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Astrid vs Hitler

Astrid Lindgren was an author who made some mistakes and weird decisions (Basing Pippi on Hamsun and Nietzsche and referring to her as Übermench? Brothers Lionheart ending wtf?) and also produced some gems.

She spoke out against Hitler in 1939, and her diary has page after page of opposing the “master race” concept and expressing support for the Jewish people.

Putinist posters are currently quoting a 1940 entry in her diary, just after the occupation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, where she says she believed Stalin would be worse than Hitler.

As time went on, she called Hitler a “destructive, culturally corrupting force”, parodied him in “Pippi goes to the circus”, and in a 1958 letter, she wrote (translated by Caroline Waight):

I thought you knew that. I thought you knew I hate every form of human classification by nationality or race, all forms of discrimination between black and white, between Aryans and Jews, between Turks and Swedes, between men and women. Ever since I was old enough to start thinking independently, I’ve loathed that blue-and-yellow greater-Swedish adulation of the fatherland. . . . It seems as repulsive to me as Hitler’s German nationalism. I’ve never been a patriot. We’re all people—that’s always been my particular way of putting it.

I feel the same way (skända flaggan! kuken!)

Not that I wanna write putinist propaganda for them, but they snarfed the wrong quote. They could’ve used her anti-nazi writings (since they’re ostensibly fighting against nazism) instead of trying to square-peg round-hole her into being a nazi, which was stupid on top of being duplicitious.

Additionally, positioning yourselves as the heirs of Stalin is not the right way to go.

(Putin must go. And so must the Azov battallion, get out of here with that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” pishposh! And that goes for all you chomskyites bashing NATO—sure, but, Putin is also bad.)