The Words of the Hansson Family
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The Words of the Hansson Family |
Tommy
Hansson (right) interviewing Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Akesson at
an outdoor meeting in Soedertaelje in early June 2010.
Tommy Hanssson, a proud Unificationist since 1974, has been fighting the war of ideas against Marxism for decades as a leader of the Sweden Democrats Party. The parliamentary election in Sweden on September 19, 2010 saw the center-right coalition led by Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt re-elected, while the Social Democrats with Mona Sahlin as top spokesperson suffered its worst election outcome since 1914 (even though it is still the biggest party in the parliament). The controversial Sweden Democrats, champions of a restrictive immigration policy, gained 20 seats in the parliament, thus controlling the balance of power between the center-right parties and the red-green coalition.
Serving as a member of the Unification Church in Sweden hasn't stopped him from taking an active part in social and political activities for decades, and since 2008, he has taken on the duties of a relatively important office-holder of the Sweden Democrats. Mr. Hansson here reports how his career began.
Born in Soedertaelje 40 kilometers south of Stockholm in 1951, I joined the Unification Church in Stockholm in 1974. At that time the church membership in Sweden totaled some ten to fifteen. I was the only member who joined the church mainly out of political interest, since I was an activist in the anti-communist and youthful organization of Democratic Alliance. In the Swedish Unification Movement I was, I believe, regarded as some kind of political John-the-Baptist type.
During the Cold War years the Unification Church and its founder, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, publicly spoke out against communism and its freedom-threatening agenda. As a new member of the Church in Sweden I got the distinct impression that the fight against communism was one of the most important activities. This idea matched exactly my own view of communism as an evil political force, so there was no problem for me to continue my political engagement while being a member of the Unification Church.
In my continuing political activities I never tried to hide the fact that I was a Unificationist, although I did not parade that fact. I have followed that line up till now, and I am probably the most publicly well-known Unificationist in Sweden.
I was a full-time member of the Unification Church most of the period 1974 -- 1980, although I had substantial difficulties accepting the demanding discipline that ruled the Church centers. During this period -- one of the most important of my life -- I became a freelance writer specializing in international matters and ideological questions as well as culture, history, and sports. In 1978, I went to South Korea for the first time and stayed about a month in order to gather material for features and articles. In 1980, I worked for three summer months as an intern at the NewsWorld, founded by Unification Church members, in New York. Later, in 1988-90, I was a stringer in Sweden for the NewsWorld's successor publication, the New York City Tribune.
1980 became a watershed year for me. During my stay in New York -- which I enjoyed in most ways -- I reached the insight that I could never become a good full-time missionary for the church. Instead, I decided to focus on matters I felt I could manage well: writing and politics. So, I continued in journalism and took part in party politics. During the 1980s, I visited South Korea a couple of times and also found a new international field worthy of attention: southern Africa in general and Angola in particular.
The World Anti-Communist League (WACL) at that time decided to put its weight behind the anti-communist guerrilla movement UNITA in Angola, led by Dr. Jonas Savimbi. As chairman of the Swedish Angola Groups I used my professional skills to write a vast number of op-eds and articles in different publications in Sweden and abroad.
The 1980s was a very important decade for me in another sense -- in 1982 I married Marika Bardel (1956-2010), with whom I was blessed by video in 1995. We have two lovely children in Sebastian (1985) and Isabella (1990).
In the last year of the 1980s I began my career as an author. In 1989 I published a-247 page book criticizing Marxism theoretically as well as practically. The book, published by Contra publishing house, was called "Slavery in our Time" (Slaveri i vår tid) and to a certain extent was influenced by the CAUSA Worldview and Unificationist writers such as David Kim and Sang Hun Lee. Since then, eight more books have followed, and I am now preparing a tenth intended to be published in 2011. That did not happen, albeit the Cold War ended with victory for the "right" side with the implosion of the Soviet Union in the end of 1991.
For me, as a member of the Unification Church, the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 seemed logical. Divine Principle and other Church textbooks maintain that communism is a tool of Satan and therefore doomed. I was, however, stunned -- and I know many of my anti-communist brethren shared this feeling -- by the speed of communism´s demise. In the early 1980s I was convinced that I would never live to see the day of the Free World´s victory in the Cold War.
So what to do next? Now that the Soviet Union was gone and the Wall had crumbled, I wondered, " Should I call it a day and limit myself to spiritual work?" The answer to that question came from a young friend, Hakan W. Jyde, who had become the local representative of a new political party in Sweden, New Democracy. He asked me if I would like to be a candidate in the coming communal elections in Soedertaelje, and I accepted -- I realized this was what God wanted me to do at this moment. I was familiar with Rev. Moon´s concept of Hometown Messiahs, and I thought I could become a kind of political Messiah in my hometown.
Conservative-libertarian New Democracy gained Parliamentary seats in 1991 after only six months of existence, and the local party in Soedertaelje made it to the city council which had been dominated by the Social Democrats since the first part of the century. Due to internal tension, New Democracy lost big in the 1994 election, and the Soedertaelje branch started a small local party called the Taelje Party which also reached the city council. A small party like ours (with just two seats) wasn´t in a position to make a great impact on the political scene, but our people were competent and highly visible in the local debate.
My membership in the Unification Church (the fearful "Moon sect") became an issue early in my political engagement in Soedertaelje, creating headlines in the local paper, but was hardly seen as worse than my anti-communist past in general. People who knew me realized, anyway, that I was quite a normal guy with limited fanatical tendencies. A few times I made headlines by, for example, protesting against public money given to socialist theater groups and taking a stand against gay partnership and immoral art exhibitions. My biggest moment of fame came, however, when I publicly advocated the death penalty for hideous crimes. I was invited to debate the issue on national television a couple of times and made, I would like to think, quite a contribution to the ongoing debate concerning crime and punishment in Sweden.
Compared to my seven years as a local politician in Soedertaelje, though, my journalistic and editorial work for the conservative journal of opinion Contra was more extensive. Beginning as a contributor in the mid 1970s, I was named publisher in 1994 and remained in that position until 2009, when my colleagues at the editorial staff deemed it inappropriate for me as a relatively high-positioned Sweden Democrat to continue as publisher. I am now an editorial contributor to the bi-monthly publication.
I had joined the Sweden Democrats (SD) in February, 2008 and was soon elected to local and regional boards in the Stockholm area. The competition was not overwhelming, since the party´s traditional strength-belt is in Sweden´s southernmost parts where the results of the country´s liberal immigration policy are seen the most. In July, 2009 I became Editor in-Chief of the party´s national paper SD-Kuriren. I was, further, number 35 on the national list of candidates for parliament and number one on the Soedertaelje list.
The Sweden Democrats are generally misunderstood as a "xenophobic" or "racist" party because, due to its view that immigration, especially from the Muslim world, should be heavily restricted. The resistance against the hitherto liberal Swedish immigration policy has, however, more practical than ideological roots. SD maintains that Swedish immigration policy, often backed up with sentimental rather than rational arguments, has led to alarming consequences such as growing mob-style criminality, widespread unemployment in "problem areas" in large cities such as Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmoe, and a general sense of alienation.
Recently, Anders Danielsson, head of Sweden´s Security Police (SAEPO), informed the public that the grade of alertness against terror threats has been raised from 2 to 3 on a five-grade scale. The reason for this, experts claim, is the growing presence and activities of Jihadist Muslim terror groupings such as Al –Shabab, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Al-Qaeda.
One key behind SD´s success in the recent election -- not only on a national level but on county and communal levels as well -- is undoubtedly the fact that many people support the party´s willingness to address controversial issues such as immigration and Islamization and the shrinking of Swedish national defense (the latter issue was the main reason I joined the Sweden Democrats). As a balance holder between the two blocs in parliament, SD and Jimmie Akesson, its skilful young leader, almost certainly will influence Swedish politics in a variety of ways. It should be noted that SD´s international guiding-star is the Danish People´s Party, which began as a small party under the leadership of Pia Kjaersgaard but is now quite influential in Danish governmental policy. Many liberals and leftists now fear the same thing will happen in Sweden.
As the top candidate of SD in Soedertaelje, I take delight in the fact that the party here was the most successful party branch in Stockholm county with 7 percent of the votes. This translates into five seats in the city council, which, however, will be dominated by the red-green coalition and leave our party with no balancing power. I didn't make it to the parliament but will be the party´s leading voice in the commune of Soedertalje.
One fact about the candidate list in Soedertaelje has created domestic as well as international interest: the list contains several Chaldean Christian refugees from Iraq. So the big question has been: How come that a xenophobic, even racist, party nominates such candidates? The answer, of course, is that SD isn´t a xenophobic/racist party at all, but rather a conservative party supporting traditional family values and a healthy patriotic feeling that has nothing to do with intolerant ethnical views.
Extreme nationalist groups in Sweden tend to be furious about SD´s "treason" regarding the importance of Swedish "ethnic values" and have even portrayed me as one of the leading "traitors", me being a ghastly so-called "Moonie" and all that. I do not, frankly, give a damn, and neither does our party leadership.
Contributed by Tommy Hansson, who was in 2001 named Ambassador for Peace for Sweden by the Inter-religious and International Federation for World Peace.