reminds me of the danish movie “festen”. not quite swedish culture, but close. the downplaying of child abuse in favour of appearances is part of the theme iirc
I don't know if this is unique to Sweden but my impression from living here is that a lot of people are very concerned with looking enlightened and pure and it's cold and chilly sometimes and feels like nobody really cares about anybody else. And everybody is on ssri's. But I'll watch the documentary and see if I agree with what you said. It's also worth mentioning that IES is one of those evil for-profit school (friskola) so I suspect that stuff wouldn't have been allowed to fly for as long as it did if it were a regular municipal school that doesn't have as much of a financial motive to silence the victims. What I wanted to get across is that I'm not sure if this situation is representative of the whole Sweden, the category of what is considered rape is Sweden is so broad that Stockholm has become the rape capital of the world, women usually have a lot of recourse in any situation other than the specific stuff that was going on at this school, also only like 20% of schools are like IES. Sorry this is rambly and messy.
I think these attitudes are fairly common across the pond. I noticed France has a disturbingly lax attitude toward predatory behavior, but London is literally right across the English channel so it's not like it begins and ends there. Then you have the more high profile examples, with how intertwined people like Jimmy Saville and Epstein were with the royal family and such. We definitely have it bad in "high society" as well but Europe is straight up cooked, the regular population doesn't even seem to care. Our response might be half-baked and bloodthirsty, but at least there *is* a response.
I found this disorienting to watch because you're giving us your conclusions about the documentary while/before you show us the examples, and it's so condensed I don't really have any time to absorb the footage. I don't doubt it's as bad as you say, but the presentation is confusing. IMO this should be like 5-10 minutes longer where you give us a little more time to see what you're talking about
I basically live by that school so this feels extremely close to home. I didn't love the video to be honest but that's I'm part due to my shame of knowing next to nothing about the case and have only followed it passively. Which makes me look like another Swede with their head in the sand. I figured I'd wait until the dust had settled but I'll have to admit to forcing myself to not think about it too hard I.
Luckily I don't know anyone who goes there but I know of parents who had considered the school for their kids and one of them are in my family so it is just by sheer luck that I'm not more personally affected by this.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the documentary, and on the Swedish coverage of the case there compared to the coverage of a US case like Larry Nassar.
I am also interested hearing them, as I'm currently in the process of forming those thoughts. This sudden and harsh melding of my worlds have forced me to confront how on average little I consume and effectively care about local and even Swedish news and politics. Ironically I have been at that school once when they had set up voting booths for our 2022 election. In my (small) defense I think I moved to this city a year or two before this abuse started and know the school as far as I drive past it, and I do not like private schools, but that's enough of my non defense.
I have spontaneous thoughts about the differences however on how coverage in the countries differ in general which also applies to this story. Sensationalism is a word that immediately comes to mind, 24h news cycle with loaded language and Nasars name and face plastered everywhere on one end (you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong). And brief, clinical articles covering the topic in a dry and informational manner on the other. And I'm on the far end of that spectrum as well, mostly reading from our national public service company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sveriges_Television . In order to get the least amounts of editorializing, which may or may not be a good choice.
Some of your criticism ring true to me, although they feel somewhat unfair at the same time and I can't avoid feeling defensive. This is a HBO documentary that is covering a horrible series of events that were allowed to happen due to vast amounts of neglect and incompetency. You have critiques of the doc, the school, the news org, Swedish police and justice system, and finally wrap that up with our culture as a nice bow at the end. And for me those are individually valid, but zooming out so wide while using a documentary which you don't like that much as your lens to sum up a generalized critique on basically a whole country and their institutions makes it muddy. I'm also willing to speculate that finding family members of rape victims that are outraged and comparing them to one other case where a woman seem very unable to express her emotions about this somewhat different and non physically direct kind of sexual abuse is hard to take valuable conclusions from .
As for the rest, I am watching the doc as we speak and can come back to you on that part when I'm done. I did find it immediately funny when I realized I was watching one of the culprits supposedly stumbling upon the CP through a random popup ad though. (which btw the material has been officially deemed as CP by our courts of appeal which also will increase the payouts to the victims) And they added 4 months to the 2 year sentence, which...
Leads me to the justice system, and policewoman in the doc. While I do feel like the doc so far does lack the emotional weight and more importantly I understand that it doesn't underscore the severity of what's been done to these kids. I do not think that is a reflection of our culture from my perspective. Like I said about our news coverage, there is often a more matter of fact approach when conveying information, but this does not take away from our understanding of what is taking place. But yes seeing as this is a documentary and not a news story, I understand and think that I agree so far that the doc is not fully conveying the level of predation that has taken place or the true damage it causes the victims. Is our culture just like that? No, I do not think that. Even though yes there are truths to the stereotypes of naivety and overly nice Swedes. I think you could see that represented in our politicians during our migration issues 2014 migrant crisis where any establishment parties were not allowing for any real discussion of possible negative outcomes of taking on large amounts of migrants at a time, effectively only letting a then fringe far right party represent people who had issues with this which fast tracked them into power and is now part of our government.
That said, while I do think that you point out some things which can lead to abuse like this to take place more easily. This schools incompetency and actions do stand out. I view incompetency and willful blindness to discomforting allegations of wrongdoing as separate from a country's leniency on criminals, liberal leaning institutions, and a general sense of "wanting to be proper and to good". Even if they may cause overlap and things to fall trough the crack. I thought we were on the same page about prisons at least, that even if we have issues on the other end of criminals getting off to easy here sometimes, it is better to have even an imperfect system focused on reform and rehabilitation. Than a system based on torture and slavery? The lack of ability to see sexual sadism you notice (in the documentary), is the lack of the US ability to see the sadism of your prisons, and a more revenge based justice system. But yes I do also feel weird about this, and hoped that they did more of the rehabilitation part which currently I'm unaware of. Reading some local comments earlier which were lamenting about the fact that this guy probably has served most of his 2 year sentence already was hard not to agree with.
I feel like at least this element about Sweden share some similarity with your description of your hometown, which is where I suppose must be where the school is that you are making your sexual abuse documentary about. Hmm.. So maybe there is something there. Or maybe there is just a common human flaw that seemingly keeps letting abuse take place all around the world regardless of culture or political parties. This wasn't supposed to be this long when I started and now I'm getting tired so I'll have to call it there and and watch the rest of the doc tomorrow.
I don't think we should have to choose between apparent Swedish naivete and US cruelty. My issue isn't that these men weren't punished more severely—as you know, I am against prison in general. My problem is that any plan for handling abuse has to be built around a realistic view of what's really happening, and for some reason the narrative here just seems incredibly sanitized and almost authored by the perpetrators themselves. It just strikes me as incredibly bizarre.
I do know. It just struck me as your vitriol towards the naivete was spilling over to when you were mentioning the short prison terms in the same breath. I feel like debating your video out of defensiveness I'm noticing, but I'm going to try to avoid doing that. And the more I find out about the case the more I agree that it is been handled terribly. In fact, I have listened to the trial today at work. Listening to that I was hard pressed to get a sense of the perpetrators having done "anything more" than filming kids in complete secret, and producing and sharing CP. Which from what I have gotten from the doc so far is not the full picture in any sense. Maybe strictly legally speaking, I don't know.
I do wonder though about how you are connecting specifically that naiveness about the perps drives behind their actions like sadism, will aid in preventing abuse like this? I am of the mind that just like with Nasser, there is a problem in general with peoples ability to understand the risks of child abuse and where it usually comes from, and of course the general appeal to norms and not believing children's negative feelings towards adults with authority. I have seen in counter to your video example of Nasser's interrogator also seen him being previously interrogated and talk his way out of it by throwing around his vague bullshit about special methods. Before the event that got him busted Nasser talked his way past parents, police and other people with concern for years and years, because there was a broken view of who can be or is more likely to be a potential child predator.
Going beyond that though and let's say they see the sadism and have understanding the deeper motivations behind his actions, this is a little more vague for me to understand why it would lead to heightened alertness and prevention. I can see how doing so can help with getting higher retribution or restitution, and of course there is the inherent value to understanding the truth, offenders and psychology. But If you fully know that any person could be a child abuser and what to look out for, you know this whether or not the abuser want to specifically cause harm or if it is a byproduct of them taking action to fulfill their sexual wants and are willing to let harm happen? But yeah it does seem like the victims here feel like justice haven't been fully achieved, and that sense is shared by the community. Which is probably in part due to the lack of authority properly understanding and addressing the abuse in it's entirety including the underlying motivations. That, and the fact that the school on the whole or at least it's most obviously neglectful members are not under proper criminal investigation.
Oh and lastly. The sanitization I was going to say is probably more of a doc thing. But to be honest I do not know, I need to look into this further and process it more. As for taking the perpetrators narrative, at least in terms of the trial this seemed potentially like a strategy. The guy taking the pictures sounds like.. bordering on retarded going by his speech patterns and inflection. And he is willing to answer any question by talking endlessly, including about the other guy. It seems to have been a way for them to get as much incriminating facts out and playing the two against each other, at least I hope that's the case.
Actually. "we don't usually hear from the perpetrators in the American version". I take it you mean directly in a documentary? And not from endless interviews and dramatized TV shows and movies and radio tapes and reenactments. I love Mindhunter as much as the next guy. But at least I thought that show is a fairly good representation of the real interviews with serial killers and what was interpreted from them at the time. Maybe their narratives are disregarded much more than I think it is but. Sure feels like we hear from them.
I feel if max had used a genie wish when he was a kid to know his audience a little better, known how to be a little less provocative and inflammatory, he could have been an extremely celebrated humanist or empathy figure known to the public. You always stand up when you see things that are wrong in very nuanced ways.
I think his amount of self sabotage is at least understandable. Consider what happened with Destiny, he can't help but be self aware about just how much he craves attention and validation. If the goal is to be a good person the stupidest thing he could do is assume he always is one and then project that outward. In other words, I'd take edgy outsider "MrGirl" over some "MrBeast" style demagogue any day. I appreciate how much needs to be sacrificed to maintain any real integrity, even if it's an overactive reflex sometimes.
I'm Danish, and it's also my impression that Swedish culture is very "proper".
They put a lot of emphasis on forgiveness and understanding, but can be blind to the harsh truths of the world, which is toxic to their society. Same reason why other Nordics stereotype Swedes as not caring about immigrant crimes - it's become a joke how afraid they are of looking racist.
Since it looks like the perpetrator had brown skin, it therefore makes sense that the documentary is very naive about his intentions. I have doubts that this is how it would be portrayed, had the person been a native swede.
reminds me of the danish movie “festen”. not quite swedish culture, but close. the downplaying of child abuse in favour of appearances is part of the theme iirc
Its a tribute, man. Quit being such a bigot. It's a show of dank, sweaty, frantic respect
I don't know if this is unique to Sweden but my impression from living here is that a lot of people are very concerned with looking enlightened and pure and it's cold and chilly sometimes and feels like nobody really cares about anybody else. And everybody is on ssri's. But I'll watch the documentary and see if I agree with what you said. It's also worth mentioning that IES is one of those evil for-profit school (friskola) so I suspect that stuff wouldn't have been allowed to fly for as long as it did if it were a regular municipal school that doesn't have as much of a financial motive to silence the victims. What I wanted to get across is that I'm not sure if this situation is representative of the whole Sweden, the category of what is considered rape is Sweden is so broad that Stockholm has become the rape capital of the world, women usually have a lot of recourse in any situation other than the specific stuff that was going on at this school, also only like 20% of schools are like IES. Sorry this is rambly and messy.
I think these attitudes are fairly common across the pond. I noticed France has a disturbingly lax attitude toward predatory behavior, but London is literally right across the English channel so it's not like it begins and ends there. Then you have the more high profile examples, with how intertwined people like Jimmy Saville and Epstein were with the royal family and such. We definitely have it bad in "high society" as well but Europe is straight up cooked, the regular population doesn't even seem to care. Our response might be half-baked and bloodthirsty, but at least there *is* a response.
I found this disorienting to watch because you're giving us your conclusions about the documentary while/before you show us the examples, and it's so condensed I don't really have any time to absorb the footage. I don't doubt it's as bad as you say, but the presentation is confusing. IMO this should be like 5-10 minutes longer where you give us a little more time to see what you're talking about
I believe in mrgirl, and if I believe in you I believe in me too.
I basically live by that school so this feels extremely close to home. I didn't love the video to be honest but that's I'm part due to my shame of knowing next to nothing about the case and have only followed it passively. Which makes me look like another Swede with their head in the sand. I figured I'd wait until the dust had settled but I'll have to admit to forcing myself to not think about it too hard I.
Luckily I don't know anyone who goes there but I know of parents who had considered the school for their kids and one of them are in my family so it is just by sheer luck that I'm not more personally affected by this.
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the documentary, and on the Swedish coverage of the case there compared to the coverage of a US case like Larry Nassar.
I am also interested hearing them, as I'm currently in the process of forming those thoughts. This sudden and harsh melding of my worlds have forced me to confront how on average little I consume and effectively care about local and even Swedish news and politics. Ironically I have been at that school once when they had set up voting booths for our 2022 election. In my (small) defense I think I moved to this city a year or two before this abuse started and know the school as far as I drive past it, and I do not like private schools, but that's enough of my non defense.
I have spontaneous thoughts about the differences however on how coverage in the countries differ in general which also applies to this story. Sensationalism is a word that immediately comes to mind, 24h news cycle with loaded language and Nasars name and face plastered everywhere on one end (you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong). And brief, clinical articles covering the topic in a dry and informational manner on the other. And I'm on the far end of that spectrum as well, mostly reading from our national public service company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sveriges_Television . In order to get the least amounts of editorializing, which may or may not be a good choice.
Some of your criticism ring true to me, although they feel somewhat unfair at the same time and I can't avoid feeling defensive. This is a HBO documentary that is covering a horrible series of events that were allowed to happen due to vast amounts of neglect and incompetency. You have critiques of the doc, the school, the news org, Swedish police and justice system, and finally wrap that up with our culture as a nice bow at the end. And for me those are individually valid, but zooming out so wide while using a documentary which you don't like that much as your lens to sum up a generalized critique on basically a whole country and their institutions makes it muddy. I'm also willing to speculate that finding family members of rape victims that are outraged and comparing them to one other case where a woman seem very unable to express her emotions about this somewhat different and non physically direct kind of sexual abuse is hard to take valuable conclusions from .
As for the rest, I am watching the doc as we speak and can come back to you on that part when I'm done. I did find it immediately funny when I realized I was watching one of the culprits supposedly stumbling upon the CP through a random popup ad though. (which btw the material has been officially deemed as CP by our courts of appeal which also will increase the payouts to the victims) And they added 4 months to the 2 year sentence, which...
Leads me to the justice system, and policewoman in the doc. While I do feel like the doc so far does lack the emotional weight and more importantly I understand that it doesn't underscore the severity of what's been done to these kids. I do not think that is a reflection of our culture from my perspective. Like I said about our news coverage, there is often a more matter of fact approach when conveying information, but this does not take away from our understanding of what is taking place. But yes seeing as this is a documentary and not a news story, I understand and think that I agree so far that the doc is not fully conveying the level of predation that has taken place or the true damage it causes the victims. Is our culture just like that? No, I do not think that. Even though yes there are truths to the stereotypes of naivety and overly nice Swedes. I think you could see that represented in our politicians during our migration issues 2014 migrant crisis where any establishment parties were not allowing for any real discussion of possible negative outcomes of taking on large amounts of migrants at a time, effectively only letting a then fringe far right party represent people who had issues with this which fast tracked them into power and is now part of our government.
That said, while I do think that you point out some things which can lead to abuse like this to take place more easily. This schools incompetency and actions do stand out. I view incompetency and willful blindness to discomforting allegations of wrongdoing as separate from a country's leniency on criminals, liberal leaning institutions, and a general sense of "wanting to be proper and to good". Even if they may cause overlap and things to fall trough the crack. I thought we were on the same page about prisons at least, that even if we have issues on the other end of criminals getting off to easy here sometimes, it is better to have even an imperfect system focused on reform and rehabilitation. Than a system based on torture and slavery? The lack of ability to see sexual sadism you notice (in the documentary), is the lack of the US ability to see the sadism of your prisons, and a more revenge based justice system. But yes I do also feel weird about this, and hoped that they did more of the rehabilitation part which currently I'm unaware of. Reading some local comments earlier which were lamenting about the fact that this guy probably has served most of his 2 year sentence already was hard not to agree with.
I feel like at least this element about Sweden share some similarity with your description of your hometown, which is where I suppose must be where the school is that you are making your sexual abuse documentary about. Hmm.. So maybe there is something there. Or maybe there is just a common human flaw that seemingly keeps letting abuse take place all around the world regardless of culture or political parties. This wasn't supposed to be this long when I started and now I'm getting tired so I'll have to call it there and and watch the rest of the doc tomorrow.
I don't think we should have to choose between apparent Swedish naivete and US cruelty. My issue isn't that these men weren't punished more severely—as you know, I am against prison in general. My problem is that any plan for handling abuse has to be built around a realistic view of what's really happening, and for some reason the narrative here just seems incredibly sanitized and almost authored by the perpetrators themselves. It just strikes me as incredibly bizarre.
I do know. It just struck me as your vitriol towards the naivete was spilling over to when you were mentioning the short prison terms in the same breath. I feel like debating your video out of defensiveness I'm noticing, but I'm going to try to avoid doing that. And the more I find out about the case the more I agree that it is been handled terribly. In fact, I have listened to the trial today at work. Listening to that I was hard pressed to get a sense of the perpetrators having done "anything more" than filming kids in complete secret, and producing and sharing CP. Which from what I have gotten from the doc so far is not the full picture in any sense. Maybe strictly legally speaking, I don't know.
I do wonder though about how you are connecting specifically that naiveness about the perps drives behind their actions like sadism, will aid in preventing abuse like this? I am of the mind that just like with Nasser, there is a problem in general with peoples ability to understand the risks of child abuse and where it usually comes from, and of course the general appeal to norms and not believing children's negative feelings towards adults with authority. I have seen in counter to your video example of Nasser's interrogator also seen him being previously interrogated and talk his way out of it by throwing around his vague bullshit about special methods. Before the event that got him busted Nasser talked his way past parents, police and other people with concern for years and years, because there was a broken view of who can be or is more likely to be a potential child predator.
Going beyond that though and let's say they see the sadism and have understanding the deeper motivations behind his actions, this is a little more vague for me to understand why it would lead to heightened alertness and prevention. I can see how doing so can help with getting higher retribution or restitution, and of course there is the inherent value to understanding the truth, offenders and psychology. But If you fully know that any person could be a child abuser and what to look out for, you know this whether or not the abuser want to specifically cause harm or if it is a byproduct of them taking action to fulfill their sexual wants and are willing to let harm happen? But yeah it does seem like the victims here feel like justice haven't been fully achieved, and that sense is shared by the community. Which is probably in part due to the lack of authority properly understanding and addressing the abuse in it's entirety including the underlying motivations. That, and the fact that the school on the whole or at least it's most obviously neglectful members are not under proper criminal investigation.
Oh and lastly. The sanitization I was going to say is probably more of a doc thing. But to be honest I do not know, I need to look into this further and process it more. As for taking the perpetrators narrative, at least in terms of the trial this seemed potentially like a strategy. The guy taking the pictures sounds like.. bordering on retarded going by his speech patterns and inflection. And he is willing to answer any question by talking endlessly, including about the other guy. It seems to have been a way for them to get as much incriminating facts out and playing the two against each other, at least I hope that's the case.
But now I have to do some BF6 and chill.
Actually. "we don't usually hear from the perpetrators in the American version". I take it you mean directly in a documentary? And not from endless interviews and dramatized TV shows and movies and radio tapes and reenactments. I love Mindhunter as much as the next guy. But at least I thought that show is a fairly good representation of the real interviews with serial killers and what was interpreted from them at the time. Maybe their narratives are disregarded much more than I think it is but. Sure feels like we hear from them.
Jesus
Yikes.
Remind me not to move to Sweeden.
I feel if max had used a genie wish when he was a kid to know his audience a little better, known how to be a little less provocative and inflammatory, he could have been an extremely celebrated humanist or empathy figure known to the public. You always stand up when you see things that are wrong in very nuanced ways.
I think his amount of self sabotage is at least understandable. Consider what happened with Destiny, he can't help but be self aware about just how much he craves attention and validation. If the goal is to be a good person the stupidest thing he could do is assume he always is one and then project that outward. In other words, I'd take edgy outsider "MrGirl" over some "MrBeast" style demagogue any day. I appreciate how much needs to be sacrificed to maintain any real integrity, even if it's an overactive reflex sometimes.
Based.
I'm Danish, and it's also my impression that Swedish culture is very "proper".
They put a lot of emphasis on forgiveness and understanding, but can be blind to the harsh truths of the world, which is toxic to their society. Same reason why other Nordics stereotype Swedes as not caring about immigrant crimes - it's become a joke how afraid they are of looking racist.
Since it looks like the perpetrator had brown skin, it therefore makes sense that the documentary is very naive about his intentions. I have doubts that this is how it would be portrayed, had the person been a native swede.