By Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli.
Today, 28 of February 2016, the world is mourning the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Olof Palme, the honourable PM of Sweden. The Swedish media and a variety of early authorities and representatives of Sweden’s power and cultural elites have been during the last weeks unanimous on this: The assassination took place in the frame of a hate campaign against him, and where Olof Palme was constantly subjected to libellous personal attacks.
However, what that media and politicians who professed frank animosity against Palme’s anti-imperialist stances do not say, is that it was they who promoted and/or echoed such a hate campaign.
Photo at right. Placard used by the right-wing Moderate Party. The text besides the demonising caricature of Olof Palme reads: “Against parasites use DDT”. Next image: A wide preferred caricature of Olof Palme by the media and pro U.S. political elites of the time was to presented him as the Nazis did when demonizing the Jews under slogans such as “exterminate the rats”: a man with a big crook nose and sinister look. A similar image was endlessly published by main newspaper DN. [2]
Just some months ago a politician of name Jörgen Olsen and belonging of the same organization as Carl Bildt and Ulf Adelsohn wrote in Facebook, “Palme was a repulsive person”. Which is a copycat of the terms used by former Social Minister Göran Haglund when referring to Mr Assange,
Martin Klepke, a reporter formerly working at the Swedish newspaper Expressen, told in 2014 that he did hear colleagues at his working place in Expressen discussing in serious terms whether Olof Palme “should go voluntarily or forced out by means of military power”. [1] That was the times when Olof Palme had in unambiguous terms denounced the bombing of Hanoi civilian population by the U.S. and criticized the occupation war in Vietnam.
Nevertheless, the Swedish police disregarded eyewitness reports from the very same evening of the murder of PM Olof Palme which identified a U.S. agent at the time working for Pinochet’s infamous DINA – the secret security agency set up to assassinate opposition leaders abroad. Olof Palme was the only foreign dignitary who was listed in the death list of Operation Condor.
The participation of Swedish mainstream in libelous hate campaigns ad hominem on behalf of USA geopolitical interests is rather a rule than an exception.
After the organization WikiLeaks, founded by Julian Assange, criticized U.S. occupation wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and denounced its wars crimes, the US requested the few governments participating in the military occupation of Afghanistan under US-command to initiate prosecution against Assange. Facts show that Sweden was the only country that complied.
To start with, it was the same abovementioned Expressen that, in contravention with media-ethical norms, published the name of Julian Assange as “accused of rape”, even if the chief prosecutor Eva Finné dismissed the case days after. Of course, prosecutor Finné’s decision did not have the voracity of Expressen’s cable synchronized with worldwide Western media distribution. Even today many Swedes and people abroad ignorantly repeat the falsehood that Assange has been accused by two women of rape, and even charged for it!
And of course the hate campaign. Nowadays, while important political voices in the U.S. political establishment are asking for the assassination of Julian Assange (e.g. the top right-win politician Sarah Palin), the same abovementioned actors – now added to by the often fascist-inspired “radical feminist” movement – wage a similar hate campaign in Sweden against Julian Assange and the anti-imperialist stances of the organization he founded, WikiLeaks.
Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks
At the times of the multiple calls for Assange’s assassination by prominent U.S. figures, Expressen’s culture section wrote by 2011, “Mr Assange…inescapable element for his severe compulsive needs that are beyond. . .” About five years later, Expressen’s culture editor Karin Ohlson is heading her article of 7 February 2016, “Snowden’s defence of Assange stinks“. The competitor Aftonbladet wrote 13 Feb 2011 on Julian Assange, “a paranoid idiot who refuses come to Sweden to face a trial”. Still in 2015, Aftonbladet’s journalists Oisín Cantwell, Karin Magnusson and Fredrik Virtanen laughed on a TV broadcast at Lena Melin’s racist comparison of Julian Assange’s “future” with that of miserable migrants from Romania, forced beggars at the streets of Sweden’s cities (Afonbladet TV 27 March 2015).
Svenska dagbladet, a main Swedish newspaper, illustrated its 17 Feb 2011 article “Idyllic picture of Sweden is darkened” with a montage showing the notorious criminal Göran Lindberg — a world-reviled, convicted serial rapist (including the rape of a 14-year old child) – portrayed together with Julian Assange and his lawyer Mark Stephens.
The Swedish military also drove a hate campaign against Palme and in which Navy commander Hans Von Hofsten was a prominent actor. In order to stir national or nationalist sentiment, the psy op main PR resource was to portray, imply or even accuse Olof Palme of being a “Russian ally”.
Likewise, Julian Assange and his organization WikiLeaks are publicly demonized by the Swedish military. The second in command at the Swedish Military Research Institute, Mike Winnerstig, speaking officially at the Swedish TV, presented Assange as waging a leaks-denouncing campaign directed against Sweden and the Western countries, while at the same time he accused Assange’s organization WikiLeaks of protecting Russian interests.
The state-owned Swedish Television (SvT), in its turn, named Julian Assange “Sweden’s Number One Enemy”.
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Notes and References
[1] “Det var en tid på jag själv som reporter på Expressen på min arbetsplats kunde höra journalister på tidningen Expressen med allvarlig röst diskutera om Olof Palme var på väg att sälja Sverige till Sovjetunionen. Och om han skulle avgå frivilligt eller om han skulle behöva tvingas bort med vapenmakt.”