Into the Æther

“‘Europe,’ by contrast was pictured by the Social Democrats, and the left at large, in terms of the so-called ‘four k’s’: konservatism, kapitalism, katolicism, [and] kolonialism (conservatism, capitalism, Catholicism, colonialism).” – Lars Trägårdh, p. 92 – Culture and Crisis: The Case of Germany and Sweden

According to Trägårdh and others, the Swedish Social Democrats found Catholic Europe to be an affront to the modernistic Social Democratic movement with reason, pragmatism and equality at the forefront. But this seems to me to overlook a particularly important variable: Protestant Sweden.

It is not as though this rhetoric of Protestantism in Sweden is missing! Even from Social Democrats, back to the 1930s, there are definitely references to Protestant Sweden in contrast to Catholic Europe. I think to overlook these references and imply that the use of “Papism” as a threat to the modernity of Swedish social democracy and not to the orthopraxic Lutheranism of modern Sweden, and especially to the Sweden of the 1920s and 30s, is to look at the situation with one eye covered.

Related posts:

1. The Framing Battle that the Social Democrats Are Losing
2. Unnecessary Panic/Reactionism – An unusally personal post
3. Why this crisis isn’t like the Great Depression