Malin Ullgren: The death operation of the new right scares the most

Once again Stefan Zweig rises in Gubbängen and warns us with his violent sadness: « Against my will, I have witnessed the worst defeat of reason and the wildest triumph of brutality in historical contemporary. »

Moment Theater has had a new premiere for the stage performance « The World of yesterday », after Zweig’s memoirs from 1942. And during the more than a year that has passed since the premiere, the loss of a world order appears in even greater sharpness.

So far, few Europeans from the bourgeoisie have experienced the same hell as Stefan Zweig’s two world war and escape from anti -Semitism. But the realization that the rules are rewritten every day is there. Should the United States attack Greenland, Canada? Should the right -wing parties receive so much support from Russia and the United States that Europe once again destroy itself? Yes, everything is on the list of realistic horrors.

Moments performance has rightly been praised, so well played and dialogic. Director Andreas Boonstra has wanted to avoid the temptation to make a 2020s translation, to mix his own language and contemporary markers. The more creepy the feeling of strong identification becomes. From feeling pretty confident about what the world looks like to realize that it belongs to yesterday. It is pure and staggering separation anxiety, no matter how defective the old was.

Even more scary is that the political movements that have momentum now, which stand for change, do not want people well.

In « The World of yesterday », Zweig is trying the idea that last century security became the soil for a desire for violence that led to the First World War, then to fascism and Nazism. Inspired by his friend Sigmund Freud, he sees the death operation as part of the political reaction.

That’s what makes me most scared today – the knowledge that the new one comes with such a strong longing for The darkness. More racism, more promotion of sexual « other », more nationalism.

Progressive answers from left, promises, direction, community are needed. Something that makes it bright … sexy?

The thing is that the destructive power is so good at whipping up mass movements, promising that old times will be restored and at the same time waving promises of something new and messianic.

The philosopher and Author Anna-Karin Selberg summarizes the paradox In the movement that now affects the world at large and the US administration in particular, « Dark Enlightenment »: « In its revolutionary form, conservatism is thus not always about going back to a traditional way of living. It is rather an experiment where the past and the future meet » (Expressen, 2/4 2025).

This strong desire for aggression can also not only be answered with an appeal for reason. The death operation does not get its outlet through any kind of general -liberal financial will for status quo.

Progressive answers from left, promises, direction, community are needed. Something that makes it bright … sexy?

In the performance on steps Speaks Stefan Zweig, played by Anders Berg, about the historical turning points one does not perceive in the moment; Zweig barely remembers when he first heard of Hitler, only that he was met with contempt from those who had power in the 1920s.

It must also, I think, apply to the glimpses of light, or when the light is trampled down by the powerful.

« Today, a Swedish MP from the Swedish Democrats can provocatively pull their roller bag over a banner for climate justice as a group of young activists sitting outside the parliament building, » wrote DN’s Björn Wiman Speaking of Moments performance A year ago (DN 8/4 2024).

Then it looked like the power -drunk right -wing establishment’s victory over a young and vital movement. At best, in the future we can remember it as a laughable underestimation of a new force that wanted to make the world better.

The « world of yesterday » will be played until 30 May.

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