Hanif Bali is a Swedish-Iranian-Kurdish Twitter troll of some standing, a kind of lite version of notorious British controversialist Milo. Bali is also, somewhat curiously, a Member of Parliament for the "Moderates", the Swedish Conservative Party. On Twitter, Bali attacks mass immigration and is often regarded as closer to the nationalist Sweden Democrats than to the Conservatives. That Bali is a refugee himself makes his constant attacks on immigration extra piquant. Swedish media, and sometimes the Conservative party leadership, aren´t amused, with Bali constantly playing the role of the enfant terrible after some particularly egregious tweet. In 2021, Bali was implicated in a grooming scandal, but cleared of the charges by a prosecutor. Even some of his opponents (yes, I´m referring to perennial leftist gadfly and controversialist Jan Guillou) believe it was a frame.
Recently, Bali published a kind of autobiography, "Mina nio liv" (My nine lives), co-written by Jens Ganman. I don´t usually read autobiographies, but I made an exception in this case for two reasons. First, I was surprised that Bali´s book was distributed through "official" channels (read: regular book stores). I wondered if this was some kind of paradigm shift? At the very least, it was a harbinger: only months after the book was published, the Swedish Overton window decisively shifted "right" on immigration, with the Conservatives and Christian Democrats now sounding a bit like Bali did years ago, while the Sweden Democrats sound even more extreme! Second, the book supposedly contained information on the Iranian resistance movement PMOI (a.k.a. MEK). Since I encountered them several times (usually at a distance), this sounded interesting.
"Mina nio liv" is quite interesting, Hanif Bali definitely having an unusual background. To make a long history much shorter, Bali´s parents were members of the People´s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), a Shia Muslim-Marxist hybrid group which briefly enjoyed widespread support after the Iranian revolution of 1979. After conflicts with Khomeini, PMOI were suppressed by the regime and then made the mistake of siding with Saddam Hussein´s Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. Judging by Bali´s account, Mojahedin was a bizarre religio-political cult, with children separated from their parents at an early age, and then fostered out to other cult members. This is how Bali ended up in Sweden, where the gullible social services fostered him out to supposed "relatives" who were really PMOI members. If I recall correctly, Bali had eight (!) foster families during his childhood, only one of which was Swedish (and non-political), and when PMOI realized that he was becoming too assimilated, they immidiately made the social services foster him out again to an Iranian (PMOI) family?! Bali claims that the Mujahedins also controlled an orphanage, and that some of the children there later became child soldiers in PMOI´s war with the Iranian regime...
Perhaps it wasn´t too surprising that Bali rebelled against all this, and tried to assimilate into Swedish society and a kind of global pop culture. He still self-identifies as a gamer! Apart from gaming, "Lord of the Rings" (the actual novels) fascinated him, but also pre-Muslim Iranian history (he even sees some parallels between Tolkien´s Middle Earth and ancient Persia). Politically, Bali became an extreme libertarian and joined MUF, the youth organization of the Moderates or Conservatives. He must have been something of the odd man out in the MUF crowd, being an immigrant kid from "da hood" with an attitude (but also a strong interest in rhetoric and "normal" politics). To make a long history somewhat shorter again, Bali eventually managed to get on the Conservative Party ballot and became an elected Member of Parliament. The contrast between his crazy tweets and the day-to-day boredom of various parliamentary committees must be palpable.
But what about his politics? Perhaps Bali decided to strike a more reasonable pose in "Mina nio liv", or perhaps it´s the above-mentioned paradigm shift, but the author doesn´t come across as *that* extreme. Essentially, he is an assimilationist, but the assimilation isn´t really into "ethnic Swedish culture", but into a libertarian or neo-liberal version of generally "Western" values. Individualism and nuclear families rather than clans or ethno-obsessions, hard work and start-your-own-business rather than welfare and/or crime gangs, freedom of speech rather than authoritarian regimes (or woke speech codes), Bali sounds more cosmopolitan and globalist than "Swedish" sensu stricto. Even when discussing Iran, the cosmopolitan attitude shines through: to the author, Persians, Kurds, Azeris and the other ethnic groups in that country are at bottom "Iranians". My impression is that Bali opposes mass immigration mostly because he doesn´t believe that Third World immigrants assimilate very well into this Occidental libertarian pop culture. But what if they would? Or would to a higher degree than today? Would Bali *then* be for increased immigration?
I was surprised to read his visions or predictions for the year 2050. It sounds almost as if Bali has given up on actually changing anything. The segregated immigrant ghettoes will become larger and stronger, but since cosmopolitan-Swedish society will also remain, there will be plenty of room for those who are willing to work and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. (At least if the Conservatives can get into government!) It´s as if Bali wants a strategy of containment and indifference towards "Orten" (the Swedish slang word for immigrant-dominated neighborhoods). This sounds naïve at best. What if the Overton window shifts even more? The Sweden Democrats are already explicitly proposing "re-migration" of Somalis and Afghans. An anti-racist might call it ethnic cleansing. What if Swedes grow so tired of "Orten" that they want to make Sweden great again? Or at least ethnically pure. And how do you contain poor immigrant "hoods" *without* offering them welfare benefits (or government-created jobs)? Bali doesn´t seem to be calling for military occupation, after all...
Less surprising, given the libertarian inclinations of the author, is that he absolutely doesn´t factor in climate change in his predictions. Sweden and the world in 2050 looks pretty much like Sweden and the world today (pre-pandemic/pre-crisis). Telecom, AI, nuclear power and even rising Chinese hegemony are all part of the picture. So is the web and alternative media (although you probably have to pay for it). Greta Thunberg is only mentioned once, as an example of yet another absurd activist. Here, I must say that Hanif Bali have been overturned by another paradigm shift, the one we´ve all been experiencing since 2020. It´s called "the long decline of modern civilization"..
This Twitter troll is a moderate at heart.
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