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How Swedes And Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’ - My Dad Predicted Trump in 1985 – it’s not Orwell, He warned, It’s Brave New World - What Is Fascism? What Does Social Democracy Look And Feel Like? How US Can Break Power Of The 1 Percent

How Swedes And Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’ - My Dad Predicted Trump in 1985 – it’s not Orwell, He warned, It’s Brave New World - What Is Fascism? What Does Social Democracy Look And Feel Like? How US Can Break Power Of The 1 Percent


WHO ARE THE 1 PERCENT? IT IS THE CLASS OF ENTITLED 1 PERCENTERS, BILLIONAIRES AND CEO'S AT THE TOP OF HUGE CAPITALIST CORPORATIONS, WHO ARE DIRECTLY OPPOSED TO THE 99 PERCENT AND TO SAVING THE WORLD FROM DESTRUCTION

Left Connect "President Donald Trump delivered a speech Monday on 'America's environmental leadership' that failed to even once mention climate change. The speech was also riddled with inaccuracies, as the president took credit for environmental achievements enacted by previous administrations and downplayed the impacts of his deregulatory agenda...

At one point, the doublespeak prompted Fox News host Shepard Smith to interrupt the broadcast to point out that many of Trump's policies had been 'widely criticized by environmentalists and academics.' Smith then went on to list some of the more than 80 regulatory rollbacks the Trump administration has initiated, including the recent repeal of the Clean Power Plan that would have limited emissions from coal plants."







































Go deeper

Empire Files Documentary; Abby Martin Exposes Steve Bannon, Details Government Accountability Institute, Breitbart News, Ideology Of Steve Bannon, Militarism, And Campaign Of Fear And Hatred, Desire To Crash The Entire System
My dad predicted Trump in 1985 – it’s not Orwell, he warned, it’s Brave New World | Media | The Guardian
This was, in spirit, the vision that Huxley predicted way back in 1931, the dystopia my father believed we should have been watching out for. He wrote:






























What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.

1984 – the year, not the novel – looks positively quaint now. One-third of a century later, we all carry our own personalized screens on us, at all times, and rather than seven broadcast channels plus a smattering of cable, we have a virtual infinity of options.

Today, the average weekly screen time for an American adult – brace yourself; this is not a typo – is 74 hours (and still going up). We watch when we want, not when anyone tells us, and usually alone, and often while doing several other things. The soundbite has been replaced by virality, meme, hot take, tweet. Can serious national issues really be explored in any coherent, meaningful way in such a fragmented, attention-challenged environment?

For all the ways one can define fascism (and there are many), one essential trait is its allegiance to no idea of right but its own: it is, in short, ideological narcissism. It creates a myth that is irrefutable (much in the way that an image’s “truth” cannot be disproved), in perpetuity, because of its authoritarian, unrestrained nature.






































Go deeper

Why US Government Should Not Be Run As A Huge Corporation Business Under President Trump Or Anyone Else; When Only Corporations Exist And Government By The People Disappears, You Have Fascism, Dictatorship, Totalitarianism, Via Racism, Militarism, Capitalism

HOW THE SWEDES AND NORWEGIANS WON THE WAR AGAINST THE 1 PERCENT AT THE TOP 


How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’
by

A march in Ådalen, Sweden, in 1931.

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”

Neither country is a utopia, as readers of the crime novels by Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and Jo Nesbro will know. Critical left-wing authors such as these try to push Sweden and Norway to continue on the path toward more fully just societies. However, as an American activist who first encountered Norway as a student in 1959 and learned some of its language and culture, the achievements I found amazed me. I remember, for example, bicycling for hours through a small industrial city, looking in vain for substandard housing. Sometimes resisting the evidence of my eyes, I made up stories that “accounted for” the differences I saw: “small country,” “homogeneous,” “a value consensus.” I finally gave up imposing my frameworks on these countries and learned the real reason: their own histories.







































Then I began to learn that the Swedes and Norwegians paid a price for their standards of living through nonviolent struggle. There was a time when Scandinavian workers didn’t expect that the electoral arena could deliver the change they believed in. They realized that, with the 1 percent in charge, electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change.

In both countries, the troops were called out to defend the 1 percent; people died. Award-winning Swedish filmmaker Bo Widerberg told the Swedish story vividly in Ådalen 31, which depicts the strikers killed in 1931 and the sparking of a nationwide general strike. (You can read more about this case in an entry by Max Rennebohm in the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)

The Norwegians had a harder time organizing a cohesive people’s movement because Norway’s small population—about three million—was spread out over a territory the size of Britain. People were divided by mountains and fjords, and they spoke regional dialects in isolated valleys. In the nineteenth century, Norway was ruled by Denmark and then by Sweden; in the context of Europe Norwegians were the “country rubes,” of little consequence. Not until 1905 did Norway finally become independent.

When workers formed unions in the early 1900s, they generally turned to Marxism, organizing for revolution as well as immediate gains. They were overjoyed by the overthrow of the czar in Russia, and the Norwegian Labor Party joined the Communist International organized by Lenin. Labor didn’t stay long, however. One way in which most Norwegians parted ways with Leninist strategy was on the role of violence: Norwegians wanted to win their revolution through collective nonviolent struggle, along with establishing co-ops and using the electoral arena.

In the 1920s strikes increased in intensity. The town of Hammerfest formed a commune in 1921, led by workers councils; the army intervened to crush it. The workers’ response verged toward a national general strike. The employers, backed by the state, beat back that strike, but workers erupted again in the ironworkers’ strike of 1923–24.

The Norwegian 1 percent decided not to rely simply on the army; in 1926 they formed a social movement called the Patriotic League, recruiting mainly from the middle class. By the 1930s, the League included as many as 100,000 people for armed protection of strike breakers—this in a country of only 3 million!

The Labor Party, in the meantime, opened its membership to anyone, whether or not in a unionized workplace. Middle-class Marxists and some reformers joined the party. Many rural farm workers joined the Labor Party, as well as some small landholders. Labor leadership understood that in a protracted struggle, constant outreach and organizing was needed to a nonviolent campaign. In the midst of the growing polarization, Norway’s workers launched another wave of strikes and boycotts in 1928.

The Depression hit bottom in 1931. More people were jobless there than in any other Nordic country. Unlike in the U.S., the Norwegian union movement kept the people thrown out of work as members, even though they couldn’t pay dues. This decision paid off in mass mobilizations. When the employers’ federation locked employees out of the factories to try to force a reduction of wages, the workers fought back with massive demonstrations.

Many people then found that their mortgages were in jeopardy. (Sound familiar?) The Depression continued, and farmers were unable to keep up payment on their debts. As turbulence hit the rural sector, crowds gathered nonviolently to prevent the eviction of families from their farms. The Agrarian Party, which included larger farmers and had previously been allied with the Conservative Party, began to distance itself from the 1 percent; some could see that the ability of the few to rule the many was in doubt.

By 1935, Norway was on the brink. The Conservative-led government was losing legitimacy daily; the 1 percent became increasingly desperate as militancy grew among workers and farmers. A complete overthrow might be just a couple years away, radical workers thought. However, the misery of the poor became more urgent daily, and the Labor Party felt increasing pressure from its members to alleviate their suffering, which it could do only if it took charge of the government in a compromise agreement with the other side.

This it did. In a compromise that allowed owners to retain the right to own and manage their firms, Labor in 1935 took the reins of government in coalition with the Agrarian Party. They expanded the economy and started public works projects to head toward a policy of full employment that became the keystone of Norwegian economic policy. Labor’s success and the continued militancy of workers enabled steady inroads against the privileges of the 1 percent, to the point that majority ownership of all large firms was taken by the public interest. (There is an entry on this case as well at the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)

The 1 percent thereby lost its historic power to dominate the economy and society. Not until three decades later could the Conservatives return to a governing coalition, having by then accepted the new rules of the game, including a high degree of public ownership of the means of production, extremely progressive taxation, strong business regulation for the public good and the virtual abolition of poverty. When Conservatives eventually tried a fling with neoliberal policies, the economy generated a bubble and headed for disaster. (Sound familiar?)

Labor stepped in, seized the three largest banks, fired the top management, left the stockholders without a dime and refused to bail out any of the smaller banks. The well-purged Norwegian financial sector was not one of those countries that lurched into crisis in 2008; carefully regulated and much of it publicly owned, the sector was solid.

Although Norwegians may not tell you about this the first time you meet them, the fact remains that their society’s high level of freedom and broadly-shared prosperity began when workers and farmers, along with middle class allies, waged a nonviolent struggle that empowered the people to govern for the common good.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2012/01/26/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-power-1-percent?

WHAT DOES A SOCIAL DEMOCRACY LOOK AND FEEL LIKE IN SWEDEN OR NORWAY?







































Go deeper

Iceland Bailed Out Workers And Unions, Not Too Big To Fail Banksters, Definition And Comparing Communism, Socialism, Capitalism; The Many Ways That Republicans Have Been Champions For Socialism

Julia "Butterfly" Hill's Pacifist Activist Story; Activist, Teacher, Healer, Practicing Peaceful Non Violent Civil Disobedience, Laying Her Body On The Line, Following Road Less Traveled, Via Love, Empathy, Civility And Respect Equals Civil War By Liberals
https://www.agreenroadjournal.com/2015/07/julia-butterfly-hill-activist-teacher.html

WHERE IS TRUMP GOING WITH ALL OF THIS CORRUPTION THAT HE IS CREATING AND PART OF? 


Tyrants, Despots And Dictators Like Trump Dehumanize The 'Enemy' Before Committing Genocide, By Calling Them Names; Crooked Hillary, Crazy Bernie, Low Energy Jeb, Lyin Ted, Jeff Flakery, Cryin Chuck, Pocahontas, Rocket Man


FASCISM IS THE END RESULT OF DICTATORSHIP BY HUGE CORPORATIONS; DOES THE US QUALIFY?


How many boxes did you check off?




























Trump Legalized US Military To Shoot Immigrants - Birthright Laws Are Present In 33 Countries Globally - Nazi Hitler Fascist Regime Ended Birthright For Hated Minorities - 10 Warning Signs Of Cult - How Hitler Went From Fringe Politician To Fascist Cult Dictator With 1 False Flag Attack

WHAT YOU CAN DO; LEARN ABOUT AND GO DEEPER INTO CONSCIOUSNESS


What Is Consciousness? The Theory Of Everything Inside An Evolving Consciousness; Introduction To 25 Forms Of Consciousness - Materialistic, Altered States, Quantum, Void, Hero, Non Physical, Religious, Universal Oneness, 7 Experiential Exercises
https://www.agreenroadjournal.com/2016/12/what-is-consciousness-introduction-to.html

WHAT YOU CAN DO



VOTE!

Vote only for candidates like Sanders who refuse to take corporate or PAC bribes, and who are not billionaires.







































Marse Hernandez Add: Russia, the drug cartels,banks that launder drug money, Saudi leaders, Israel, Supremacists, Evangelicals - and worst of all: American citizens who do not vote, don't know the issues and can't be bothered.

Get ACTIVE. Speak up. Speak out. Share. Resist.

ART AND MUSIC ACTIVISM

There is no need for a never ending war on women, on minorities, on gays, on innocent children..

War/No More Trouble | Playing for Change | Song Around The World

Stop the war. Stop the fear. Stop the hatred.

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Index, Table Of Contents

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How Swedes And Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’ - My Dad Predicted Trump in 1985 – it’s not Orwell, He warned, It’s Brave New World - What Is Fascism? What Does Social Democracy Look And Feel Like? How US Can Break Power Of The 1 Percent
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