Heligt krig mot förvillelsen och tidningsterrorismen
Bernhard von Beskow och kritiken mot pressen
Holy war against the aberration and the newspaper terrorismHeligt krig mot förvillelsen och tidningsterrorismen This paper explores Bernhard von Beskow?s (1796-1868) conservative critique of the, for the early 19th century, new dominating voice in public matters namely the liberal press. There are competing narratives about the emerging liberal press and its critics. On the one hand the conservative critics were seen as hopeless reactionaries which acted against freedom of the press, themselves stripped of positive ideals and/or handled with little interest as footnotes in the great story of the liberal victory over its opponents. On the other hand this story has been questioned and an alternative has been presented of how to understand the conservatives and their critique of the press. This other story suggests that the critique was merely a critique of the new type of biased publicists that the liberal press brought about. The older form of newspapers, supposedly defended by the conservatives, were more of organs for the readers and their conversations amongst each other. The readers would send in whatever they had to say and the editor?s duty was to print it. The new type of newspapers, however, spoke in its own name for the people, it wasn?t longer a conversation from person to person. This paper doesn?t fully agree with any of the stories. Instead the paper shows how the conservative von Beskow had positive ideals, that he wasn?t against the freedom of the press as such, and that the conservative strain in von Beskow?s critique was not his will to preserve an older type of press. It was instead his opinion that the liberal press had an abstract understanding of politics and therefore wasn?t rooted in concrete political work, making it nonsense. Therefore the critique was mainly directed against a new and potentially destructive force of the political life of Sweden.