I understand the Brit Stakstons concern for ”the constant strengthening of the most extreme and hostile votes”. In the social and alternative media polarizing statements widely disseminated, and established the media also reports frequently on the more or less extreme views and people and the reactions they evoke.
But now it is not this that gets the Brit Stakston to write a post in DN Culture (3/4). No, it is, inter alia, that … Culture has taken the initiative to talk with people who play a role in it turned up debattklimatet, instead of writing about them. To try to penetrate deeper than the isolated, extreme statements and ask questions about how these people see themselves in their role and in society, and what really drives them.
the Ambition of the SvD’s article series is not to speak with ”the most extreme”, but from different perspectives to highlight the polarized debate. In the series sets the playwright Stina Oscarson both open and critical questions – in the next part she meets, for example, a controversial feminist activist. It’s about trying to understand, which is not the same thing as to agree with or ”normalize”.
aimed at understanding and knowledge without being uncritical is a difficult art, and sometimes it can be wrong. But I think it is a mistake to which Stakston categorically deny any attempt that aims to give a larger public the opportunity to peek into how people with other views than one’s own reasoning. And I think that she underestimates the readers ‘ ability to form their own opinion.
She also criticises the site Sverigepratar.see, that folkbildningsaktörer behind, which allows people with different political views to chat with each other. Why is it so provocative?
Stakston mean that it is good that people are trying to understand and approach ”oliksinnade” – but only when this happens in everyday life. However, the question is how many people in Sweden today have the opportunity to in their daily lives to converse with people who have completely different experiences and perceptions than they themselves.
She gets it to that it goes ”a straight line between the shouts of more calls” and elitförakt and ideas about the åsiktskorridorer. She is careful, however, did not explain how.
the greater the risk of the spread of elitförakt and beliefs about åsiktskorridorer when à la Stakston ruthlessly dismisses various initiatives to call, and cast suspicions of them by putting them in the context of a ”högerextrem dryer”.
How the media and individual citizens should respond to an increasingly polarised debate is an important discussion, which would benet from a more humble and tentative attitude.
Read more: the Contemporary era is characterized by an over-reliance on the calls by right-wing extremists
