Rak höger med Ivar Arpi Ivar Arpi

Qaisar Mahmood har brottats med sin svenskhet – sin identitet – under lång tid. I Jakten på svenskheten (Natur & Kultur) som kom 2012 åkte han 900 mil på motorcykel för att hitta den. Han följde upp med Den besvärliga mångfalden (Fri tanke 2019) där han utforskade samma tema. I sin nya bok – En av dem (Mondial)– sitter han återigen på en sadel, men han har bytt motorcykeln mot en vanlig muskeldriven hoj. Det börjar med att han lägger märke till att många, kanske de flesta, av cykelbuden som levererar mat har samma bakgrund som han. Kunde han ha varit en av dem, om ödets lotter fallit annorlunda? Den frågar ställer han under de tre månaderna han arbetar som cykelbud.
Dagens podd handlar om detta och mycket mer. Om medelklassens nojor och hyckleri, om jämlikhet och frihet, om att leva i världen som den är men behålla sina värderingar, om svenskhet och identitet och om mycket annat.
Till vardags är Qaisar Mahmood managementkonsult, men det är som författare han är mest känd. Han har även en bakgrund som statlig tjänsteman från en rad myndigheter.
Genom att bli betalande prenumerant gör man det möjligt för oss på Rak höger att fortsätta vara en självständig röst.

Utgivaren ansvarar inte för kommentarsfältet. (Myndigheten för press, radio och tv (MPRT) vill att jag skriver ovanstående för att visa att det inte är jag, utan den som kommenterar, som ansvarar för innehållet i det som skrivs i kommentarsfältet.)


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I dagens podd pratar jag med journalisten Lina Makboul. Hon har varit många år på SVT:s Uppdrag Granskning, och det är nog därifrån hon är mest känd. Rollerna brukar alltså vara omvända – det är Makboul som ställer frågorna, och den på andra sidan kameran som svarar. Men nu är hon i podden för att prata om boken hon just kommit ut med – Revolutionens första offer: en berättelse om en granskning (Mondial).
Boken handlar om #metoo och utgår från den granskning hon gjorde av rörelsen i Sverige, för UG:s räkning. Vi pratar om vad hon hittade, och om vad som stämde i Cissi Wallins anklagelser mot Fredrik Virtanen, om teaterchefen Benny Fredriksson och drevet som ledde till hans självmord, om vanskligheten med anonyma vittnen, om chefredaktörer som vägrar svara på frågor, om journalister som inte kollar upp vad som faktiskt stämmer, och om hur hon själv blir så hårt åtgången av drevet mot henne att hon till slut får diagnosen PTSD. En diagnos hon först inte vill acceptera, eftersom hon främst förknippar det med krigsdrabbade barn på Gazaremsan.
Jag måste säga att det är skrämmande läsning som påminner en om hur medieetiken sattes ur spel under #metoo. Frågan är om det kan hända igen. Jag är inte så säker på att medierna lärt sig något (vilket min nästa text handlar om).
Genom att bli betalande prenumerant gör man det möjligt för oss på Rak höger att fortsätta vara en självständig röst.

En intervju med Cissi Wallin
En av de första intervjuerna jag gjorde här på Rak höger var med Cissi Wallin. Bakgrunden var att hon skrivit ett inlägg där hon gjorde ett slags avbön: “Under flera år var jag en stor del av en rörelse, en obehaglig mentalitet på nätet som drog fram vecka efter vecka. Det främsta syftet var att hitta saker och personer att känna sig illa berörd av. Allt och alla skulle problematiseras! Förtrycket fanns överallt!”
Den som vill kan ta del av den intervjun nedan.
Utgivaren ansvarar inte för kommentarsfältet. (Myndigheten för press, radio och tv (MPRT) vill att jag skriver ovanstående för att visa att det inte är jag, utan den som kommenterar, som ansvarar för innehållet i det som skrivs i kommentarsfältet.)



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When Douglas Murrays book The Strange Death of Europe came out in 2017 I started recommending it to basically everyone I knew. Some of them, quite a lot of them actually, came back to me and said that they now saw the world in a different light. But they were also so disconcerted that they sometimes asked me to present a solution, since I was guilty of leading them down this path. What is to be done, Ivar?
So today I’m putting that question to the author himself. He’s one of the foremost thinkers and writers of our time, and that’s not an exaggeration. He followed up The Strange Death of Europe with The Madness of Crowds two years later, which focused less on migration and islam, and more on the cultural issues afflicting us, centered around identity politics.
And last year he came out with The War on the West which is what we focus on in today’s conversation. Why is the west waging a war on the west? Why are we so preoccupied with feeling guilty over things that we fail to notice our achievements? How did antiracism become so racist? When did much needed self-criticism morph into abject self-flagellation?
Below you can read the transcript of interview with Douglas Murray, for those of you who prefer that over listening to podcasts.
Welcome Douglas Murray to Rak höger!
– Very good to be with you!
It's an honor to have you on! One of the reasons I've been very keen on having you on is because your books really are some books I recommend as I said before in the monologue. The latest one is called The War on the West and it came out a year ago and it really ties into the book you wrote before which was The Madness of Crowds and it sort takes it a step further. What is the War on the West and why did you chose choose that title?
– Well, in in a number of recent books, as you say, I've been sort of groping towards what's going on in our time. In The strange Death of Europe I addressed the question of immigration and integration in the West, in particular in Europe. And this is obviously a subject which Swedes know very well, the challenges around. One of the things that I recognized that comes from mass migration and the great changing of a society is the identity of society changes. You might like the direction of change, or you might dislike it but it's pretty hard to argue against the simple proposition that if the people in the society changes, the society changes. One of the ways in which our societies have changed has been that we've had to change our guiding ethos and in my last book The Madness of Crowds, I looked at one of the things that is a changing ethos which is the way in which the public religion of our time has come to do with identity and what has become known as identity politics, obsessions with LGBTQIA+ issues, obsessions with women and the place of women in society and obsession with race and other identity related issues. These have become the dominant issue in our in our societies.
– I addressed that as I say in The Madness of Crowds but there was an element of it that I had not addressed and which I wanted to address and did in in my most recent book in The War on the West,

We live beyond your modern manAnd all his justifications for his world of progressAnd though he has created his alibis by falsifying historyBy smearing what was left of our nameBy insinuating poisonous myths in the minds of our peoplesBy proclaiming himself sovereign at the crossroads of ideologiesThis, his modern civilization is not superiorIt is not enlightened nor privileged
- “Master of the earth” by Rome

The text above is an excerpt from the one-man band Rome. It’s from one of his most anti-modern albums – The Lone Furrow (2020). The theme in the poem – that modernity and its cult of progress is a dead-end – runs through much of what Paul Kingsnorth, today’s guest, has written and said. He has a background as a journalist, but in 2009 he started the Dark Mountain Project. The manifesto, called Uncivilization, argued that environmental collapse as inevitable and criticized the whole notion of progress.
He left the project in 2017, and released the non-fiction book Confessions of a recovering environmentalist the same year to summarize his experiences. It also delves into why he became disillusioned with the environmental movement he was a part of for so long.
He’s also a novelist, whose work include The Wake (2014) and Beast (2017), and his latest novel is called Alexandria (2020).
And he also has a Substack newsletter called The Abbey of Misrule. Which I highly recommend, if you find today’s conversation interesting.
In today’s episode I focus on the fantastic essay Paul wrote a couple of years ago called The Cross and The Machine, published first in First Things. (It’s also been translated into Swedish and published by Tidskriften Pilgrim).
In it he tells the story of how he went from being a Dawkins-esque atheist, to an environmental activist on to zenbhuddhism, landing in a witch-coven. Yes, he was a witch for a while. Until he realized that what he was searching for was Christ. Christianity. An answer he didn’t want to receive, but it nevertheless came to him. We also talk about what the machine is, and how to keep oneself from not being swallowed by it. (Spoiler: don’t live your life on your smartphone.)
Utgivaren ansvarar inte för kommentarsfältet. (Myndigheten för press, radio och tv (MPRT) vill att jag skriver ovanstående för att visa att det inte är jag, utan den som kommenterar, som ansvarar för innehållet i det som skrivs i kommentarsfältet.)


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Today I’m speaking with Matthew Goodwin who’s a Professor of Politics at Rutherford College, University of Kent. He was on the podcast pretty recently to speak about his book National populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (Penguin UK 2018). In today’s podcast we talk about his forthcoming book Values, voice and virtue – the new British politics (Penguin 2023), which focuses more on the UK.
There have been a tendency write-off the counter-revolution of Brexit as a spent force. What people want in Britain, goes the argument, is stability. That things just work. They don’t want more rebels, populists or radicals. In his book Matthew Goodwin argues, and I would say that he is convincing, that this analysis is wrong. The realignment of politics that’s been taking place has been underway for decades, and it won’t go away until it’s somewhat resolved. The divides in society are real and not just a product of social media, even though that certainly has exacerbated the conflict level. What is to be done? Tune in to hear it! 
I also just want to mention that Matt is a fellow Substacker and I highly recommend giving him a follow if you’re interested in politics, populism and the challenges to democracy. In the episode I mention his latest post, which is a great read. I’ve learned a lot from reading him over the years.
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Utgivaren ansvarar inte för kommentarsfältet. (Myndigheten för press, radio och tv (MPRT) vill att jag skriver ovanstående för att visa att det inte är jag, utan den som kommenterar, som ansvarar för innehållet i det som skrivs i kommentarsfältet.)


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ivararpi.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit ivararpi.substack.com

Disputationer brukar inte uppmärksammas nämnvärt. Men Sameh Egyptsons avhandling blev både riksnyhet och kulturdebatt. Innehållet är nämligen sprängstoff – hur muslimska brödraskapet har infiltrerat Sverige. De vill underminera institutionerna som ger dem bidrag för att hålla igång verksamheten, menar Egyptson. Detta handlar dagens podd om.