A screenshot of the official website of the Chinese Embassy in Sweden on Sept 22, 2018.
By openly insulting the Chinese people and others by his insolent racist performance on a talk show called Swedish News on Friday night, program host, stand-up comedian and radio personality Jesper Ronndahl has put Sweden to shame. He gave a wink and a nod to offensive material aired under the name of free speech and press.
Being categorized as an entertainment program does not mean it can wantonly tread on common sense and professional media ethics. The manager behind the show, Thomas Hall, assured concerned parties of the integrity of the program's content, and it was allowed to be filmed and aired, leading to a torrent of protest letters to SVT, the public broadcaster.
Since its debut in March, the program has repeatedly caused controversy. The Swedish broadcasting authority has reportedly received at least 11 reports about improper content after airing just four episodes.
Condemned by all civilized people, racism has no place in modern polite society, but Hall deftly used sly language to engage in prevarication. If cultural differences can be used as an excuse for racial discrimination without question－which has sadly been the status quo in Sweden as the SVT case indicates－it is likely racial enmity will be encouraged in the country.
It took hundreds of years and a heavy cost for humanity to agree on the viciousness and danger of racism, which has resulted in all kinds of tragedies, including genocide. And it doesn't take long to translate risky beliefs into similar action.
That explains why racists are the common enemy of all sensible people throughout the world. The strong message of white supremacy, driven home by the coarsely-produced 90-second video Welcome to Sweden at the beginning of the talk show, laid bare how producers are mired in their racist beliefs. The program itself is the bitter fruit of such sentiments.
Even worse, after the Chinese embassy lodged a strong protest to SVT, they translated the video, which was apparently made for Swedish eyes, into shoddy Chinese language and uploaded it to a Chinese video website to hector Chinese nationals. It also used an incorrect map of China, in which Taiwan, China's islands in the South China Sea and parts of the Tibet autonomous region are all missing.
History indicates that it would only be a matter of time for a country to reap what it has sown if its mass media can fearlessly provoke and instigate racial hatred and confrontation, and advocate racism and xenophobia. Given the social and refugee challenges the Swedish government faces, if it continues to give a green light to "entertainment" programs like this, while claiming to be an advocate of equality and human rights, the chickens will eventually come home to roost.
