Soft portrait of a harsh man

"Petter Larsson seeing a documentary about the SD's Mattias Karlsson"

"This is a kulturartikel which is a part of Aftonbladet's opinionsjournalistik."

"It's a pity about the SD's group leader Mattias Karlsson."

"It is the overarching theme in Donald Segerbäcks documentary Mattias Karlsson – the year leading up to the election, as shown on SVT in the evening. From the first scene, then Karlsson and his parents suddenly find themselves without water at home, to the last, when he destroyed notes that he ”isn't really made for this position."

"the Journalists harp on about the old rasistförbrytelser as members hatch out new. The political opponents just lie and lie and comes with the nidbilder. Counter demonstrators boo him out, the nazis threaten him, his girlfriend leaves him."

"He is sleeping poorly, working too much and gets burned out and depressed. The climax is reached when he loses his mentolcigaretter and fixed virrar around looking for them. Then there is a man close to the collapse we see."

"Karlsson emerging as a talented, välartikulerad and dutiful man of the people who are struggling with working class lack of confidence in the småland idyll with children, lufsarhund and red cabins, which he in large pieces to be filmed in."

"He talks himself about how he becomes unstable, increasingly, in politics, in a way that is unexpected, honestly, to come from senior politicians. This närgångenhet and sincerity is the film's real strength: Karlsson opens up and reveals itself. And for a tormented idealist, it is hard not to feel sympathy."

"But it is also difficult to see that the SVT would have sent this film a few years ago. Understand me right: it is both worth seeing and even fun – including the show itself Karlsson completely aware of what a dark picture of the situation in the country and he will gladly give, ”I just lowers the audience”. "

"But it also shows how far the normalisation of the SD has gone when you give us a soft biographical of one of the leaders of the country's kulturrasistiska party.nonly sometimes get a glimpse of the hardline kulturkrigarens face. In a scene regret Karlsson over the tone of the public discourse, however, he goes cheerfully to adamantly identitetspolitiskt attack against the ”" forces,” as for the ”war against our right to be who we are”."

"He thinks that partikollegan Kent Ekeroth see everything in black and white. But he publishes himself, at the end of the film, his infamous post on the Facebook about the of the fate designated the patriots who must fight an existential battle for the nation's survival against foreign invasion forces. It is a text that could just as well have been published on a nazistsajt."

"I can therefore not help but wonder why the quote mutilated in the film – the flicker in its entirety just past the briefly – so that we never get to hear the pompous conclusion: ”Victory or death”."