By Jonathan M. Feldman, (Updated) January 29, 2020

It’s not enough that 25% of the population are willing to support a party initiated by Nazis, now public television is joining the act by preparing cultural programs to suit their customers, the new and growing Swedish Democrats (SD) demographic. The program in question, Kalifat, focuses on persons with immigrant backgrounds as terrorists and the noble role of heroic figures in the security services. SVT sometimes hides behind the argument that it supplies what the public demands as if it has no role in shaping “tastes,” cultural capital, or hegemony. Yet television is a critical institution helping to define and shape values by transmitting ideas, normalizing frames and legitimating these ideas and frames.

Here is the problem is a nutshell. First, there is a lot which this program does not say and by not saying it the program engages in “sins of omission.” In this context, what is not shown becomes more important than what is shown. These sins can be defined by what the program reveals, which is simply that some Muslims engage in extremism and that this is tied to social constructions of the Swedish society by would-be ISIS supporters and other factors. I will show here why the linkage between would-be ISIS supporters and a critique by such persons of Swedish society, while partially advancing our understanding, is done in a way that is of little political value.

The main sins of omission include a failure to give a comprehensive picture on how terrorist threats are generated by non-immigrants. In addition, so-called “native Swedes” play a role not only as “right-wing” terrorists, but also as incompetent legislators unable to properly “regulate” terrorism. The natives have engaged in a systemic failure to understand the extent to which grievances by would-be terrorist supporters encourage terrorist recruitment if not terrorist acts themselves. Kalifat gives us “native Swedes” as ISIS supporters, sidestepping the role of actual right-wing terrorists who have burned down asylum centers. Kalifat also gives us the would-be ISIS supporters’ deconstructions of Sweden, but it also de-legitimates the notion of grievances as triggers to recruitment for reasons elaborated below.

Second, the program and its promotional campaign (particularly in the subway system) easily lend themselves to demonization of Muslims. In this context, what is shown is more important. There are no nuances available in this symbolic compression of religious Muslims, terrorism and suburban Sweden. I will show how this compression is used by the far right as well in almost exactly the same manner. Some Muslims are shown to not be extremists, of course. Yet, these characters appear in one sense passive, without an explanation for what that passivity is based on. The passivity suggests a repressive tolerance of extremism or perhaps the political weakness which parents have when trying individually to take on a larger fundamentalist movement that their children are aligned with. What would empower such parents? This question is related to the aforementioned “sins of omission.” Kalifat suggests that the security forces are the key empowerment mechanism.

Part of the problem is that this fictional television series tries to apply the framing system of journalists reporting on ISIS recruitment in Swedish “ghettos” (or multi-ethnic enclaves). This became apparent in a January 2020 segment that aired in SVT’s local Stockholm’s news. The limit of this journalistic approach, however, is that a fictional series and cultural product might have higher aims, i.e. to capture the totality of life and not simply a specialized segment of that reality. The reason for such higher aims is that by representing Muslims as terrorists and making that the central frame, the larger totality of Muslims as non-terrorists is lost. This argument rests on the number of programs on SVT and Swedish television which do not portray immigrants and Muslims as criminals or terrorists in programming in which such characters are in the center of the narrative, i.e. not peripheral props for non-immigrants. This number is relatively small, far far too small in a country in which the dominant political debates often center on criminality, terrorism, migration, refugees, far-right populists and the Swedish Democrats.

Anna Croneman, the program director at SVT drama, now promises to show us different kinds of Muslims in its programming in the future. Croneman argues: “But ‘Kalifat’ is not a documentary, but a drama series. Therefore, we have of course used as many narrative techniques as possible to make the story exciting for the audience to see. Telling complex stories about difficult topics for the big audience, and not just for the already inaugurated, is a reasonable goal for a TV channel funded by citizens.” She also writes: “The series does not claim to tell what it is like to be a ‘Muslim’, or to be a story about Islam at all. The theme of the story is fundamentalism. When developing a series like ‘Kalifat’, research is crucial, and in this case, most of us have plowed everything written about radicalization and Islamic extremism, and in addition, many experts and persons with relevant experiences (ordinary people, police, priests and imams) helped the screenwriters and us others with the expertise that builds a variety of perspectives in a story.” Just because the program does not claim to represent Muslims does not mean that it is not “representing” them, however. SVT certainly under-represents and here is a kind of self-confession.

Croneman’s arguments are not convincing. First, if one claims to offering diverse stories about Muslims and one leads off with the stereotypical terrorism or criminal frame, what impression is that supposed to leave?

Second, Croneman seems to be suggesting that the frame of telling a story about fundamentalism need not address the various relevant totalities that extend beyond that narrative frame, e.g. the diversity of being Muslim, the politicians who did little at first to stop ISIS participants, or the complex and detailed sociological realities of racism or social exclusion that help legitimate extremism. As I will describe, the program even helps deflate these realities using its narrative techniques. What is not said is still as important as what is not said.

More fundamentally, SVT’s idea of who is relevant may be largely irrelevant. Did SVT read Edward Said who warns about how Muslims are often demonized by culture and even demonized by academics? And what kind of “experts” did SVT utilize? One such “expert,” Eli Gödnör, is clearly aligned with the right-wing ideological spectrum. The think tank, Timbro, and has praised the program. How does one argue that one is just advancing a fictional drama that appears to be above politics or conventions of a documentary, but objectively selects particular experts and key informants with their own ideological frameworks at the same time? If right-leaning experts are helping to inform the narrative, then what difference does it make if we get their viewpoints in a documentary or another form? Basically, this program has such experts’ fingerprints all over it, only the authors are concealed and so the political biases of their viewpoints guiding the narrative is similarly hidden.

The fingerprints of right-wing experts and those dealing with anti-fundamentalism as a kind of policing, values debate or psychological matter appear throughout the program. We are not presented with deeper political solutions to underlying problems, only reactive police solutions and a weak form of citizen engagement based on the idea that all we have to do is change peoples’ minds or cooperate with policing. So, if a father tries to change his daughter’s mind about being an extremist and she resists him because she believes Sweden is racist, then can’t the father be helped by making Sweden less racist? And if that were true, then shouldn’t the program address how to make Sweden less racist? “Of course not,” we are told.

This is not a program about racism in Sweden. There’s not going to be a Do the Right Thing moment in Sweden. Rather, Kalifat is a program about fundamentalism. Yet, fundamentalism is partially triggered by grievances (as the program itself implies), but addressing grievances like racism in more depth is considered irrelevant. It’s far more important to elaborate upon the drama of policing, being an extremist, or the plight of those trying to escape extremism. The “drama” of the immigrant family as terrorist nest is the trigger for the television gaze. Sadly, this reminds me of the time I was trying to write about Swedish immigrants who were high technology entrepreneurs and was told, “no, that’s not ethnic entrepreneurship” because ethnic entrepreneurship basically meant immigrants selling pizzas and repairing shoes. Immigrants are often viewed as props for “natives.”

Of course, a TV series on how a person with an immigrant background becomes an activist organizing for economic equality, developing cooperatives or fighting against militarism would be too much to ask for. Persons with immigrant backgrounds are regularly employed as actors to live out the idea that immigrants are criminals, i.e. that seems to be one of the major sources of incomes for immigrant background actors. Why not now diversify and include terrorists? In fact, a Swede with an immigrant background is easily accepted into the cultural mainstream if he or she can master the ability to play the role of an immigrant criminal. The problem is not that such actors are not good actors. Rather, the problem is the material defined by authors, directors and producers that limits the contours of such actors’ professional trajectories. Such material is defined by the “white” Swedish mainstream or by persons with immigrant backgrounds appealing to the majority’s cultural tastes.

The cynicism, stupidity and vulgarity of the cultural elite is amazing. It’s the kind of low level culture of an irresponsible teenager who has been put in charge of his family business for a week while mom and dad are out of town in Thailand, building up frequent flier points designed to destroy the ecosystem. Wilhelm Behrman, the key screenwriter, is the same person behind the TV series, Innan vi dör, which repeats the trope of the Swedish immigrant as criminal, particularly Eastern European immigrants from former Yugoslavia. Having an Eastern European background myself, I was immediately offended by this portrayal. But there was no major uproar among the cultural elite, at least not one I could detect.  

I understand very well how the political left has sometimes engaged in repressive tolerance of fundamentalism if not extremism. This failure can be seen in the United Kingdom, France, the U.S. and Sweden. Yet, this failure does not mitigate how right-wing ideologues (or even the liberal mainstream) systematically engages in sins of omission when addressing the causes of terrorism and the nuances behind terrorist recruitment or the solutions to these problems.

Rather than criticize Kalifat, the mainstream media has praised the show based on its entertainment value and its ability to address “controversy.” This praise includes the nominally “left” Aftonbladet which claims, with no evidence presented whatsoever, that Kalifat avoids promoting Islamophobia and that the program convincingly explains the reasons for Islamophobia in Sweden. If only the mass media understood the limits of the Swedish TV audience and the effect this show has on some of them. Another paper, Göteborgs-Posten claims that the program is “balanced,” but it’s far from clear that the author has a very well developed notion as to what that word actually means in this context.

How can we say that the program could promote Islamophobia? The key character Sulle, profiled in SVT’s poster campaign (and played by the actor Nora Rios) argues that Israel engages in systemic crimes, Palestinians are victims and that many (if not most) Swedes thinks Muslims are terrorists. Sulle feels excluded and believes that Sweden is racist and she would like to live elsewhere. She also argues that immigrants must change their last names to get ahead in Sweden and that Muslims can’t be police unless they give up their religion. She argues that the news is filled with lies and then is led to ISIS-related news which she finds to be the truth. As Sulle becomes more religious this move is associated with her becoming more aligned with or attracted to ISIS. So what’s obviously wrong with this picture?

First, the collage effect of this character associates criticism of Israel, becoming more religious and speaking truths about Swedish society with the turn to extremism. While some extremists become more religious, the Sulle character is used to argue that Sweden is antagonistic to religion and Muslims. This truth is quickly associated with praise for ISIS. This strategy of guilt by association was deployed against the Left Party’s critique of the war in Afghanistan which was linked to a position also taken by SD, such that the Left Party could be labeled extremist. Some in fact believe that Kalifat shows the similarities between the Swedish left and ISIS, i.e. they associate the worst excesses of that left and implicitly embrace the Thatcherite view that “there is no alternative.”

Second, Sulle’s suggesting that most if not all Muslims are associated with terrorism, which is obviously an overstatement, helps inoculate the program from having to address the truth that many make this association. The fact that a character who criticizes Israel is associated with an ISIS supporter helps inoculate the program from having to deal with any valid critiques of Israel. Of course, persons who are critical of Israel might turn towards ISIS. But we know that the majority of Swedes and Muslims in Sweden don’t become ISIS supporters on this account. The producers will argue that they are not making this argument, simply portraying one character in an artistic narrative. The problem is that this kind of narrative is low-hanging fruit and begs the question of why someone would turn to extremism if they had to grapple with some version of the hard truths about Sweden or international relations. This brings me to the last point.

Finally, there is no world–in this SVT view of the Swedish suburbs–in which there is a left ideology, an anti-militarist ideology, a systemic non-racist ideology or a comprehensive and radically socially and economically inclusive reality. Persons with immigrant backgrounds who have these views (as opposed to criminals and terrorists) are very boring for cultural producers at SVT and may not even exist for them as conceivable “cultural content.” Instead, the only alternatives are posed by ISIS.

Of course, hundreds of persons in Sweden joined ISIS and reflected this very same vacuum (of there being no meaningful alternative to racism, social exclusion and alienation). In contrast, thousands upon thousands of Muslim Swedes support left-leaning (or other) parties in Sweden but they are seemingly irrelevant because they don’t meet the “dramatic” boundaries defined by this program. Yet, it is this very framing which excludes the more radical spin on Sweden and conditions in the Swedish suburbs. This exclusion in turn helps reproduce the probability that someone alienated from the suburbs would turn towards ISIS. SVT needs to own up to that fact. The producers behind this show could not bring themselves to show how other approaches might deal with the very realities Sulle grapples with without become a lunatic terrorist. One must also note that so-called “dramatic” boundaries are also political boundaries that define the politically possible.

If we could ever have a debate about the questions I am posing, SVT and the producers of Kalifat will likely say that they are addressing a timely and important issue and taking artistic license to portray realistic trajectories leading to extremism. These producers might argue that my political lens amounts to a kind of politically correct attempt at censoring them. Yet, these replies don’t address the opportunity costs presented by producing programs which on the one hand myopically focus on the immigrant background person as criminal or terrorist and on the other hand say nothing meaningful about how to stop criminality and terrorism. In order to say something meaningful one would need a cultural intervention that addressed how to empower marginalized persons through democratizing the political, economic and media spheres. Yet, these programs say nothing meaningful about how to deepen democracy because that is not of topical interest. A deepened democracy doesn’t interest politicians either.

In a rational world, there would be and should be protests outside SVT’s headquarters. Instead, we have the kind of cultural program which we would expect in a deep south state in 1950s USA–only this is Sweden in the 2020s. Sweden needs a Martin Luther King or a Malcolm X to mobilize citizens against the perversion of spoiled brats with zero political consciousness whose going to film school was like getting training in polluting the cultural environment.

One day I saw Alternativ för Sverige members who were white male Swedes dress up like Muslim women wearing a Niqab. The appropriation of this dress was designed to inspire fear, hatred and association of Muslims with criminals and terrorists by persons from “mainstream” society. Here in the SVT promotional video for Kalifat (go to download above) we see the same exact transformative technique being deployed. One can argue whatever one wants about the merits of clothing which conceals someone’s face in the public realm. We all have our opinions. Yet, what is remarkable is the way in which the “normal” or “normalized” Swede appropriates a transformation into this clothing into an immediate statement about criminality/terrorism. The same utter lack of sensitivity on the part of the extreme right political parties is used by mainstream culture to project an aura of sophistication or self-reflection on cultural norms. And here we see the overlaps between mainstream society and the far right extremists. It is not just that mainstream society normalizes the extremist output of the far-right. Rather, the two already share so much that we must begin to question not just the far-right, but mainstream society itself. Until this self-reflection begins, we can consider ourselves to have already entered into the danger zone.

QUESTION 1: Are you saying that SVT cannot make a television program about the realities of immigrants (as criminals for example) or immigrant background persons becoming ISIS supporters or extremists?

ANSWER: SVT is under-representing all kinds of immigrants in diverse occupations. These include doctors, nurses, lawyers, journalists, college professors, activists, etc. Instead, immigrants or persons with immigrant backgrounds are fictionalized as criminals and terrorists or would-be terrorists. If SVT had portrayed the diversity of these “occupational” realities, then they might be recognized as having the sophistication of a somewhat clever college student. Instead, they appear to be using the cultural analysis of a not-so-clever twelve year old. Despite the cultural elites’ belief that Sweden is morally superior to the United States, please note the following description of minorities in the U.S. film, media and entertainment industries: “We might not see confederate flags flying in parks or signs relegating colored people to separate facilities, but we do see minorities cast as criminals and leeches to ‘white upper-class’ America.”

The probability that someone who is fully integrated into society would join ISIS is very slim. So-called “radicalization” is often traceable to alienation from mainstream society or some kind of alienation which in theory is affected by how society and culture are organized. Therefore, by understanding the diversity of those who are and are not alienated, we can best understand the risks of extremism and alternatives to it. The problem, however, is that the concerns of sociologists, political scientists and the limited number of sophisticated terrorism researchers who appreciate this reality is the other side of majority, i.e. the mass appeal and mainstream cultural entry point of mainstream framing of the terrorism. The low level, low culture discourse in the mass media becomes recycled as cultural products which normalize that discourse. Individual narratives about terrorists and their sympathizers are elevated above domestic structures generating such support which are largely invisible.

Kalifat does have the merit of showing how someone who thinks Sweden is racist and its cultural institutions liars would be motivated to join ISIS or support them. This might be viewed as giving some attention to the aforementioned domestic structures. The problem, however, as I already pointed out is that no other means of addressing these problems are conceived of. Kalifat addressed both foreign and domestic recruiters for ISIS. Yet, the domestic side of ISIS recruitment is not simply based on immigrant background communities’ feelings of social exclusion and the role of recruiters in exploiting those feelings. The domestic side is also based on the reality of social exclusion and the absence of viable strategies to combat that reality. If one does not address the reality (as opposed to the perceptions) and the strategic vacuum, one is not sufficiently addressing the domestic roots of terrorism.

SVT, to its credit, has shown in cultural programming how members of the upper class elite can become far-right extremists. It has not shown, however, how mainstream society generates alienation and political inequality because it is consistently taking the lead from how SD frames the integration debate or how mainstream SD critics frame this debate. Once when SVT had a roundtable discussion of SD’s causes, the entire panel attributed the problem to racism, without any reflections on the role of class, economic power or simply the limits of mainstream democracy. Racism without (a) a discussion of power inequalities and (b) a discussion of how to empower people who lack power is largely useless. There are models for how to systematically empower socially marginalized groups and reaching them before they turn to ISIS or ISIS-like substitutes for authentic social movements. Yet, we never or rarely get to this level of discourse because mainstream media is continually using the reference points designed by a party founded by Nazis.

QUESTION 2: Does SVT’s cultural programming division lack irony?

ANSWER: No. SVT uses Clear Channel to advertise their new program. Who is Clear Channel? They are a US media conglomerate who helped support and build political capital for the US invasion of Iraq: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/26/usa.iraq. This war helped lead to ISIS: https://theintercept.com/…/isis-iraq-war-islamic-state-blo…/ Thus, SVT helps channel Swedish public funds to a U.S. firm that helped contribute to the rise of ISIS. Then, SVT does cultural programming related to extremism and the political developments associated with ISIS. Still don’t believe me that Clear Channel was linked to the Iraq War support rallies? Then read Nobel prize winning (or the economics prize equivalent) economist and columnist Paul Krugman’s essay.

QUESTION 3: “Are you aware that ISIS are racists? And that almost all of the ISIS supporters and members in Sweden were of foreign origin and Muslims? The hero in the series is a Muslim SÄPO agent fighting extreme racists.”

ANSWER: First, the status of ISIS as racists is irrelevant to my arguments. In fact, ISIS is worse than racist and has supported activities that lean towards genocide. Racists are not automatically genocidal.

Second, the fact that ISIS members have a foreign origin is similarly irrelevant. A lot of persons with foreign backgrounds do many things with only an infinitely small proportion of what they do being involvement in ISIS, i.e. that’s less than 1%. Furthermore, the common denominator of ISIS members is not Muslim and foreign, but fundamentalist/extremist. There are many fundamentalist/extremists who are not Muslim or immigrant, even if many ISIS members have such backgrounds as one smaller part of their cultural repertoire. I don’t deny the Muslim self-characterization of ISIS members. The problem is how this association comes to dwarf other associations of Muslims in the larger culture and how this program takes place against a vacuum regarding these other associations.

Third, if one is looking for a cultural product regarding ISIS, why not do a series on the white Swedish (predominantly non-immigrant background) members of parliament who took so long to make ISIS activity illegal or the planners who could not secure Swedish infrastructure to make it less vulnerable to a terrorist attack or the ways in which immigrants are pushed to the political, economic, and cultural periphery in society such that alienation becomes a recruitment mechanism for ISIS? Interestingly, on SVT’s Agenda program broadcast on January 26, 2020 (some weeks after the first draft of this essay was published), the problem of the lag in Swedish laws coping with the ISIS threat was discussed. Yet, this understanding is not really part of the Kalifat narrative because it does not fit its plot line.

Fourth, glorifying security agencies as the savior for Muslims or victims of racism is about the most absurd idea I have ever heard of. In contrast, I would have liked to have seen a TV program about a community organizer, lawyer, civil rights activist or social change oriented journalist and how they fight to empower marginalized groups. Instead, we get the surveillance apparatus as the hero of society. Of course we need a surveillance apparatus, but the idea that these groups are the champions for immigrant groups is a totally absurd concoction which derives from fantasies of the ethnic “native” “Swedish” “majoritarian” culture.

As it is the work that SÄPO does in fighting white racists or fundamentalist Muslim extremists is limited by mainstream societies’ belief that extremism is not generated INTERNALLY by alienation but rather EXTERNALLY by some FOREIGN ELEMENT. What better way to sidestep this point than inventing a Muslim woman who is a security agent, i.e. use an immigrant front person to legitimate the security/police apparatus and associated spending rather than the budgetary priorities and social policies necessary for deep integration.

QUESTION 4: Who are the ultimate owners of this enterprise, i.e. the production company behind Kalifat?

Kalifat is a production of SVT, but it’s also a production of a company called “Filmlance International.” And who is Filmlance International? According to Wikipedia, this company is a part of Metronome Film & Television. Filmlance International suggests that they are one of Sweden’s largest independent production companies.

Metronome Film & Television was purchased by the Shine Group in 2009 which in turn was sold to the News Corporation, an entity which was run by Rupert Murdoch from 1980-2013. Filmlance International’s webpage says that they belong to the Endemol Shine Group. This company’s webpage reveals that the firm is a media transnational corporation, with operations in both Russia, the United States, Poland, Brazil and other countries.

The Endemol Shine group was “formed in 2015 through a merger of Dutch television studio Endemol and Elisabeth Murdoch‘s UK-based studio Shine Group,” according to a Wikipedia entry about the firm. Elisbeth Murdoch is Rupert Murdoch’s daughter. The latest information available about the company from Wikipedia is that “on 22 October 2019, Banijay officially announced its intent to acquire Endemol Shine from Disney and Apollo for over $2.2 billion” with “the merger…approved on 26 October 2019, pending antitrust approval.” Banijay’s ownership of Endemol Shine was confirmed according to IBC.org and a Variety article published in October. The deal was worth $2.2 billion.

The article in Variety, October 26, 2019, reported the following about the Endemol Shine group (based in Amsterdam): “France-based Banijay Group has sealed a $2.2 billion deal for Endemol Shine, in a move that will create a new pecking order in the international TV business. The merged entity will be the largest non-U.S. player in the market, with a bigger catalogue than the main U.K. players, BBC Studios and ITV Studios. Banijay is owned by company chairman Stephane Courbit’s LOV Group and an arm of the Italian conglomerate De Agostini, and Vivendi.”

The Banijay Group is “the world’s largest independent content creation Group for television and multimedia platforms,” according to the firm’s webpage. Banijay owns the Yellow Bird production, Jarowskij, Mastiff and Nordisk Film TV companies in Sweden.

An article in Communication Theory by Jean K. Chalaby at City University of London explains how the Banijay group itself was “the product of four rounds of crossborder mergers and acquisitions.” These mergers not only linked interests in Sweden with those in Italy, the UK and France, but also involved a series of consolidations in Scandanavia itself: “Zodiak Television began life with the fusion of two Swedish TV production groups, Jarowskij Enterprises AB and MTV Mastiff Produktion AB in 2004. Zodiak Television AB joined thereafter and gave its name to the eponymous group. Three years later, the Stockholm-based group held majority holdings in 18 businesses. Its footprint was concentrated in Scandinavia but the company was making inroads into other markets.”

In sum, Kalifat is part of a transnational media oligopoly that now manages culture on a global scale.