Jan Myrdal

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Jan Myrdal (2007)

Jan Myrdal ( pronunciation : [ ˌ ʝɑːn ˈmyːɖɑːl ], born July 19, 1927 in Stockholm ; † October 30, 2020 in Varberg ) was a Swedish writer .

Life

Myrdal was the son of the economist Gunnar Myrdal and his wife, the sociologist Alva Myrdal . Sissela Bok and Kaj Fölster are his two sisters.

In 1946, Myrdal described the self-discovery and development of an adolescent into an adult in his novel Pub Rated . On the one hand, because of its style, but also to avoid harming his parents, this manuscript was only published in 1988.

From the spring of 1961, Myrdal traveled to the People's Republic of China for a year and in his reports showed his solidarity with Mao Zedong and his politics. From 1968 to 1973 he was chairman of the Swedish-Chinese Association or the Swedish-Chinese Friendship Society and was also involved in the late 1960s against the Vietnam War .

From 1963 to 1966 Myrdal was a major contributor to the features section of the liberal newspaper Stockholms-Tidningen with regular columns . He achieved great fame with his books about countries he traveled to, but also made many enemies through his political statements. Myrdal always took the side of the "common people" in his self- image and criticized Eurocentrism .

He also appeared as the editor of works by his favorite authors August Strindberg , Jean-Paul Sartre , Denis Diderot and Honoré de Balzac . 1980 awarded him Upsala College, NJ , the honorary doctorate .

Myrdal's literary and cultural work is the subject of the activities of the Jan Myrdal Society (Swedish: Jan Myrdalsällskapet ) based in Varberg , Sweden .

Jan Myrdal was married to the architect Nadja Wiking from 1948 to 1952, with whom he had a son. From 1952 to 1956 he was married to the sociologist Maj Lidberg, with whom he had a daughter. The third marriage followed from 1963 with the photographer, artist and author Gun Kessle until her death in 2007. From 2008 until the divorce in 2018 he was married to the translator Andrea Gaytán Vega.

Controversy over Myrdal's defense and downplaying of human rights violations

In 1996, Myrdal caused a sensation worldwide when he found the fatwa against Salman Rushdie to be formally legally correct. He found the massacre of June 4, 1989 on Tian'anmen Square to be “right” under the circumstances at the time. This hiring resulted in an unsuccessful request to expel Myrdal from the Swedish PEN . He also said elsewhere that the Taliban's government in Afghanistan had been the best in decades. Myrdal also defended the Pol Pot government's actions in Cambodia and interviewed him for Swedish television.

Myrdal defended the Chinese cultural revolution and praised it as “a great and beautiful time” in which life was “new and fresh again”, but at the same time admitted “personal accounts and injustices”. The two Chinese interpreters who had looked after him during his trip were also criticized for this during the Cultural Revolution. He praised Mao Zedong, whom he also met personally, as the "creator of something new" and denied the "officially established truth" about him after his death in China.

Myrdal also praised Enver Hoxha , the long-time chairman of the Labor Party of Albania , for the policy of "social revolution, economic progress and general enlightenment" that he carried out.

Myrdal was accused of denying the Holocaust . He rejected this, for his part endorsed the death sentences against war criminals and criticized the fact that several participants such as Hans Globke remained unmolested after the Second World War . Speaking to the newspaper Al-Intiqad , he condemned the treatment of Jews in post-war Europe , which in his opinion was based on latent anti-Semitism, and said that they had been deported to the Palestinian mandate and thus "misused as tools to open Palestine to mass immigration" ("used as tools to open Palestine for mass immigration ”). The interview was published on the Radio Islam website , which in turn is considered anti-Semitic and radical Islamic . Within this debate, however, he also referred to Japanese war crimes in China and human rights violations by British colonial troops . Myrdal also stood up for the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson and cooperated with the right-wing Swedish newspaper Nya Tider . He took a critical stance on Israel's policy and accused the country's government of wanting to take over all Jews, which gave the impression that they were generally supporters of Israeli politics.

With regard to Iran, Myrdal pointed out that the country's government is elected by the people and that women make up the majority of university graduates. The country thus differs from the states allied with the USA in the region.

Works (selection)

  • Way of the Cross of Cultures (1960, Kulturers korsväg)
  • Report from a Chinese village (1963, Report från kinesisk by)
  • Turkmenistan (1966)
  • Confessions of a Disloyal European (1968, Confessions of a Disloyal European)
  • Art and imperialism using Angkor as an example: an essay (1968, Ansigte av sten)
  • China. The revolution continues (1970, Kina. Revolutionen går vidare)
  • The Albanian Challenge (1970, Albansk utmaning)
  • The Unnecessary Present , Eight Conversations on the Future of History (1974, Den Onödiga Samtiden, with Lars Gustafsson )
  • Career , novel (1975, career)
  • China according to Mao Tsetung and the third report from a Chinese village (1976: Kinesiska frågor från Liu Ling, 1977: Kina efter Mao Tsetung)
  • India breaks up (1980, India väntar)
  • Balzac and Realism (1981, Strindberg och Balzac)
  • Childhood in Sweden (1982, Barndom)
  • The thirteenth year (1983, Den trettonde)
  • Another world (1984, En annan värld)
  • Word and Intention (1986, Ord och avsikt)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d Lena Einhorn : Jan Myrdal - author and provocateur: Documentary. Lena Einhorn Film for Sveriges Television; 57 min. In: lenaeinhorn.se. Retrieved September 7, 2013 .
  2. a b Rolf Soderlind: Writer Jan Myrdal - too radical even for Sweden. In: upi.com . December 11, 1987, accessed September 9, 2020 .
  3. a b c d Per Gudmundson: 80 år att minnas. In: Svenska Dagbladet . July 19, 2007, accessed September 9, 2020 (Swedish).
  4. Peter Fröberg Idling: Pol Pot's smile. A Swedish trip through the Khmer Rouge Cambodia . Book Guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-7632-6579-4 .
  5. Joscha Schmierer : Two books about the Khmer Rouge: Indescribable brutality, amazing incompetence. In: FAZ.net . July 1, 2013, accessed October 31, 2020 .
  6. Jürgen Horlemann , Erwin Steinhauer (Ed.): Kampuchea 1979: Liberation or Aggression? (= October paperbacks; 2). Rote Fahne Verlag, Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-8106-0079-2 , p. 172.
  7. ^ Foreword to: Jan Myrdal: Liu Lin 1962–1982: Reports from a Chinese Village , Volume 1. Verlag Neuer Weg, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-88021-137-X , p. XII.
  8. ^ Foreword to: Jan Myrdal: Liu Lin 1962–1982: Reports from a Chinese Village , Volume 1. Verlag Neuer Weg, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-88021-137-X , p. IX.
  9. ^ Jan Myrdal: Liu Lin 1962–1982: Reports from a Chinese Village , Volume 2. Verlag Neuer Weg, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-88021-145-0 , p. 301.
  10. a b Jan Myrdal: Jag ifrågasätter inte folkmordet på judar. In: Expressen . May 16, 2017, accessed on August 31, 2020 (Swedish, Myrdal's statement on the allegation that he was relativizing the Holocaust).
  11. "Al-Intiqad" interviews the Swedish intellectual and writer Jan Myrdal. In: Radio Islam . February 3, 2006, accessed August 31, 2020 .
  12. Werner Bergmann , Juliane Wetzel : Manifestations of anti-Semitism in the European Union. First semester 2002: Synthesis Report on behalf of the EUMC European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia. (pdf; 2.2 MB) In: jugendpolitikineuropa.de. February 20, 2003, accessed September 1, 2020 .
  13. Margareta Zetterström: Myrdal passar i Nya Tider. In: Aftonbladet . October 24, 2016, accessed August 31, 2020 (Swedish).
  14. ^ Jan Myrdal: Om Israel och antisemitism. In: janmyrdalsallskapet.se. June 6, 2010, accessed August 31, 2020 (Swedish).