Recently stumbled on a new outlet called the Bellows, whose editorial line seems to tend towards fairly bog-standard Nagleism/Wagenknechism/contrarianism of the kind that has been well critiqued many times elsewhere.
They do have an article "On ‘Strasserism’ and the Decay of the Left" that made some claims I'd like to know more about:
In my native Sweden, this conflict is already playing out politically. The left keeps picking up affluent liberals (“You know, I used to hate socialists, but now with these scary populists around, I’ve realized some of you guys are all right!”), but is otherwise stagnant and filled with paranoia and malaise, like the left everywhere. But at the same time, there are more and more of us renegades every day—old comrades, new friends, racists and sexist and immoral chuds all—and we have decided to build a populist movement that does away with trying to serve two masters, that no longer tries to convince ordinary people that they need to listen to—or pay the salaries of—these puffed-up hall monitors that the left caters to today. It’s still early in the day, but I cannot lie: after years and years of losing, of having to listen to the petty political commissars of leftism telling you that “It’s a decades long struggle, comrade!” and “This movement is bigger than X or Y!” and, of course, “Buy my book!” it feels good to actually start winning at something.
Which is the point where I might expect the author to start saying something about what this new populist movement actually does and what its victories look like, but they just skip merrily on to the next topic.
Anyway, apparently the author is "also on the steering council of the Swedish think tank, Oikos". Which, first of all, is very funny that this bold working-class warrior bravely standing up against the evil PMC turns out to be yet another sodding think tank operative. Also, looking into it, it turns out that this person, who wrote an entire article mocking the idea that "Strasserism" or red-brown crossover is a thing that exists... works for a think tank set up by the former leader of the Sweden Democrats. Also on board at Oikos is Naweed Khan, who's executive director of another think tank set up by Margaret Thatcher and worked as a special advisor to the Cameron administration.
Does anyone know any more about this lot and what their version of "winning at something" looks like? Perhaps I'm just a terrible cynic, but there's a part of me that suspects that this bloke who works at a think tank with the former head of the Sweden Democrats and one of David Cameron's special advisors might not actually be the best person to give advice on what a new properly working-class socialist movement should look like.
Apparently, this Malcolm
Apparently, this Malcolm Kyeyune fellow - together with one of his mates - is working on a new and updated Marxist class theory, where the main antagonistic class is the "transferiat", defined as everyone who makes their living from government transfers and don't produce any values. So I guess their recipe for winning is that left and right wing populists should unite against their common enemy in this new parasitic class of welfare recipients and government bureaucrats. Or something like that.
Also, I think they argue for restricting immigration because this is used to lower wages.
Quote: Does anyone know any
Malcom and his pal Markus Allard are a tale of their own... They both used to be large figures within Ung Vänster(Young Left), the youth-league of Vänsterpartiet(Left Party), but were eventually purged. The official reason they were purged were very characterized by the fact that they were fighting what amounted to a reformist-leadership(that has now left Young Left and become party bureaucrats), which was that they had supported the Revolutionary Front. In reality there was a lot more in-fighting going on behind the scenes, like refusing to co-operate with the Left Party locally, but I don't think this is worth getting into more because its mostly gossip.
When they left they started a podcast, Markus och Malcom, and it was probably still like to an extent "leftist" at its start but as they both started drifting right-ward that changed even if they called themselves Marxists and even compared their "strategy" to the viet-cong. The "strategy" they have developed basically amounts to local and municipal populism, with the abandonment of any long-term goal, like socialism. This was first done in Örebro by Markus but now they are helping others establish similar parties, and local parties consisting of ex-leftists(from Left Party, Socialist Party, Communist Party, etc) with a reactionary nationalist program have been popping up here and there but none of them have reached any success really.
For some reason people have this picture of them pretending to be for workers' struggle bu that they are "workerist" or something but in reality they have opposed solidarity campaigns for the dock workers strike and criticized a garbage collectors workers wild-cat strike because "the left doesn't understand the municipal budget".
Also worth noting, he has been writing for like far-right papers for a good while now, and so has his comrades in Örebro partiet. I remember one of the party members once interviewed an ex-Young Left member in the far-right paper Nyheter Idag about how he had been oppressed by the women in Young Left.
I don't think its even like government bureaucrats over all, its like the state- or municipal PR-, culture-employees.
Felix Frost
Felix Frost
And, at the risk of repeating myself, I suppose that being on the steering council of a think tank makes you one of the real essential value-producing workers, not a parasitic transfertarian.
comradeEmma
Shocking, who would have predicted it? If they were British I'd be getting ready to place odds on how long it'd be before they get a peerage, what's the Swedish equivalent?
Well, I suppose that goes along with working for Matthias Karlsson.