party board’s refusal to send Swedish weapons to Ukraine, that the party’s Riksdag members waved PKK flags during [The Left Party’s] Day in Almedalen – and the youth association’s stated burning zeal to transform Sweden into a communist society.”
Analysis of Point VI: Here DN is totally wrong or engages in ambiguities or other arguments which end up leading nowhere.
First, whether voters approve things or not is really irrelevant (more accurately, clearly insufficient), i.e. just because a voter likes something, does not mean that this thing is okay or wonderful. Would you like examples? Voters have voted for these politicians: Richard Nixon (criminal and war criminal), Ronald Reagan (assistant to contra murder in Nicaragua), Adolph Hitler (fascist thug and mass murderer), Donald Trump (anti-democracy campaigner) and a certain party in Sweden founded by the Nazis, as well as today’s ecocidal Republican Party of the United States. In sum, DN does not really understand that democracy is based not just on voting, but critical understanding/consciousness. Therefore, it can hardly afford to tell the Left Party what is democratic, when DN apparently does not understand itself fully what democracy even means.
Second, the PKK is a military force that emerged in part to counter Turkey’s slaughter of Kurds. I will not condemn nor support this organization at this particular juncture. What I will say is that Sweden authorized weapons sales to Turkey after they bombed civilians, so Swedish society is hard pressed to lecture Kurds about what they should do given that reality. I have analyzed this moral failure and the shameful decision made by a “democracy,” elsewhere in far great depth elsewhere. The story involves a cowardly attempt to sacrifice Kurdish lives in order to support NATO entry.
Third, I have written many essays (see for example this one on the Left party) about why Sweden should not have sent weapons to Ukraine. The basic problems have to do with how this decision undermined Swedish diplomatic capital, how Sweden itself exports weapons and violence that kills in Yemen or supports thug states in Thailand and Pakistan, and how these weapons are not tied to any demands or plan for a diplomatic solution. I have shown how Sweden helped finance the Russian military with oil and other imports, engaged in provocative military war games on Russian borders and now tries to align itself with NATO, an organization creating massive humanitarian crises and surplus violence in Libya, former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere. The interested reader can simply study the writings of Noam Chomsky or Alan Kuperman who have documented how NATO multiplied violence.
Third, I don’t know what DN or the Left Party mean by a “communist society.” If they mean the Soviet Union, then that would not be a “communist society” by Karl Marx’s definition. For Marx, Communism meant abolishing capitalism or alienation of workers from each other, their labor and their species, etc., seen for example in the fact that our societies easily poison water and food or promote such products that clearly undermine our health. If DN wants to endorse the non-communist society of alienation, that’s their prerogative. I don’t know what the Left Party means by this expression, but it is just thrown around loosely because of the Soviet Union’s misuse of Marxist ideas and the like. I don’t have time or space to address the limits and advantages or Marxism, i.e. certain varieties of useful and non-useful Marxism.
In conclusion, the Left Party’s embrace of weapons exports to Ukraine is where they and DN are both engaged in militaristic, self-serving nonsense. While Ukraine has a right to defend itself, Sweden could have done better to create a space beyond the militarist insanity promoted by both Russia and the United States. If DN does not think the United States has been engaged in such insanity, they obviously don’t know anything about the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and other such wars. This ignorance is really inexcusable. If DN thinks I am engaging in so-called whataboutism, I have responded to the use of that mind-numbing phrase elsewhere in some detail. The right has leveraged the Ukraine crisis for its own version of that phrase by ignoring the U.S. war machine’s extension of gratuitous and self-defeating violence. DN should address claims that the U.S. has sabotaged a peace deal. If the Russians are so inherently evil for bombing cities, then why did Sweden buy so much oil from that country after it bombed Chechnya?
Point VII: The Legitimation Crisis
“In its constant cleaning to appear respectable, may the party continue to scrub away such embarrassments. But extremism runs deep in the walls. Far too many leftists are attracted by Che Guevara, want to continue to be enchanted by the romanticism of revolution, and think – like Ali Esbati – that class struggle trumps truth. The war in the Middle East also sends shockwaves to Sweden. This places high demands on our parties. The Left Party cannot meet these demands.”
Analysis of Point VII: The Left Party’s attempts to be respectable have advantages if that means that they do not endorse Hamas. Does DN want the party to be respectable or not? I am confused. The Party’s support for arms exports respectability simply puts them in the same morally weak position as DN itself. So this last point really carries very little weight for anyone who fully understands the problems of militarism and the limits to military power, which both entities (DN and the Left Party) obviously do not. DN’s deconstruction of revolution, class struggle and the like, are just empty expressions. The United States, Sweden’s big new ally, was founded on a revolution. So if DN wants to deconstruct the basis of the United States, that would be rather embarrassing (assuming the editorial writers fully understand what they are writing). Che Guevara represents a lot of things, but he can’t be held responsible for the authoritarian direction of Cuba after his death. DN really needs to talk about the
dictatorship which preceded Castro if they want to shed any significant light on this subject.
If DN wants to equate Guevara and Hamas, there are strengths and weaknesses to that comparison. But to make that comparison would require more nuance and details than are provided here. Hamas has tortured its own people and helped de-legitimate the cause of Palestinian liberation. If DN wants to deconstruct the fake (or inauthentic) post-colonial tendencies in the Left Party, they would be right to do so. I myself have criticized these kind of tendencies in which the left engages in suicidal positions based on repressive tolerance of terrorism. Yet, doing that requires more work than deconstructing Guevara who clearly did more good than harm. DN is very confused because they give the impression that they are to the right of President John F. Kennedy who stated: “Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years…and he turned Democratic Cuba into a complete police state—destroying every individual liberty. Yet our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror.” Kennedy’s endorsement of the Bay of Pigs Invasion was a clear failure and preceded the near global blow up of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet, Kennedy was honest about the dictatorship which helped lead to the Cuban Revolution. And as bad as Castro’s regime may have been can it really compare to the near blow up of the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Any sane person would say that the latter development was far, far worse. Of course, now various states in Europe and the U.S. as well as Russia are close to playing with the risks of nuclear conflict, gambling with the risk of nuclear weapons use by accident or design.
In conclusion, there is just too much confusion within DN or the Left Party for me to argue that the essay being reviewed here leads us anywhere. It is very much about one party having its own dirty laundry but which then condemns another party for having their dirty laundry. To the extent that the Left Party has screwed up, it provides cover for DN’s sins of omission about militarism and its revisionary view of movements that tried to overcome authoritarianism (however, poorly). DN’s way of avoiding various nuances makes its take down of the Left Party that less convincing. I am convinced by some of what DN says about the Left Party, but they forget that just about every party in Sweden is confused about militarism, terrorism, the limits to military power, the cycle of violence, and so on.
Is Swedish discourse just about the clash of dirty laundries? Is it about making intellectual silos for people to fall into? Is that what journalism amounts to these days? Why do universities lead to the development of lefts like this and what (in contrast) do they do (if anything) to help design and promulgate more comprehensive ideas? Will the dysfuntionality of contemporary lefts create a funding backlash, aided by the far right and others, that will simply lead to similarly mediocre ideas? In the U.S. we see cancel cancel in both right and left variants. Deconstructing the Left Party in itself is hardly a sufficient project.
