Just as the spring weather wrapped Brussels in its arms, Malin Björk, a member of the European Parliament from Sweden, put her contempt for Europe’s Christians on full display in the heart of the European capital. She inaugurated an openly hateful exhibition in the parliament, consisting of a dozen highly disrespectful pictures of Jesus Christ. A Swedish photographer had depicted the son of God in multiple settings meant to desecrate the man worshiped by Christians worldwide.
Malin Björk did not desecrate the Prophet Muhammed. She is a communist and therefore harbors a fervent hostility toward religious faith in general. Hate of religion is an integrated part of communist ideology, but for reasons we will get to in a moment, Björk is careful not to let her hate spill over on Islam. She apparently confines her contempt for faith to Christianity:
As we have reported, the exhibition at the European Parliament caused quite a splash, with sharp reactions from conservatives in the parliament. French MEP Jean-Paul Garraud explained that the “exhibition clearly has nothing artistic about it,” that it spreads “political propaganda of hatred” and that it is an attack on “everything that makes up our civilisation.”
These are well spoken words, but they will unfortunately not resonate with Malin Björk. She is a prime example of the kind of privileged, entitled political elitists who promote the Left’s ideological agenda wherever they get a chance to. The exhibition that Björk spearheaded played a big role in this agenda as a show of power—it signaled that the Left is going to continue its persecution of Christians in Europe.
It was also another piece of their unrelenting attacks on Hungary. On May 17th, Björk posted the following image on her Facebook page; the text in the bottom right corner says “Stand up and fight Orbán and all other LGBTQI haters”:
Without getting into the details of the Hungarian government’s eminent fight to prevent the sexualization of children in their country, suffice it to say that Malin Björk is a fervent ideologue who does not care much for the pro-family policies that have made Hungary one of the strongest, safest, and most resilient nations in Europe. Like the Left in general, Björk is outspokenly opposed to all the social institutions that have built Europe into the strong, prosperous, and mostly peaceful continent it is today.
The hatred for the traditional family and for the values that support it is the very life blood of the politician Malin Björk. She officially defined her political views during the years when she wrote for the now-defunct feminist online magazine Scumgrrrls. Published from 2002 to 2012, the magazine—which Björk was a co-founder of—put out a thick flow of agitative feminism, often with laudatory references to violence as a political method. One of the many examples is a celebration of Valerie Solanas, author of a “Manifesto SCUM,” where the acronym stands for “Society for Cutting Up Men.”
A Scumgrrrls article from 2005 claims that women really did not see any improvement in their lives when a U.S.-backed government replaced the Taliban in 2002. Although this one was not penned by Malin Björk, it echoes of the same Islamist apologeticism that we will see more of in just a minute.
Björk herself is clear about her ambitions to launch a frontal attack on the very values that constitute the foundations of Western civilization. Specifically, her aim is the family as a social institution; she wants to “make the individual truly political” and—in the true tradition of communism—use “structural and collective changes” as means to “address our individual problems.”
Among the “individual problems” that she identifies, we find a wealth of hateful rhetoric aimed squarely at the mainstream of European society. She mixes antipathy for heterosexual individuals and families with revolutionary tirades worthy of a communist. At times, though, her sexualized communism becomes almost entertaining. In a teenage-rebellion soaked article in Scumgrrrls from 2009 (when she was 27), Malin Björk raises the LGBT movement to the skies as the ultimate force of revolution:
LGBTs are sometimes celebrated as the ultimate de-stabilisers of heteropatriarchy, living outside the norms of reproduction of humanity, of norms of how we are supposed to love each other (and not), and outside norms structuring our sexuality and sexual relationships.
To Björk, this new sex-based ideology serves the same role as an ideological battering ram against a free, open, and prosperous society that Lenin’s communist practice of Marxism did in the Russian revolution (see my book Democracy or Socialism, pp. 81-86). The agitative tone is also similar, as is the focus on the lives that hundreds of millions of people live in happiness and quiet. This thought is apparently unbearable to Björk, who wants to find ways to “battle daily discrimination, conformity to dominant behaviours and norms” that “seem to be commanded” in society. She lists “monogamy, straight sexuality … lifelong relationships, climbing the professional ladder, being good consumers” as examples of discriminatory and “dominant” behaviors that, somehow, are oppressive.
Unlike Lenin, who identified the ‘proletariat’ as the oppressed class, Björk identifies herself as oppressed, in her capacity as a homosexual woman. Curiously, she never explains exactly how the mainstream lifestyle of society oppresses her; at least Lenin had an elaborate theory to explain the oppression he identified. His theory was wrong, but at least he had one …
To be fair to Malin Björk, if we stretch our image of it, her sexual communism could be construed as an argument that society needs to become more tolerant toward alternative family formations. However, even with this generosity to her advantage, Björk still cannot bring her ideology full circle without ending up on the Leninist-wanna-be side of things. After her tirade about how welfare-state benefits incentivize the way of life that most people choose anyway, you would expect Björk to demand the end of the welfare state. A libertarian “leave me alone” finish would in some ways have been respectable.
That does not happen. Once the welfare state has been castigated as some kind of ‘heteropatriarchic’ system of oppression that forces people into “lifelong relationships,” Malin Björk demands that she and her partner get access to the very same welfare-state benefits that heterosexual couples get.
Suddenly, “monogamy” and “lifelong relationships” in two-parent families are no longer oppressive, but worth striving for—and subsidizing with taxes.
That said, this self-serving plea for government benefits is really just a detour. Malin Björk soon reveals the true purpose behind her demand for welfare-state benefits: her homosexuality is a political project aimed, as she says, at destabilizing institutions like the family as a place to raise children. Björk looks down her nose at those who live in lifelong relationships and work to improve their contributions to society (“climbing the professional ladder”). Even though these social norms and institutions do not hinder her in her lifestyle choices—contrary to what she tries to allege—she still wants to “battle” these norms and the ‘patriarchy’ they apparently stand for.
Perhaps if Malin Björk had not decided to desecrate one of the holiest components of Christian faith, it would not have been necessary to expose her anti-Christian, revolutionary, even undemocratic values. However, her political choice has made it legitimate to examine who she really is, and what political beliefs she has. It has also made it legitimate to point out that hers is not the mindset of a rational, selfless person who wants to serve in public office to protect democracy, freedom, and the stabilizing institutions of our society.
Malin Björk has the mindset of a self-aggrandizing revolutionary, an enemy of the open society, someone whose political goal is to destroy, not build up. It is a mindset that we recognize all too well from nearly two centuries of socialism and communism, its extreme authoritarian end state.
It is interesting in this context to note that Björk summarily dismisses the traditional family as a “Western” project. She is apparently unaware that Muslims have a very strong tradition of forming what she spittingly refers to as “nuclear [W]estern bourgeois” families.
Speaking of Islam. Why did Malin Björk choose to desecrate Jesus Christ in the European Parliament? Why did she not bring in an exhibition that would portray the Islamic Prophet Muhammed as a homosexual?
At least one answer is simple to surmise. Malin Björk surely knows very well what would happen to her if she did. She saw the persecution against the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who had to live under constant bodyguard protection after having portrayed the Islamic prophet as a dog. Björk is very likely aware of the long ordeal that followed for Salman Rushdie after the publication of his “Satanic Verses.” She has heard about the Islamist terrorist attack after the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo had subjected Islam to humor.
Her choice to target Christianity is not based on some sort of free-speech concerns. Muslims do not enjoy any special privileges in that regard: their religion is open to the whole range of free speech—just like all other religions are. We have the right to ridicule the prophet Muhammed just as much as we ridicule Jesus Christ. As a devout Christian myself, I am ready to defend the right of people like Malin Björk to desecrate my Lord Jesus Christ any time she wants to.
However, when a person in Malin Björk’s position, a member of the European Parliament, selectively chooses to desecrate one of the big world religions while leaving the others untouched, she resorts to primitive cowardice. Her selective outrage over Christianity has nothing to do with intellectual discernment, let alone courage. It emanates purely from cowardice: she is afraid of what Muslims would do if she angered them by inviting an exhibition of, say, the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and the Lars Vilks drawings.
Cowardice has no place in politics. Cowards always run with the crowd. They never innovate, they never challenge the boundaries of the human experience, and they are always quick to accept conventional wisdom. Judging from her ideological writings, Björk appears to believe that she is a rebel by virtue of her homosexuality. She is not: she is part of the established, dominant paradigm within the modern political Left.
As an MEP she is privileged and protected from the financial, social, cultural, and political strife that Europe’s working masses have to put up with on a daily basis. She is free to engage in a political campaign against the very institutions that have elevated her to where she is today.
The one question she does not want to ask is: what happens if she and her peers succeed in tearing down the Western society that she is so spiteful of? What will rise in its stead? A new Soviet Union? An Islamic caliphate? In which of these would Malin Björk be treated better than in the very Western society for which she has such deep disdain?
The Communist Coward
Malin Björk, photo by GUE/NGL, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Just as the spring weather wrapped Brussels in its arms, Malin Björk, a member of the European Parliament from Sweden, put her contempt for Europe’s Christians on full display in the heart of the European capital. She inaugurated an openly hateful exhibition in the parliament, consisting of a dozen highly disrespectful pictures of Jesus Christ. A Swedish photographer had depicted the son of God in multiple settings meant to desecrate the man worshiped by Christians worldwide.
Malin Björk did not desecrate the Prophet Muhammed. She is a communist and therefore harbors a fervent hostility toward religious faith in general. Hate of religion is an integrated part of communist ideology, but for reasons we will get to in a moment, Björk is careful not to let her hate spill over on Islam. She apparently confines her contempt for faith to Christianity:
As we have reported, the exhibition at the European Parliament caused quite a splash, with sharp reactions from conservatives in the parliament. French MEP Jean-Paul Garraud explained that the “exhibition clearly has nothing artistic about it,” that it spreads “political propaganda of hatred” and that it is an attack on “everything that makes up our civilisation.”
These are well spoken words, but they will unfortunately not resonate with Malin Björk. She is a prime example of the kind of privileged, entitled political elitists who promote the Left’s ideological agenda wherever they get a chance to. The exhibition that Björk spearheaded played a big role in this agenda as a show of power—it signaled that the Left is going to continue its persecution of Christians in Europe.
It was also another piece of their unrelenting attacks on Hungary. On May 17th, Björk posted the following image on her Facebook page; the text in the bottom right corner says “Stand up and fight Orbán and all other LGBTQI haters”:
Without getting into the details of the Hungarian government’s eminent fight to prevent the sexualization of children in their country, suffice it to say that Malin Björk is a fervent ideologue who does not care much for the pro-family policies that have made Hungary one of the strongest, safest, and most resilient nations in Europe. Like the Left in general, Björk is outspokenly opposed to all the social institutions that have built Europe into the strong, prosperous, and mostly peaceful continent it is today.
The hatred for the traditional family and for the values that support it is the very life blood of the politician Malin Björk. She officially defined her political views during the years when she wrote for the now-defunct feminist online magazine Scumgrrrls. Published from 2002 to 2012, the magazine—which Björk was a co-founder of—put out a thick flow of agitative feminism, often with laudatory references to violence as a political method. One of the many examples is a celebration of Valerie Solanas, author of a “Manifesto SCUM,” where the acronym stands for “Society for Cutting Up Men.”
A Scumgrrrls article from 2005 claims that women really did not see any improvement in their lives when a U.S.-backed government replaced the Taliban in 2002. Although this one was not penned by Malin Björk, it echoes of the same Islamist apologeticism that we will see more of in just a minute.
Björk herself is clear about her ambitions to launch a frontal attack on the very values that constitute the foundations of Western civilization. Specifically, her aim is the family as a social institution; she wants to “make the individual truly political” and—in the true tradition of communism—use “structural and collective changes” as means to “address our individual problems.”
Among the “individual problems” that she identifies, we find a wealth of hateful rhetoric aimed squarely at the mainstream of European society. She mixes antipathy for heterosexual individuals and families with revolutionary tirades worthy of a communist. At times, though, her sexualized communism becomes almost entertaining. In a teenage-rebellion soaked article in Scumgrrrls from 2009 (when she was 27), Malin Björk raises the LGBT movement to the skies as the ultimate force of revolution:
To Björk, this new sex-based ideology serves the same role as an ideological battering ram against a free, open, and prosperous society that Lenin’s communist practice of Marxism did in the Russian revolution (see my book Democracy or Socialism, pp. 81-86). The agitative tone is also similar, as is the focus on the lives that hundreds of millions of people live in happiness and quiet. This thought is apparently unbearable to Björk, who wants to find ways to “battle daily discrimination, conformity to dominant behaviours and norms” that “seem to be commanded” in society. She lists “monogamy, straight sexuality … lifelong relationships, climbing the professional ladder, being good consumers” as examples of discriminatory and “dominant” behaviors that, somehow, are oppressive.
Unlike Lenin, who identified the ‘proletariat’ as the oppressed class, Björk identifies herself as oppressed, in her capacity as a homosexual woman. Curiously, she never explains exactly how the mainstream lifestyle of society oppresses her; at least Lenin had an elaborate theory to explain the oppression he identified. His theory was wrong, but at least he had one …
To be fair to Malin Björk, if we stretch our image of it, her sexual communism could be construed as an argument that society needs to become more tolerant toward alternative family formations. However, even with this generosity to her advantage, Björk still cannot bring her ideology full circle without ending up on the Leninist-wanna-be side of things. After her tirade about how welfare-state benefits incentivize the way of life that most people choose anyway, you would expect Björk to demand the end of the welfare state. A libertarian “leave me alone” finish would in some ways have been respectable.
That does not happen. Once the welfare state has been castigated as some kind of ‘heteropatriarchic’ system of oppression that forces people into “lifelong relationships,” Malin Björk demands that she and her partner get access to the very same welfare-state benefits that heterosexual couples get.
Suddenly, “monogamy” and “lifelong relationships” in two-parent families are no longer oppressive, but worth striving for—and subsidizing with taxes.
That said, this self-serving plea for government benefits is really just a detour. Malin Björk soon reveals the true purpose behind her demand for welfare-state benefits: her homosexuality is a political project aimed, as she says, at destabilizing institutions like the family as a place to raise children. Björk looks down her nose at those who live in lifelong relationships and work to improve their contributions to society (“climbing the professional ladder”). Even though these social norms and institutions do not hinder her in her lifestyle choices—contrary to what she tries to allege—she still wants to “battle” these norms and the ‘patriarchy’ they apparently stand for.
Perhaps if Malin Björk had not decided to desecrate one of the holiest components of Christian faith, it would not have been necessary to expose her anti-Christian, revolutionary, even undemocratic values. However, her political choice has made it legitimate to examine who she really is, and what political beliefs she has. It has also made it legitimate to point out that hers is not the mindset of a rational, selfless person who wants to serve in public office to protect democracy, freedom, and the stabilizing institutions of our society.
Malin Björk has the mindset of a self-aggrandizing revolutionary, an enemy of the open society, someone whose political goal is to destroy, not build up. It is a mindset that we recognize all too well from nearly two centuries of socialism and communism, its extreme authoritarian end state.
It is interesting in this context to note that Björk summarily dismisses the traditional family as a “Western” project. She is apparently unaware that Muslims have a very strong tradition of forming what she spittingly refers to as “nuclear [W]estern bourgeois” families.
Speaking of Islam. Why did Malin Björk choose to desecrate Jesus Christ in the European Parliament? Why did she not bring in an exhibition that would portray the Islamic Prophet Muhammed as a homosexual?
At least one answer is simple to surmise. Malin Björk surely knows very well what would happen to her if she did. She saw the persecution against the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who had to live under constant bodyguard protection after having portrayed the Islamic prophet as a dog. Björk is very likely aware of the long ordeal that followed for Salman Rushdie after the publication of his “Satanic Verses.” She has heard about the Islamist terrorist attack after the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo had subjected Islam to humor.
Her choice to target Christianity is not based on some sort of free-speech concerns. Muslims do not enjoy any special privileges in that regard: their religion is open to the whole range of free speech—just like all other religions are. We have the right to ridicule the prophet Muhammed just as much as we ridicule Jesus Christ. As a devout Christian myself, I am ready to defend the right of people like Malin Björk to desecrate my Lord Jesus Christ any time she wants to.
However, when a person in Malin Björk’s position, a member of the European Parliament, selectively chooses to desecrate one of the big world religions while leaving the others untouched, she resorts to primitive cowardice. Her selective outrage over Christianity has nothing to do with intellectual discernment, let alone courage. It emanates purely from cowardice: she is afraid of what Muslims would do if she angered them by inviting an exhibition of, say, the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and the Lars Vilks drawings.
Cowardice has no place in politics. Cowards always run with the crowd. They never innovate, they never challenge the boundaries of the human experience, and they are always quick to accept conventional wisdom. Judging from her ideological writings, Björk appears to believe that she is a rebel by virtue of her homosexuality. She is not: she is part of the established, dominant paradigm within the modern political Left.
As an MEP she is privileged and protected from the financial, social, cultural, and political strife that Europe’s working masses have to put up with on a daily basis. She is free to engage in a political campaign against the very institutions that have elevated her to where she is today.
The one question she does not want to ask is: what happens if she and her peers succeed in tearing down the Western society that she is so spiteful of? What will rise in its stead? A new Soviet Union? An Islamic caliphate? In which of these would Malin Björk be treated better than in the very Western society for which she has such deep disdain?
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