Palme & Protesters (and #HimToo)

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This week, our group finalized our selections for our display and discussed the historical significance of the items we selected during the Archive and Special Collection visits, but in class we discussed the intersectionality within the #MeToo movement. The items from our display that I felt most interested in related to Former Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, specifically the photograph of protesters and the flyer announcing his visit. I was shocked by the protesters' audacity to crash a commencement address in order to protest the speaker, and I often wonder how audience members perceived this situation. The document about his visit explained that protesters wanted to voice their opposition to Palme's opposition to the U.S.'s policy in Vietnam.

 These protesters reminded me of participants within the #HimToo movement and how they switched around the situation to make it seem like they were the victims. Yazdiha (2023:173) specifically points out Donald Trump's comments of claiming men in society aren't "safe" because they could "be guilty of something [they] may not be guilty of," which completely spins around the initial purpose of #MeToo. I would like to note that the rise of the opposing movement places an emphasis on men perpetrators, while #MeToo is genderless and not specific to women victims, but its opposers made it a gendered situation.

With this chapter in mind, it seems that both the Palme protesters at the commencement and #HimToo participants took a movement/action that they disagreed with and found a way to make it about them. In Palme's case, the protesters realigned the situation to match their agenda (a commencement address for graduating students turning into a protest against someone protesting war while people were actively being affected by the war and Palme was not affecting the protesters' existence in any way). In the case of the #HimToo movement, somehow participants were able switch a situation about solidarity and justice for victims into blaming those same victims and identifying as victims themselves. I see parallels between these two situations and see a common theme with past chapters of Yazdiha's book that we have read, like when the family values movement claimed the Civil Rights Movement as their own. These shifts, realignments, and changes further emphasize the idea that the interpretation of movements and opposing views complicates the way events like movements and protests can play out because it is almost as if the interpretation of ideas is up for grabs.


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