On mob rule, female rage, and the death of a Swedish star

I sang at a friend’s wedding a few years ago. The song was a Swedish classic, the main singer of which, Josefin Nilsson, died in 2016 after years of pain, anxiety, health complications and surgery following a violently abusive relationship back in the ‘90s – I just didn’t know that at the time.

Last week, to coincide with what should’ve been the singer’s 50^th birthday, a documentary produced by the Swedish national broadcaster SVT was released. In it, her sister, best friend and band mate, along with a number of other illustrious Swedish musicians and actors, talk about her, her life and the fears the struggled with. The abuse she suffered is covered in detail, but the man who abused her – a famous Swedish actor – remains unnamed.

A couple of days after the documentary went online, a candle-lit vigil was held outside Dramaten, Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre, the state-funded place of work of the unnamed abuser, in memory of Josefin and in protest of her abuser’s continued employment at the theatre.

And soon enough, it was dubbed a lynch mob.

As a Swede abroad, initially without access to the documentary, I mostly followed the unravelling of all this through Instagram and the accounts of various more-or-less established feminist voices. And yes – they were angry. They were furious after watching the documentary and realising what Josefin had been through, knowing that her abuser had been convicted of assault, breach of restraining order and more – but released on probation. Their fury took many different expressions: some shared their own experiences of domestic abuse; others took it upon themselves to share, anonymously, the stories of those still too afraid to speak out; some wrote blog posts and opinion pieces, sharing statistics and calling for stricter sentencing; others complained to the theatre.

Some named the abuser – and thus came the verdict: lynch mob.

What does ‘lynch mob’ mean? ‘A lynch mob is an angry crowd of people who want to kill someone without a trial, because they believe that person has committed a crime,’ goes one definition. And sure enough, these people knew the famous actor had committed a crime – but no one was trying to kill him. ‘You can refer to a group of people as a lynch mob if they are very angry with someone because they believe that person has done something bad or wrong,’ goes another definition, and at this point, it starts to make sense. You can bet your life these people were very angry, and you can bet they thought he’d done something wrong. It’s no secret that he’d thrown Josefin into a wall with such force that the wall collapsed, and that he’d threatened to kill her, kicked her so badly that her spine started to rot and she required repeated surgery.

So that’s what a lynch mob is now: peaceful, justified anger?

Or perhaps the expression was merely used to invalidate the anger, to shut down the criticism and restore the peace?

***

I’ve been thinking a lot about rage lately. I carry it around – sometimes simmering and undefined, other times clear and, to me, entirely sensible. For many women, this rage has had a natural outlet in recent years thanks to the global #metoo movement, the abortion rights movement here in Ireland, and a number of other movements and platforms for feminist mobilisation and organising – but justified though that rage may seem, we are continuously told that we should tone it down. We’re coming across as just a bit hysterical.

Mind you, no one’s telling the famous, Swedish actor to calm down. He’s served his sentence. Moreover, he’s a respected artist.

Swedish feminist author and doctor of economics Nina Åkestam spoke about anger in a podcast interview I listened to recently, where she discussed the various ‘traps’ she thinks feminists tend to keep falling into these days, as presented in her recent book Feministfällan (‘The Feminist Trap’). In looking at what she defines as ‘the emotional trap’, she argues that while it’s understandable and natural to be angry, acting out the anger won’t get us anywhere – and feminism is nothing if we can’t successfully affect change. In conversation with sceptics, she explains, acting outraged about their ignorance is not exactly going to get them to let their guard down; you need to listen to people if you want them to listen to you, and you need to ask intelligent but kind questions if you really want them to start asking some questions for themselves.

There’s very little arguing with her logic here; I’ve yet to shout someone into identifying as a feminist. And still, a part of me wonders what kind of equality we’ll end up with if the methods that take us there require us to play by the rules of a system that insists on viewing us as two-dimensional characters to be managed and controlled, as people the real feelings of whom are scary and offensive. All around us, we see womanhood defined by caring kindness and soft selflessness, while men are depicted as hard, cold and, indeed, sometimes angry.

But isn’t rage a fundamentally feminine disposition in our modern, patriarchal world? I look at my friends, women past their mid-30s, trying to contain themselves as these progressively stubborn waves of frustration and ire arise inside. For most, it seems, this is increasingly what being a woman feels like: a negotiation with fury in a world that deifies the notion of the rational man. But rage as enveloped in womanhood isn’t aggressive or dangerous: we’re naming abusers and building human walls, not breaking people’s spines. This anger is dynamic and productive – not controlling, manipulative and murderous. ‘Lynch mob’ not only gets it wrong; it fundamentally underestimates it.

***

‘Why didn’t she leave him?’, we often hear in response to stories of domestic violence. ‘Why didn’t she just walk away?’

Of course, Josefin did walk away. She even dragged him through court – but she died anyway. It wasn’t his fists that became the final straw, but her pain and suffering started with him. The loss of her hair and her confidence, the morphine and confusion, the physical injuries and relentless fear – she never escaped them after his work was done. As for the actor, he was put centre stage at the country’s national theatre, celebrated as a gifted artist – complex and unpredictable, sure, but isn’t that what male artists are like?

Those who talk about a lynch mob say that we live in a democracy, and we are nothing unless we trust that democracy. By naming this abuser, they say, we cross that line into mob rule, a situation where no one is safe. He has served his sentence, they say – except of course in the end he didn’t.

I wonder what they think democracy means. I wonder how they think of the rule of law. If 20% of women are abused in their home by a partner at some point in their lifetime, and there is less than a 1% chance that the perpetrator is convicted – are we to sit and cry nicely in silence? And if public funds put abusers on stage, if we must be quiet to protect their future lives and careers, can the judicial system really claim to be just at all?

If we are serious about ending men’s violence against women, we have to stop pretending that the form of abuse he subjected her to can be brushed under the rug as a number of drunken mishaps. We have to stop getting hung up on the details of just how directly or indirectly the abuse contributed to her death, and we have to stop pretending that Josefin’s experience was one of a democratic society with a fair judicial system. It is true that his name is irrelevant. He is just one of many men, and he shouldn’t be in the spotlight here – but that’s exactly the point: he is, on Sweden’s much cherished national stage for theatre. Structuralist analysis in all its glory; if it’s so blind to individuals that you can all but murder a woman and still remain a national treasure, it is pointless.

They keep asking why she didn’t leave him. But where was she supposed to go? Into the arms of a society that cherished and protected him? Perhaps it’s time we start asking why we, as a society, don’t leave. Perhaps it’s time we start to turn our backs on abusers, kick them out of our offices, stop inviting them to our parties, tell them our theatres are not for them, and walk away.