Reading "A German man's history" (Geschichte eines Deutschen) or "Defying Hitler", written by Sebastian Haffner in 1939 about the decades leading up to the Nazis coming to power.
Made me think about current Swedish politics. #svpol
1/?
About the Reichstag fire in 1933: "Only the morning after did I read about the fire in the parliament building, and not until noon did I hear about the arrests [people sent to concentration camps]. Around that time came the order abolishing the freedom of opinion and the secrecy of correspondence for private citizens and giving the police unlimited rights to [search, arrest, etc]"
Those were obvious steps for the nazis then, in 1933, when establishing their dictatorship.
2/?
Now, in Sweden, we have similar proposals from the current government, backed by the "Sweden democrats", a party founded by nazis and other fascist-leaning people.
The government is proposing increased surveillance, violating citizens' right to privacy, and letting the police stop and search people for "looking suspicious" or wearing the wrong kind of clothes.
All cheered on by the founded-by-nazis "Sweden democrats" party.
3/?
Today came news of a local politician for that party having an "Adolf" tatoo: https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/sd-politikerns-tatuering-adolf-i-runskrift-lamnar-sina-uppdrag
I'm disgusted by this, and also amazed: how can the current government fail to see that the whole thing looks really, really bad?
I mean, just the optics of it. Even if you want to throw away human rights and establish an authoritarian state, surely you must see that it looks bad to do it together with nazis? It's so wrong and so ugly.
How do these people think?
4/4
