The Moderate Truth
The silence in the storm. by Andreas Bergstedt
Foreword and Disclaimer:
For the record, this article is my own personal opinion and does not reflect the opinion of my past present of future employers.
I base this article solely on my own observations, opinions and to some extent social research, this article has not been peer reviewed and unless otherwise referenced all quotes should be treated as hearsay.
Before we move on to the main content of this article I would like to just give a brief history of who I am and where I am from as this will give a bit of clarity for you the reader on who I am.
About me:
My name is Andreas Bergstedt I was born in 1976 and at the time of writing this I am 44 years old, I am the youngest of three kids born in Sweden, politically my mom was a social democrat and my father a conservative moderate, me and my siblings grew up in a middle-class household with what I would consider a safe childhood in the safe suburban neighborhoods of the city of Sigtuna, I had predominantly white friends but was always surrounded by a multicultural class mates.
My parents divorced when I was 13 years old and we moved into council housing 1st provided by the church and later by the municipal housing association.
After I finished junior high school I decided to pursue a future in technology and manged to get into a high school engineering program, after working in a computer store for 12 months I spent a year in collage attaining a diploma in PC-Coordination and a certificate for the “prestigious” Swedish Gymnasium Engineer qualification.
I then served 10 months in the army and at the ripe age of 21 I moved to South Africa in August 1998 after meeting my wife online.
Over the next 17 years I got married, became a father to two boys and grew my career in the IT sector.
In 2015 my family and I moved to the UK to escape the demise of the middleclass in South Africa and to ensure a better future for our two young boys.
Understanding the forces at play:
I remember the exact moment when I became aware of the mindset of an oppressor and what a corrupt government actually did to maintain its power, It was in May 2012 and I was working late at the Dimension Data campus in Bryanston, I walked into one of the communal kitchens in the office to get my next cup of coffee.
As I walk in, I overhear two gentlemen discussing the Brett Murray satire painting “The Spear” of the then President Jacob Zuma, I didn’t know the two gentlemen but couldn’t help but overhearing their angry discussion of how disrespectful the painting was of their president.
At this point I opened my mouth and said “Come on, it is just satire”, I was met with a whiplash reaction from the two gentlemen, that instantly judged me by my appearance, to them I looked like the white South African male, born into privilege, benefactor of apartheid and by the death stares that I was given surely not worthy of being in the same room as them.
When I saw there reaction I figured that I needed to break the tension by making them understand that I was not being unsensitive and as they started to ask me how I could even say that when I was a benefactor of the apartheid system I cut them off explaining that I am Swedish and that the only thing I knew about South Africa before August 1998 was my Primary school teacher’s music classes about the Khosa click and Miriam Makeba as well as a faint memory about the 76 riots that I saw on Swedish television in the 80’s.
The conversation carried on for a good 20 minutes and at one point after a long debate and discussion about progress, the struggle and the fact that one of the gentlemen was an actual family friend of Jacob Zuma I decided to make the message of unity and solidary really clear and I took the gentleman’s hand and I said “walk with me”, and we took a few steps in the kitchen and as we stopped I turned to him and I said, “I wish that we could all just learn to walk together, this way we could move forward and progress in life.” At that point the gentleman looked at me and smiled and he said, “That is a very noble idea, but it will never work, you see there is no money in progress, there is only money in keeping the oppressed oppressed.”
That day in May 2012 I figured out that no good could come from a revolutionary movement that had outlived the revolution.
The pot and the frog:
Years passed and after the move to the UK I started taking an interest in political developments, In South Africa the rise in Marxist “revolutionary” Ideology was on the rise, in the UK, Europe and the USA Nationalism was on the rise with the likes of Brexit, Free Catalonia, Trump and more, I remember having a conversation on a political website in 2016 where this young European liberal was concerned about the rise of the far right in Europe and how this could destroy European freedoms and her way of life, I remember saying “I have seen Europe overcoming and surviving many atrocities from the fall of the berlin wall, to the conflict in Kosovo, and she always rise up stronger”, I got a friendly “I hope your right” response to that statement.
Sitting here years later I can only say this, I was completely blind to what was going on behind the scenes.
You see I had ignored the change in technology and platforms that was enabling voices that had never before been heard.
The rise of the warrior:
As Brexit was cemented in and Donald Trump won the USA election in 2016 the world was starting to look like a really bad circus. It looked like right wing nationalism was going to win, as geopolitical tension around the world started to reach the boiling point.
Then in August 2018 something happened, a young Swedish girl in junior high decided that she should convince her schoolmates to bunk school and protest outside the parliament building in Stockholm for climate change, this is the when the internet and particularly twitter became the megaphone of the Social Justice Warrior(SJW), a platform that enabled anyone to name and shame anyone that disagreed or had a different opinion in 140 characters or less(280 now). I remember being added to a few twitter lists in August 2018 after commenting on a Greta Thunberg post that one should not wildly protest bunking school, but rather organise a formal protest and not waste tax payers money, this was clearly the work of AI and Machine learning Bot’s as I got added to lists like “HumanScum”, “NatziApologist” and a few other that bared the same character associations.
In 2019 as I was working in London I remember the inconvenience of dealing with the raging Climate protests, and whilst taking the bus over Waterloo bridge I remember spotting the LGBTQ+ and Vegan graffiti that was sprayed on the concrete barriers and thinking “What does LGBTQ+ and Vegan activists have to do with Climate change?” and it dawned on me everyone needs a platform to scream from.
Now in 2021 it is obviously clear that the right wing and left wing politics of the last 6 years have given birth two SJW camps, one is hiding behind phrases like “Facts don’t care about your feelings” and the other “Check your white/male privilege”, both of these are equally disturbing and vile, and both of them believe that they are right, when we look at them in detail we can clearly see that there is money attached to them, just look at You tube channels like StevenCrowder and see how his production quality has gone from “two man garage project” to “professional production studio” quality, or the youtube channel Feminist Frequency that virtually display the same traits.
With the ever growing access to platforms on the internet that is available to the general public, people start expressing their opinions more and more, and if someone feels marginalized they tend to start seeking out content that speaks to them, this has become big business and is now a full time career for many bringing in more than enough money to support a living.
It is at this point I would like to draw your attention back to the previous section about the conversation in May 2012 especially the part about there is no money in moving forward….,
The moderate truth:
To come clean about how I, a white cis-male in his 40’s self identify on the political spectrum I would say that I am a centre moderate, I believe in universal freedoms of all humans and that everyone has the right to security, education, freedom of speech and the right to an education and the right to earn a living, I believe in fiscal and social security and in short I believe in humanity.
I believe that there is value in all walks of life and that there is good in all social and political spectrums as long as there is a moderate balance.
This view has been both good and bad for me, for instance, on the positive it has enabled me to have open and honest conversations about controversial topics without getting trapped in an echo chamber, it has enabled me to make friends and form meaningful relationships that span culture, religion, race, social and political boundaries.
On the bad side it has broken friendships and relationships, it has slowed career advances and in general it is frustrating as hell to be logical in a world driven by irrational and manipulative political biases.
What Now:
To conclude this opinion piece I would like to think that in the next 3 to 5 years the world at large will stabilise and hopefully self-regulate as we come to grips with the pandemic and with the recent shift in geopolitics that seem to be more inclusive and cooperative, but then again I have been wrong before about this.