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This study focuses on two Swedish politicians, Nils Flyg and Sven Olov Lindholm. During the interwar era, they were both leaders of various Swedish political parties; in the case of Flyg the Swedish Communist Party, and later on the Socialist Party; in the case of Lindholm the National Socialist Worker’s Party (later renamed Swedish Socialist Unity). Both men were, in other words, influential politicians located at the outer edges of the ideological landscape.
During the span of their lifetimes, however, Flyg as well as Lindholm made remarkable ideological transitions. From the end of the thirties and onwards, the former communist leader Flyg successively embraced German Nazism. Lindholm on the other hand stepped down from his leadership after the war, and became a left-wing political activist who did not hesitate to identify himself as a communist. Superficially, this is strikingly symmetric: The communist leader becomes a Nazi, and the Nazi leader becomes a communist.
The aim of the study is to analyze the ideological links and tensions between Nazism and communism using these parallel biographies as a point of entrance. Inspired by political theorist Michael Freeden and his conceptual approach, and using a variety of sources, two core clusters of political concepts are identified and compared. It is shown that there are great similarities between Flyg and Lindholm when it comes to the role of anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism and the aspiration to idealize the Soviet Union or Germany as model states for workers. There are also, however, a number of differences, especially when it comes to views on modernity and materialism. In the final chapter, Flyg and Lindholm are compared to other European renegades. Here, the ambition is to identify common traits in the conversions. It is argued that the ideological antagonisms, the anti-positions, are crucial to this kind of generic renegadism.
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Denna bok handlar om de svenska mellankrigstidspolitikerna Nils Flyg och Sven Olov Lindholm. Under tiden mellan världskrigen var de båda ledare för varsitt politiskt parti. Flyg var ordförande för Sveriges Kommunistiska Parti, sedermera kallat Socialistiska Partiet. Lindholm var under samma period ledare för Nationalsocialistiska Arbetarpartiet, sedermera omdöpt till Svensk Socialistisk Samling. De var med andra ord inflytelserika politiker på varsin ideologisk flank.
Under sina respektive liv kom de dock att göra uppseendeväckande ideologiska förflyttningar. Flyg kom från andra halvan av 30-talet och framåt att alltmera öppet omfamna den tyska nazismen. Lindholm å sin sida lade ner sitt parti efter krigsslutet och kallade sig med tiden öppet för kommunist. Då Flyg och Lindholm ställs sida vid sida föreligger alltså en slående symmetri: Kommunistledaren blir nazist och nazistledaren blir kommunist.
Bokens syfte är att med utgångspunkt i dessa båda biografiska fall dissekera det ideologiska kraftfältet mellan kommunism och nazism. Med metodologisk inspiration från den politiske teoretikern Michael Freeden och hans begreppsliga idéanalys, samt ett brett källunderlag, identifieras två ideologiska kärnkluster som sedan jämförs. Likheter mellan Flyg och Lindholm fastslås, inte minst genom ett gemensamt antikapitalistiskt och antiimperialistiskt ställningstagande liksom en ambition att idealisera Sovjetunionen och Tyskland som mönsterstater för arbetare. Till de skillnader som går att identifiera hör inte minst olika synsätt på materialism och modernitet. I ett avslutande kapitel jämförs Flyg och Lindholm med samtida europeiska renegater, med ambitionen att identifiera gemensamma drag i dessa övergångsprocesser. Inte minst fokuseras här den roll som det negativt uttryckta idéinnehållet tycks spela i respektive omprövning.
Academic co-ordinator is Lars M. Andersson, Senior Lecturer, History, Uppsala University: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1718-2448
This book is included in DOAB.
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Keywords
- Communism
- European History
- Fascism & Nazism
- History
- Humanities
- Marxism & Communism
- Nazism
- Nils Flyg
- Philosophy
- Political Ideologies
- Politics & government
- Regional & national history
- Renegade
- Social & political philosophy
- Society & Social Sciences
- Sven Olov Lindholm
- thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government::JPF Political ideologies and movements::JPFC Far-left political ideologies and movements
- thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JP Politics and government::JPF Political ideologies and movements::JPFQ Far-right political ideologies and movements
- thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history
- thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QD Philosophy::QDT Topics in philosophy::QDTS Social and political philosophy
Links
DOI: 10.21525/kriterium.20web: http://www.kriterium.se/site/books/10.21525/kriterium.20/
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