The
New Totalitarians
By Roland Huntford
In 1971, Roland Huntford, the Stockholm correspondent of The Observer,
published his book The New Totalitarians. It is a book based on his long
experience of Sweden and its systems, and he analyzes the Swedish system of
ideas in comparison with the Soviet Union, George Orwell's "1984" and
Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World".
The New Totalitarians is a scathing indictment of the Swedish welfare
state that interpreted it as the embodiment of the dystopian society Aldous
Huxley had envisaged in Brave New World forty years earlier. Huntford's
disturbing portrait of contemporary Sweden, in which he described the alleged
sacrificing of individual freedom on the altar of social security, was
published in both London and New York. It alarmed numerous reviewers and caused
intense resentment and heated debate in the Swedish press and government.
Indeed, partly out of fear that Huntford's critique could damage Sweden's
reputation overseas, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs conducted research into
the reactions of citizens whom he had quoted, an administrative exercise
intended to undermine the credibility of his book.
A Swedish version with the title "The blind Sweden", (Det
blinda Sverige) translated by Åke Ohlmarks, was published by Tema in 1972.
There are also versions in Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, German, French and
Portuguese, so one certainly can say that Huntford's accounts received very
considerable attention around the world.
· Publisher: Allen Lane (1971)
· Language: English
· ISBN-10: 0713902604
· ISBN-13:
978-0713902600