It is not possible to compromise on abortion rights
unsaveSpara
share-arrowDela
expand-left
full screen Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto
The ugliest word in politics today is “polarization”.
It probably shouldn’t be.
When we talk about polarization in the debate, we often think of Donald Trump or parties like the Sweden Democrats. Their political strategy is based on pitting groups against each other and poisoning the political conversation with hatred, racism and conspiracy theories.
We see it in the US, and here in Sweden.
Politicians on both sides of the bloc border accuse each other of polarizing. This is what is usually called a “false balance”. What has actually happened is not that the right and the left have gone in different directions – but that the right has been radicalized on issues such as immigration, the view of Muslims, the climate, integrity and anti-feminism.
It is not that the red-green parties have simultaneously moved to the left, rather the opposite. The Left Party, for example, has probably never been like that lite radical like today. And the real far left has basically closed up shop.
According to the researchers, there really isn’t that much polarization to speak of. The rhetoric of polarization is “most talk”.
In the SNS Demokratiråd’s report 2021 “Polarisation in Sweden”, the researchers came to the conclusion, for example, that we think quite differently in Sweden between the right and the left, but that this is nothing new.
What has happened instead is that we are arguing about a new type of values. Along the right-left scale, we are used to compromises. Tax rates and RUT contributions can be lower or higher, it can be negotiated.
But when KD or SD waver on abortion rights, no compromise is possible. There will be confrontation. Or when SD encourages more Koran burnings. How do you negotiate it? Or when the government wants doctors and teachers to be obliged to report patients and students to the police?
What does a compromise on “adequate GDR” look like? It’s not possible.
This, that the debate has been moved to issues where compromises are impossible – because they are about people’s basic values - is the real “polarization”.
When it comes to socioeconomic questions there are clear class interests, should we spend the money on poor pensioners or on reduced taxes? Both sides can understand what interests are involved. Should we have more or less equality?
But when it comes to more sociocultural grounded opinions – questions of value – about, for example, immigration, feminism and the climate, we as humans do not always accept other people’s opinions as legitimate.
And then there will easily be no conversation, just shouting.
The solution to “polarization” is therefore paradoxically more polarization. Fixed on other issues. It is the colostrum that is the real threat.
Let me explain.
In his imaginative trilogy “The country outside” (Norstedts 2018) about Sweden during the Second World War, the historian Henrik Berggren describes how the role of the parties was viewed in the debate during the 1930s.
In short, many disliked the rise of the party system. Previous governments often consisted of professors, high officers and civil servants. These saw themselves as statesmen – not party men.
But when The Social Democrats and the Farmers’ Union, today’s Center Party, broke through and a new type of politician appeared. They openly represented different class interests, workers and peasants respectively. And their policy was precisely based on pitting groups against each other. Today they would probably have been accused of polarize.
But they were the ones who built the community center.
In the 1990s, another political method came into vogue. It is usually called with a strange word triangulation. One of the first to try was US President Bill Clinton, another was British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
They even called their parties New Democrats and New Labor respectively.
The strategy, which is often misunderstood, is based on you admitting that your opponent was partly right. Then you steal parts of his politics, language and arguments. To finally run your own politics.
Triangulation is therefore not copying your opponent’s policy outright, but can instead be described as a kind of political shoplifting. You snort the treats.
When Tony Blair scrapped Labour’s unpopular crime policy, he said the party was wrong. They had only talked about the causes of crime. But even the right had been wrong to only talk about themselves the crimes. New Labor therefore talked about both the crimes and the causes of the crimes.
Fredrik Reinfeldt did exactly the same thing when, in the 2006 election, he called the Moderates the “New Moderates” and stole S-words such as “labor party” and “arbetslinje”.
And now the Social Democrats are doing the same to SD when they change their rhetoric, and historiography, about immigration, feminism and the climate.
Magdalena Andersson thus intends to defeat Jimmie Åkesson just as Fredrik Reinfeldt deposed Göran Persson. I do not rule out that she will succeed.
But I still want to raise a finger of warning.
Triangulation often has unexpected side effects. Once you win, you have no mandate, no politics and soon no party.
The strategy is a one-trick pony.
Because in the end, everyone is sitting in each other’s lap. Anxious glancing at opinion polls.
The price for Tony Blair and other left-wing politicians who tried is that class divisions have deepened and that in practice they have ruled on right-wing politics. The price for the New Moderates was that the SD went over and that Ulf Kristersson looks like a worse copy of Jimmie Åkesson.
The alternative to political shoplifting is actually to polarize more.
What if, instead of apologizing for immigration, the Social Democrats said sorry for not abolishing the grace period when they could? Or introduced free dental care? Or cleaned up the free school swamp? Or increased government subsidies to healthcare?
And then seriously took battle to do it. The increased polarization of the debate I would love anyway. Pour out the intermediate milk.