kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
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kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
In view of what you said to Gloria in this thread, I wonder what you think about this unlikely piece of newz:
Marine le Pen wants France to become the next Sweden
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Ken:
Why do those of us in the academy delegitimize the right wing? Is it not a form of citizenship and nationalism?
I am an immigrant but there are clusters of population in all countries that see me as unnecessary.
There will always be people like Trump!
TF
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Dear Professor Harrow :
Many thanks for the New York Times article on Sweden’s Far-Right Rising. I’ll pass it on.
Mind you, by merely posting this sort of article and others like it, I don’t ask you, “ Why do you credit rightwing pieces so much?”
So, we’re back to basics and that's why I’m surprised at this kind of inanity from you to me :
“my real question to you is why you credit rightwing pieces so much, pieces that would seem to support positions that would be attacking you personally?”
I'm affronted. It’s appalling that you should ask me such an insulting question. Who told you that I “credit” rightwing pieces so much, and where is the evidence for that? Who do you think I am? `Bluebeard? Your little uncle tom? Your Big Uncle Tom? Mister Charlie? The Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan? Or are you only testing the crocodile-infested waters?
I live in the current reality that is Sweden and I have fulfilled my civic responsibility and voted in the past fourteen general elections in Sweden. Do you think that as a humble, poor black & blue, I would be supporting positions that would be attacking us personally? Suffice it to note that just the other day, at my Better Half’s birthday party a family member who is a Conservative ( Moderate) brushed past me in my own house, without even saying “Hello, Cornelius.” That's how it is. He thinks that ” they “ are now the Lords of power, and that we should greet first, and maybe that I should even bow, after greeting him...
Here are The results of the Swedish General Election
The last time around, Sweden’s Social Democrat Government couldn’t get enough parliamentary support to pass their own budget and had to rule for so many years with the Conservative’s shadow budget that was able to garner enough parliamentary support - so we had the peculiar situation in which the Social Democrats were governing with the opposition's Conservative budget. This time around, since the Conservatives aim at lowering taxes, and of course, aim to complete their privatisation policies from where they left off the last time they were in POWER, where is the money going to come from to support the so far generous Swedish Social Welfare system - the Swedish Model - that’s the question? I suppose that among other things they will be slashing foreign aid to some foreign countries since some of that aid money goes down the drain into some politicians' private pockets anyway . The Conservatives will need the support of their main allies, the kingmakers, the far-right Sweden Democrats, failing which they may have to govern with the Social Democrats’ shadow budget. Time will soon tell.
As for some of these insults, sometimes I’m not at all surprised. Try this for size:
Liberman says that Netanyahu uses 'Goebbels, Stalin methods'
For those of us who live in Europe, the latest development in the Ukraine- Russia crisis isn’t looking too good. Once the referendum is certified and that part of Ukraine is annexed as Russian territory, any attack on the annexed region would be seen as an attack on sovereign Russia and so if they’re not careful we’ll have a nuclear war on our hands, maybe starting in Poland.
Just five thousand miles south there’s this reality:
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Matthew 10: 28 solved this problem centuries ago.
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Dear Sir,
Last night, I couldn’t help thinking about you ( Ojogbon Falola) and some of the other men and women of great intellect, in this forum, and I could imagine some of your quiet chuckles as I first read and then listened to what could be contemplated as an adjunct to Matthew 10: 28, from Volume 1 of The Philokalia ( of which I am still only familiar with Volume 3) :
Hopefully, of pertinence to you and other believers:Isaiah the Solitary: On Guarding the Intellect: Twenty- Seven Texts
Dear Professor Harrow,
I am heartbroken and remorseful and I apologise that I took offence and overreacted; this was because I so obviously misunderstood you. I asked you to please read and comment because you are recognised in this Forum as the one who, as you also say, knows France, “better than any other country”. So your opinion would be useful, impressive, and not “ half-baked”
A few days ago, I read on Infowars.com that Putin had narrowly survived an assassination attempt. Lies.
Likewise, there's no dearth of Swedish extreme right-wing conspiracy theory websites and other propaganda organs.
During the first wave of the Corona pandemic, when everyone over here was in a panic ( as in Burns’ “To a Mouse”) I was worried about succumbing to any vaccines, so I enquired from a friend who is a medical doctor and a virologist about what turned out to be mere stuff and nonsense in a website known as “Natural News”. My virologist friend’s reaction was similar to your “ why do you credit rightwing pieces so much ”?
I’m quoting here some exact words from the virologist to me.
“Be reassured by getting your information from trusted sites and not the ones you constantly send me links to. Read this one:
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/five-things-you-need-know-about-mrna-vaccine-safety.html
Why do you insist on keeping reading sites pushing false and scary information?
Here is what your latest "source" is:
"Natural News (formerly NewsTarget, which is now a separate sister site) is an anti-vaccination conspiracy theory and fake news website known for promoting pseudoscience and far-right extremism."
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Professor Harrow,
Should it always be a fight between WE and THEM?
When it comes to diversity the United States with all that jazz is indeed the ideal, it's still work-in-progress, a milestone passed, blighted by hopping over Ed Dwight
But, in the US, nobody ever asked me, “ Where do you come from ?” In 1976 in New York, I was introduced to Sonelius Smith as “one of our cousins from Africa”
In Sweden, “Where do you come from ?” is an everyday question if you’re not an albino like the late great Johnny Winter or like our Salif Keita or if your hair happens to be black or even a little dark …and for the Afro-Swedes who were born and bred here, when they name the city, town, village, or hospital where they were born, the follow-up question is always ”But where are you from originally?”
For me - depending on who's asking, if the enquirer's curiosity appears to be unhealthy or on the warpath “ Planet of the Apes” is my first retreat - that or “South Africa”. We the people who are darker than blue, we’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
I suppose that’s how the Americanos pestered the Swedes who emigrated to the US in the 1880s, not “ How are you?” “ Howdi !”, “How y’doin?” or “How’s the weather?” or ``Hi, my name is Joe, what’s yours?”, but the one only illustration of their “ social competence”; “Where do you come from?” - like a thing the cat brought in from outer space. At the job interview, invariably the follow-up question is, “How do you like Sweden?” - a good question and here too, one has to be brief and to the point about the weather. One could also sing this song: Anywhere like Heaven
The expression “ dumb Swede” originally popped up into the US vocabulary along with the first immigrants who were probably deemed slow at picking up the new lingo… as is clear in The Emigrants, a Swedish Film based on a Swedish novel - The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg
Looking back with or without nostalgia (I wasn’t there) The Spectator still true to form, goes back to their founding fathers who were true whigs of their time, Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele. So, even today, what kinds of opinions are we to expect from another mouthpiece of the conservatives except that they reflect the controversies and contentions of their times, our times as they are doing exactly right now when asylum seekers in Britain being threatened with deportation to Rwanda is on the government's agenda and - of course - is being hotly challenged in a British court of law as being both unconstitutional and inhumane - so - bearing in mind the anti-immigration factor and the general UKIP’s effect on Brexit, we ought not to be surprised that the general feeling in the UK and in Europe is that they already have more than enough economic woes to cry about and mouths to feed , these recessionary times when the cost of living for the low-level taxpayers puts more than 50 % of the country population at bare survival levels - as the UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared yesterday in a flight of oratory at the UN General Assembly
“Our world is in big trouble. Divides are growing deeper. Inequalities are growing wider. Challenges are spreading farther… A winter of global discontent is on the horizon. A cost-of-living crisis is raging. Trust is crumbling. Inequalities are exploding. Our planet is burning. People are hurting – with the most vulnerable suffering the most.”
The Spectator article also brings up a sore point in France - Britain relations, namely, the record number of asylum seekers crossing the channel from France to the UK and records the record number of asylum seekers - 160, 000 generously taken in by Sweden in 2015…top the chagrin of those who think that 160, 000 is far too much for x number of reasons ( I have some difficulty imagining how Nigerians would react if some 20 million Oyibos were granted Nigerian citizenship in 2020 - what the fallout would be.
It's difficult enough imagining John Lennon’s Imagine
Fact is, if Africa was Heaven, who would want to freeze in Europe?
Here’s a mild, partial ( not partisan) lowdown on some of what goin' on in Sweden. I begin with this lamentation from a Sierra Leonean friend's daughter who has a Swedish mother (from personal experience - just one dramatic encounter at Slussen, I used to think that it was on Hitler’s birthday that the Swedish Neo-Nazis got really Nazi nasty - it was on that day about twenty years ago that some Appolo like blonde and blue-eyed youth in full Nazi uniform first spat at the window of the train carriage where I was sitting and then marched in, in full battle regalia foaming at the mouth. Everybody in the train carriage was quiet, nobody said anything.. So he marched - pranced up and down, beat his chest a few times and when he looked at me with that “ boy you’re in the wrong country” type of look, I was afraid that he was going to say, “ I smell a nigger in here” and that I was going to ask him, “ Where?”
Here’s my friend’s daughter’s sad story from a week ago:
“When I was a kid my mom made me stay home on the 30th of November every year because on that day the neo-Nazis became scarier than they already were. I got 5 letters home explaining how me and my family would be murdered for being so ugly and disgusting. There is endless to tell. The kind of youth who exposed me and many others to endless hatred now sit as appointed politicians in Sweden's second-largest party. How do I tell my kids that this is now normalised? Not being able to move outside because of a dead king's birthday? That it's totally ok to be called a nigga, monkey and a child being threatened with murder? That they will be exposed to this and about 20% of Sweden's adult population think it is ok.”
(The Sweden Democrats harvested 20% of the votes) and are now the second biggest party in the Swedish Parliament.)
A top Sweden Democrat politician claims that Jews are not and cannot be Swedish
Lastly, for now, I’d like to mention that a few days ago on Swedish TV News, Aktuellt, a very distraught Willy Silberstein, worried about the rise of the Sweden Democrats was pitted in a debate with a very Aryan-looking specimen who was trying to calm everybody down.
Here they were ( Google translate could come in handy)