The “Swedish submarine incursions” of the 80s have been called the greatest deception operation of all times.
During the reign of US president Ronald Reagan soviet submarines were allegedly intruding hundreds of times into the Swedish archipelago, training for war – while Olof Palme was trying to negotiate a “common security strategy” with the Warsaw Pact.
Why the soviets should want to torpedo the detente-strategy of Olof Palme and Egon Bahr did not make any sense from a “cui bono” perspective, but the western media in general and the Swedish in particular nevertheless reported in unison and regularly about soviet intrusions for more than 10 years. Rarely investigative journalists raised questions about the veracity of the story, those who did were silenced by a stream of comments about their allegedly crackpot conspiracy theories and by professional and personal consequences.
Now the evidence is piling up those sighted submarines (hundreds) were US, British and italian submarines – probably all of them. Not a single case is left where evidence points to soviet subs. On the contrary, now all evidence points to western subs.
The greatest “deception operation ever” was all fake news, prepared by the CIA and a “deception operations committee” of the Reagan administration, it´s staged events and fake news were transmitted eagerly by the “quality media” for more than a decade.
If a reminder is needed how flimsy and dangerous the concept of “fact-checking fake news” by means of “reliable quality media” is, after the war-enabling Nayirah Kuwaiti incubator baby hoax in 1991 and the weapons of mass destruction hoax in Iraq 2003, the Swedish submarine deception should be taken into account as prime example.
It completely stalled Olof Palmes detente policy, which was in sharp contrast to Reagan´s confrontation strategy. The still unsolved murder of Olof Palme cannot be understood without the submarine deception.
Olof Palme was loved and hated in Sweden and the rest of the world. Like Dag Hammarskjöld he possessed in abundance what the superpowers lacked so dearly -integrity- and became target of machiavellian intelligence operations against him.
Probably both cases ended with political murder. In the case of Palme e.g. Michail Gorbachev is convinced the murder was not committed by a lone lunatic, but by people who “didn´t want a better world.”
Through a series of interviews with Swedish witnesses Dirk Pohlmann provides a deeper understanding what happened in Sweden at that time. The events have to be analyzed in perspective, especially since there were new sightings of submarines in Swedish waters, in 2014 and 2015, now allegedly Russian subs sent by Vladimir Putin – to frighten Sweden into the NATO.
The Swedish submarine crisis was not a regional event with regional effects, it was part of a struggle for world supremacy, a battle against the European social democracy and it´s then powerful vision for the future. It was a highly successful strategy for US world hegemony by deception and special operations. Because it was so enormously successful it is kept secret and became a model for similar operations, e.g. in Libya, Ukraine and Syria – and will be used ever more until it´s effectiveness is hampered by widespread recognition
In this interview with KenFM host Dirk Pohlmann Ola Frithiofson talks about a past in which social democratic ideas were formative for politics – worldwide. The concepts of “Détente” and “Change through Rapprochement” dominated discussions in progressive political circles, while the “Swedish Model” with high taxation and superb, corruption-free services for it´s citizens was a household name for those who loved it – or hated it. Olof Palmes Sweden had started to prove a third way between capitalism and communism was possible.
In the era from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump talking about Swedens past is also providing an outlook, what social democrats from Sweden, Austria, Germany, Great Britain and the USA (Bernie Sanders!) should evaluate. The only way out of the current desperation is probably to track “Back to the Future”.
Ola Frithiofson, in his own words, “has always been a social democrat and will always be”. But what he calls social democracy is not the streamlined, neoliberal version of the British “new labour” or the German SPD, but the ideas of Olof Palme, Egon Bahr and Willy Brandt. In this interview Ola Frithiofson does not weasel away from tough questions and issues as it is so common with current career politicians.
Frithiofson has worked for several Swedish social democratic governments in various positions. In the early 80s he was the foreign affairs secretary of the Swedish social democratic youth organization. He established contact to Solidarnosc and the dissidents in Poland and reported to Olof Palme about it. Olof Palme´s name meant a peaceful, rational way towards a socialism which deserves it´s name, also to the Polish population. The Swedish prime minister had an excellent reputation in the dissident circles of the Warsaw Pact.
Frithiofson´s father was undersecretary of defense and had firsthand knowledge about the submarine incursions. He told his two sons already in the 80s the submarines were western, not soviet.
The Palme murder, which both Frithiofson and Pohlmann consider a political murder with probable deep state planning and execution, it´s causes and effects are always present as a historical background in this interview.
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