Stieg Larsson and James Lee: Fantasy Enemies of the Eternal Childhood

Both Stieg Larsson, the late author of the "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" trilogy, and now deceased Discovery Channel hostage taker James Lee, exhibited a fantasy ideology. The complexity of the modern world disturbed them, and so, seeking a simplistic solution, they chose a childish fantasy instead of embracing reality. Lee's fantasy, ended in terror for people just doing their jobs at the Discovery Channel, and death for Lee. Larsson's, gave him some minor fame, his estate some minor cash, but both cases illustrate the complete failure of people on the left to grasp the innate reality of mankind. We are NOT going back to hunter-gatherer days and the menace stalking Sweden is NOT Swedish Nazis. Yes, Lee was merely a nut, an obviously mentally deranged man. But what of his inspiration, Author Daniel Quinn, and his two books, Ishmael, and "My Ishmael"? Both novels were published by Bantam Books. The first novel won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award. Both novels have inspired everything from Pearl Jam, to the film "Instinct" with Anthony Hopkins, the Peace movement. While Lee was a marginal nut, Quinn is a major published author, with prizes to prove it. The Turner Fellowship Award netted him half a million dollars, the most awarded for any literature prize.

For Larsson, the mentally ill Lee, and Daniel Quinn, the question is, how deep has such lunatic ideas really gotten into society? You can read Lee's entire manifesto here at inmalafide.com, it reads straight out of the Peace Movement, New Tribalists, and a good part of the Democratic Party. The sentiments expressed are not that far off from what James Cameron has said, who wants to ban DVDs (but only after you buy all three special editions of AVATAR), or for that matter, Barbara Boxer, Senator from California. All three are deeply embedded in fantasy, to avoid real questions and real solutions. "Invent, Humans! These are the demands, and sayings of Lee!"


For Larsson, his main themes are the need to root out the ever-present Swedish Nazis. And the "abuse" of Swedish women … by figures sadly resembling his father. Both are childish fantasy enemies instead of the real ones facing Sweden today, and in the past.

Sweden, after 1934, was ruled by Social Democrats. Who preferred to spend all the government money possible on social welfare, instead of defense. By May 1940, with the Allies firmly defeated, Britain in shambles, fearing invasion itself, and Norway occupied by the Germans, Sweden had no choice but to cooperate and make itself useful to Germany. Otherwise it would be invaded and occupied by the far superior forces of the Germans. Of course Sweden, under Social Democrats, supplied Hitler's War Machine with raw materials and weapons. So too did Larsson's beloved Stalin, and the Soviet Union, from 1938 and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, up until the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin even regarded Hitler as a close friend, and refused to believe news of the invasion for several days. Stalin, as much as Sweden, before Hitler's invasion, provided the Nazis with raw materials, weapons, helped them pursue Jews, and betrayed local communist rebels to the Nazis. Stalin in 1952, with the "Doctor's Plot" planned his own final solution to Jews in Russia. Something that Larsson, a life-long member of the Communist Party, and journalist (but I repeat myself), conveniently ignored in his writings.

The lesson of Sweden in WWII was that a small nation must bend to a hostile, and much larger, better armed one, unless it has powerful defenses of its own. Defenses that require massive mobilization of society, spending large amounts of money, and forgoing social welfare for military spending. Sweden could have defied Hitler, had it spent nearly all its money on a Navy, an Air Force, and a strong Army. It would have had to have fought Hitler, and many Swedes would have died. Stockholm would have been pounded into rubble, along with many other beautiful Swedish cities. As was East London, Coventry, and many places in Britain. But it is likely that the Swedes could have held out. German manpower was not unlimited, and a strong Navy, Air Force, and Army could have made things very costly for Germany.

But it would have cost Sweden too. Life is not a choice between chocolates and strawberries.

Nor did Sweden become "rich" off seizing assets from fleeing Jews, and betraying them to Nazis. Or selling to the Nazis. For the former, there were not that many Jews, who got to Sweden, and by the time they got there, they did not have much money. At any rate, the party of the Left, not the Right, ruled Sweden. The materials sold to the Nazis generated little wealth, Sweden not being in the position to dictate terms. No, Sweden's wealth, came AFTER the War, when with Switzerland, it was the only nation in Europe with both a large industrial infrastructure and no war damage. Unlike British, or French, or Soviet, or German factories, Sweden's factories (and Switzerland's) were untouched. Their cities pristine. No massive demographic hole, either. Russia and the Soviets lost 20 million or more, the Germans around 9 million, and the French and British around 5 million a piece. There were plenty of people to do the work, that needed to be done.

As for Swedish "misogyny," well, Stanley Kurz at National Review has a few items on Sweden's Feminists demands:

• A man tax, levied only on men, to pay for battered women's shelters, because all men are "guilty" of rape.


• Changing rape laws to make all men who do not formally ask for permission for sex "guilty of rape."


• Comparable worth laws to force all women to get the same pay as men, even across male-dominated and female-dominated professions, for example secretaries making as much as telephone linemen.


• Forcing fathers to take as much time off from work as mothers.


• Gender quotas for daycare workers (excluding men)


• Forcing androgyny by making boys wear dresses in Kindergarten.

Now, some of these went nowhere, though many were eventually successful, and state support for lesbians wanting artificial insemination, and gay marriage, were eventually enacted. Indeed the youth wings of the left party endorsed polyamory. Later, as Kurz notes,

In the midst of all this feminist success, trouble struck with the broadcast of a televised documentary called The Gender War. This close-up look at Sweden’s feminist movement exposed a degree of radicalism that shocked even Sweden’s socially liberal public.

The documentary featured prominent feminist academic and activist, Eva Lundgren, claiming that half of all Swedish women are victims of male violence. Lundgren went on to assert that a network of male Satanist groups had carried out hundreds of ritual baby murders in Sweden. (A formal inquiry by Uppsala University has since discredited both claims.) Another segment of the documentary featured Ireen von Wachenfeldt, chair of the government’s women’s shelters. Von Wachenfeldt’s remarks set off what soon became known as the “men are animals” controversy.

Under Von Wachenfeldt, the government’s women’s shelter network had printed excerpts from the “SCUM Manifesto” (Society for Cutting Up Men), penned by a radical feminist in the late 1960s. The SCUM Manifesto urges women to “destroy the male sex” by using modern science to insure that only female children are born. SCUM goes on to say: “To call a man an animal is to flatter him: he’s a machine, a walking dildo.” Asked by the film-maker if she agreed, Von Wachenfeldt said, “Yes, man is an animal. Don’t you think so?”

Lundgren and Von Wachenfeldt’s televised statements set off shock waves in a Sweden perhaps soon to be governed by a coalition that would include FI. After all, the “man tax” would fund a shelter system run by a woman who appeared to despise men. The government’s new Equality Minister, Jens Orback, seized on the controversy to criticize Von Wachenfeldt’s “separatist” decision not to work with or employ men in government shelters.

Thrown off-balance by the controversy, the Feminist Initiative tried to find a “male feminist” to place on its governing board. Unfortunately, their chosen male candidate declined the honor.

Dogged by the “men are animals” controversy through the spring and summer, the Feminist Initiative headed into its critical September 2005 convention determined to emerge with a winning platform. Yet the convention saw divisions emerge. After a bitter power-struggle, several “moderates” resigned from FI’s board. They complained that a “broad-based” program (focused, say, on business quotas and compulsory paternity leave) was being pushed aside by a radical coalition dominated by homosexuals, bisexuals, and the transgendered. One erstwhile FI board member said she’d been “bullied for being a middle-class heterosexual.”

Determined to transcend “patriarchal norms,” FI decided against having official leaders. Yet now the purged “moderate” feminists complained of a “democratic deficit” on the board. The Feminist Initiative had become “much worse” than the traditional patriarchal organizations it was meant to replace, said one. In other words, “man tax” advocate and de facto leader, Gudrun Schyman, was in control, purging the “moderates” (themselves quite radical by American standards) and siding with the radicals. The entertainment at the conference further radicalized the party’s image, particularly the rapturous applause for a song that went, “F***ing man, we’re going to chop you to bits.”

FI’s victorious radical faction was led by Tiina Rosenberg, a feminist professor who made a badge of her lesbianism. Rosenberg raised public hackles for reportedly calling women who sleep with men “traitors to their gender.” And shortly after her triumph at the convention, Rosenberg announced the Feminist Initiative’s new proposal: the abolition of marriage and its replacement by a system of gender-neutral partnership legislation that would allow for multiple partners. Like the youth parties the previous year, Rosenberg touted the proposal as freeing the family from “heterosexual norms.” “The history of marriage is not about love and living together,” she said, “it’s about ownership.”

Sweden, far from being a nation filled with natives who are "Men Who Hate Women" (Larsson's Swedish title for "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo") is a nation apparently filled with man-hating (but I repeat myself) lesbians and gays and transgendered individuals.

Meanwhile, Sweden DOES have a rape epidemic. From Muslim immigrants. As blogger Fjordman reports:

Becirov runs the Islamic Center of Malmö, on the outskirts of Sweden's third-largest city. Some immigrant neighborhoods in the city have (official) unemployment rates exceeding 50 percent. Swedish authorities have failed to lift up the area, and seem to be giving the Islamic Center of Malmö a great deal of leeway in attempting to do so. An article that appeared in 2003 noted that "a few" of the 6-to 10-year-old girls were wearing headscarves. On a visit in January 2005, fully 80 percent were covered in class--only a handful were not. In a fit of absent-mindedness, Sweden has suddenly become as heavily populated by minorities as any country in Europe. The percentage of foreign-born is roughly equivalent to the highest percentage of immigrants the United States ever had in its history (on the eve of World War I). Rosengård appears to be all-immigrant. The public schools have virtually no ethnically Swedish children. There are stories--familiar in other parts of Europe where immigrants from the Muslim world have recently settled--of students harassing Jewish teachers and defacing textbooks that treat Jewish themes. Crime is high.

Rapes and assaults against Swedish women and girls are at an all time high. And perpetrated almost entirely by Muslim men. Who regard Swedish women as "whores." As Fjordman reports in Brussels Journal, a full 85% of convicted rapists are Muslims from foreign lands, or the children of such. Sweden is rapidly becoming the Bosnia-Serbia of Northern Europe. Fjordman notes the Muslim rape wave in Sweden, link here, with the chilling news that two young Swedish women invented an anti-rape belt (requiring two hands to get it open).

Some Muslim immigrants admit their bias quite openly. An Islamic Mufti in Copenhagen sparked a political outcry after publicly declaring that women who refuse to wear headscarves are "asking for rape." Apparently, he's not the only one thinking this way. “It is not as wrong raping a Swedish girl as raping an Arab girl,” says Hamid. “The Swedish girl gets a lot of help afterwards, and she had probably fucked before, anyway. But the Arab girl will get problems with her family. For her, being raped is a source of shame. It is important that she retains her virginity until she marries.” It was no coincidence that it was a Swedish girl that was gang raped in Rissne – this becomes obvious from the discussion with Ali, Hamid, Abdallah and Richard. All four have disparaging views on Swedish girls, and think this attitude is common among young men with immigrant background. “It is far too easy to get a Swedish whore…… girl, I mean;” says Hamid, and laughs over his own choice of words. “Many immigrant boys have Swedish girlfriends when they are teenagers. But when they get married, they get a proper woman from their own culture who has never been with a boy. That’s what I am going to do. I don’t have too much respect for Swedish girls. I guess you can say they get fucked to pieces.”

Now, who seems to be the men who hate women? Emasculated, polite, Swedish men who seem to have all the testosterone drained out of them by lesbians and gays of their own native people, or Muslim men from places like Morocco, or Algeria, or Pakistan, who bring the attitudes towards women from those places and pass them on to their sons? As shown in the quote above.

Larsson adopted a fantasy enemy, one not even as entertaining as Sauron or Lord Voldemort, because dealing with the reality of Sweden was too difficult. Social spending on welfare by Sweden's Social Democrats left the nation no choice but to cooperate with the Nazis in WWII. Or be conquered. Even fighting them, with a military that had a chance of standing them off, meant destruction of Sweden's cities and factories, and the deaths of millions of its people. Meanwhile, the real people who hate are the lesbians and gays waging a war on native Swedish men, and standing silent (as Larsson accuses Sweden's power structure of doing with abuse of Jews in WWII and women today) about the rape and assault of Swedish women by Muslim men from other countries, let in because Sweden is ashamed of being … Swedish.

The real future of Sweden is not some glorious anti-capitalist crusade against racism and violence against women. It is instead, Bosnia on the Baltic. With rape, murder, mass-killings, mass graves, ethnic cleansing, as Swedes and Muslims fight to control Sweden. Only one can win. The fight of course, will draw in Muslim nations determined to protect Muslim countrymen, and conquer one more part of Europe, and those parts of Europe determined to resist, and prevent a Muslim Caliphate from being put on the Baltic. Eventually, those Swedish men with nowhere left to go will simply have to fight, as Fjordman notes, the Army consists of less than 5,000 men and the police are totally useless. Germany, Finland, Russia, are as all likely to be drawn in as Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus was by the Thirty Years War in Germany.

Thus dies the glorious colors of Benetton. As Bosnia on the Baltic begins.

But what of Lee, and his inspiration, novelist Daniel Quinn? After all, can't a telepathic gorilla guide us to a new tribalism, where we all live like furry blue cats in James Cameron's Avatar? What, you say we can't go back? Yes.

Actually, a gifted journalist (back when journalist actually meant something) and science writer, James Burke, said just that in 1978. When he dissected the idiocy of Quinn (Lee was obviously a lunatic) and Cameron in the TV series that ran on PBS, "Connections." Youtube now has the series available, and in the last episode, he talks about how we cannot go back. In the last few minutes of the first clip, and the first few minutes of the second clip, Burke shows how and why we just cannot go back:






For those unwilling/unable to watch the clip, Burke notes it all began with the plow. The plow, more than 9,000 years ago, gave man food. A lot more food. Which could support more people. Which needed to be stored in clay jars, begetting the potter's wheel. And needed writing, so you knew who owned what. And irrigating the fields required geometry, because they'd flood every year, and irrigation to channel the floods, and grow food even when the river wasn't flooding. Which gave architecture. Which needed metals, for more food, and weapons to defend the food you'd got. Which meant more, and more, and more innovation, and technological change.

Because, at their core, people want more. More food, so they don't go hungry, and their kids get more protein, so they grow taller. More clothes, so they have more comfort, warmer in the winter, cooler in the summer. More shelter, so they don't sleep rough, or in a giant hall, all in a bundle. More energy, so more things can be made, so that everyone can have nice things. Not just really rich people. More energy means more clean water, so more poor people don't die of disease, and their children don't die of disease. More energy means more communication, so people can exchange ideas, which drives change even faster, and more entertainment, which spreads ideas more, which creates even faster change that way.

People want more. They need more. And they are determined to get more. Indeed, our genes have been selecting, for more, and an ever desire for more, and change itself, for more than 9,000 years. And it all started with the plow. If we were all to suffer some terrible Hollywood disaster, civilization would restart, because of the plow. The plow was the one tool, a very simple one, that started all the others. Everyone knows about the plow. Its not going away. So neither is civilization.

Whether a telepathic gorilla can shame rich guilty Westerners about Nazis, or not, is beside the point. Just as guilt over Sweden not fighting the Nazis to a stand-still until its cities were in ruins and people half-starving is beside the point. No matter how much rich, near billionaire film-makers exhort people to buy their DVDs and burn down society (but not their mansions, please), or authors rage against Swedish men for not being born lesbians or gay, the real issues press on.

China will industrialize because it has no other choice. Africans will exploit their natural resources, because they have no other choice. Latin America will exploit its resources, because it has no other choice. To feed its people's demands for more. More food, and better, safer food. More water, and cleaner, safer water. More roads, and better ones. More physical safety, from bandits and guerrillas (not the kind in zoos), or militias, or even safety from abuse by one's own government forces. Not a theoretical in the Sudan, or the Congo, or many other places. All of this requires energy, resources, money. Which can only come, from exploiting resources. These resources can be exploited wisely, or foolishly, by informed consent, or whoever can be the slickest or strongest (or both). But they will be exploited. Because 6.5 billion people all want more. And why wouldn't they? Lower class, middle class, and upper class Western Women told they can't have makeup, cosmetics, clothes, decent food and water, cars, shelter, botox, decent medicine so they don't die in childbirth, or their children in infancy or early childhood? The silly (botox and cosmetic surgery) is inexplicably intwined with the serious: modern medicine that lets women not die of infection after giving birth. You can't have one without the other. Poor, Third World people will not accept being told, "Sorry, your children have to die of disease, to save the Polar Bear. And the froggies." This is a non-starter, for the world, as is the fantasy that carbon emissions will be reduced to "save the Planet" because Chinese and Indian peasants won't accept being poor forever, nor will Western women (the swing vote) give up the life they lead, nor Western men for that matter. Professional sports, rock music, movies, NASCAR, are all going nowhere. Neither are nylons, designer dresses, expensive shoes, or trips to the mall. The television screen is as close as Westerners want to come to tribal life, on National Geographic channel.

Much of the Western World, and in particular the Left, has been reduced to idiotic infancy.



Indeed, as the professional Left has become more degreed, it has become more childish. The Wiki entry for "Ishmael" reads like the novel was written by a ten year old, one prone to emo-fits and goth tendencies. This is in contrast to the old-line Environmentalists, like John Muir or Teddy Roosevelt, who made the argument, that some wild lands should be preserved for their beauty, so that future generations of people could enjoy them. Now, we have History Channel's "Life After People" series. If people are not around, who cares? The entire modern environmental movement can be summed up as one giant temper tantrum against "daddy." "Daddy" being defined as the modern industrial world that gives so much wealth to so many people, at a cost, to be sure, but does indeed make humans far richer.

In the same manner, fantasies about the ever-present lurking menace of Swedish Nazis abusing Swedish women, is ultimately childish. The temper tantrum of someone unable to deal with the complexity of modern humanity, wanting unalloyed good in their people and culture and history, and declaring it all garbage when finding human beings instead of Angels from Heaven in Sweden. So too, the idea that male heroism is easily replaceable by kick-ass female heroism, is a fantasy that is childish. Ignoring human physiology and fundamental interests.

In both cases, it is wealth and removal from consequences that create the childishness. John Muir, unlike the crying hippies, or the fatuous self-loving camera hogs on "Whale Wars" actually hiked the Sierras extensively, and mounted a sustained public campaign to convince people and politicians that some places were worth saving. He did not win every round. But he did help save some of the most spectacular and beautiful places on Earth. Actually being responsible for something, including his own life (he often hiked alone) created an adult responsibility. Acting as a trustafarian as in "Whale Wars" or crying hippies, posing for others and the camera, creates a childish fantasy.

A fantasy that detracts from the real business at hand: dealing with the choices and trade-offs in making exploitation of resource decisions, and addressing the looming battle for much of Europe over who will rule: natives or foreign Muslims?