Sweden: Anti-Immigration Party Becomes Kingmaker

by Soeren Kern • September 18, 2018 at 5:00 am

Swedish police received more than 2,300 reports of potential crimes linked to this year's election, including voter intimidation and threats of violence against property or persons. An international team of observers found irregularities in 46% of the polling stations visited. The team expressed particular concern over the lack of secrecy in voting. Swedish authorities allow more than one voter (normally from the same family) to enter the polling booth together, ostensibly to ensure that the more literate family member can assist the less literate ones to correctly fill in the ballot paper.
"We are concerned about the significant level of family voting where women, older voters and the infirm can be guided or even instructed how to vote by another family member... We feel this may be a way of suppressing some voters from freely choosing their own choice." — Statement on the Swedish election from Democracy Volunteers, election observers.
With tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of migrants receiving welfare payments without having made any contributions, Sweden's current welfare system seems destined to collapse, according to Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Åkesson.

In Swedish elections, each party has separate ballot papers with the party name prominently displayed. The picking of ballots takes place in public, so anyone present can observe which party's ballot paper the voter will choose. As a result, some voters may have felt intimidated and reluctant to publicly reveal that they wanted to vote for the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats. (Image source: Jens O. Z. Ehrs/Wikimedia Commons)

A strong showing by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats in the Swedish elections on September 9 drained away so many votes from the establishment parties that the two main parliamentary blocs were left virtually tied and far short of a governing majority.

The Sweden Democrats won 17.5% of the vote and emerged as the third-largest party in the country, according to the official election results released on September 16. The result, a 4.6% improvement on the 12.9% it won in 2014, placed the Sweden Democrats into a situation of holding the balance of power in the next parliament.

Incumbent Prime Minister Stefan Löfven's center-left Social Democrats came in first, with 28.3% of the vote — the party's worst result in more than 100 years. The center-right Moderate party came in second, with 19.8% of the vote, a 3.5% drop from 2014.

Continue Reading Article

New Eichmann Film Puts the Lie to Hannah Arendt's "Banality of Evil"

by Alan M. Dershowitz • September 18, 2018 at 4:00 am

Martin Heidegger, who was Hannah Arendt's teacher and lover, was anything but banal. Nor were Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, Hitler and the numerous doctors and lawyers who were tried at Nuremberg. Neither were the university students who began by burning Jewish books and ended by burning Jewish children. Adolf Eichmann was also anything but banal, as a perusal of the trial transcript reveals.
Although the film Operation Finale partakes of Hollywood liberties, Ben Kingsley's fictional portrayal of Eichmann is far more realistic than the allegedly non-fiction account by Arendt.
That mendacious and dangerous phrase, "the banality of evil," should be struck from the historical vocabulary of the Holocaust and the trial of Eichmann, lest we look in the future for banality and miss the brilliance of those who would repeat Eichmann's crimes.

Adolf Eichmann serving in the SS in 1942 (left) and on trial in Israel in 1961 (right) for his crucial role in the murder of millions of Jews. (Images source: Wikimedia Commons)

One of the most notorious lines -- and lies -- that grew out of the trial of Adolf Eichmann for his important role in the Holocaust, was what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil," meaning that even the most horrific people can appear insipid. Arendt was assigned to report on the 1961 trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem, but according to contemporaries, she rarely attended the trial. She came to Jerusalem having made up her mind in advance that Eichmann in particular and other perpetrators of the evils of the Holocaust in general, were ordinary nondescript functionaries. She reported on the trial with an agenda. It was not necessary for her actually to observe and listen to Eichmann because to do so might undercut her thesis. So instead she wrote a mendacious screed in which she constructed a stick-figure caricature of one of the most significant perpetrators of the Holocaust.

Continue Reading Article