Word: westman
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Westman Law. Three days before last Christmas, Sweden's new conservative Cabinet set up a committee for the pur pose of "devising appropriate measures to prevent misuse of press freedom." Minister of Justice Karl Gustaf Westman (already feared in Sweden because of his Nazi leanings) dug up an obsolete press law providing for criminal action against editors who publish "offensive writings" about a foreign State...
First editor indicted under Westman's forgotten law was a notable Swedish Socialist, journalist, poet: Senator Ture Nerman. In his weekly Trots Allt, after the bombing of Hitler's beer hall in Munich, he wrote an editorial on "Hitler's Hell Machine." Senator Nerman was found guilty, sentenced to three months in jail. Then followed a wave of arrests and convictions for "offensive writings...
Under the same law, Minister Westman confiscated onetime Nazi Hermann Rauschning's new book, The Voice of Destruction (see p. 8g), two hours after it came from the press. Exclaimed Publisher Johan Hansson, who had carefully expurgated the Swedish text before it appeared: "What a strange kind of democracy we now have in this country!" As last month ended, Minister Westman had permission from the Cabinet to draft a new and drastic law defining responsibilities of the press...
...liberal tradition is the Gazette that it has been called Sweden's Manchester Guardian. Segerstedt's column, I Dag (Today), is masterful journalism. He has a rare faculty for clothing deadly sarcasm (about Hitler, Stalin, various native enemies of democracy) in words so innocent that even Minister Westman cannot dub them "offensive." Sample: "What cannot be hidden is the opinion the Swedish people have of the powers which are struggling to dominate them. . . . They cannot be made to believe that we must huddle together like quiet mice, hoping the cat will go easy...