The spoken word applies.
Friends. A year ago, I stood in Eskilstuna and gave an inaugural speech at SFSFUM 2013. I ended by reminding that there were exactly 500 days left until the election. I talked about the fact that our election campaign had thus already begun and about the challenge we had before us in ensuring that the country's students are winners when the votes are counted, regardless of who wins the government. Today, there are 128 days left until the election in September and only 16 days left until the important EP election. Our task remains the same, and is about working tirelessly to put issues of higher education and not just school issues high on the political agenda.
We know we are a force to be reckoned with. Anders Borg and the Moderates have already made the mistake of underestimating the consequences of irritating the student movement in general and during an election year in particular. The fact that the damned proposal to reduce the study grant was withdrawn and that the increased debt burden was reduced somewhat was a great victory. But we should not just make those in power regret it when they propose bad policies. We must get them to shape good policies for academia and society from the very beginning and be a proactive force in the development of society. We now have two big victories left to win. On the one hand, it is to ensure a reform of the useless health insurance system that excludes the chronically ill from higher education and makes us students sicker than we are or need to be.
In addition, it is to get a future commission for the academy that guarantees a broad political agreement on the role of our universities in society and reviews their conditions for conducting higher education, research and collaboration. A commission consisting of all parliamentary parties, researchers and of course us of students. What my friends are and must be our two most important goals right now. All parties must know that Sweden's students demand when they sit down and begin government negotiations after the election.
We must all be aware of the great strength of being the Swedish National Union of Students. That we are a political grassroots organization that extends from the smallest university to an international political level and that we are precisely students. And SFS is a political organization before anything else, just as and because the union consists of 52 political organizations - you, the members. I know that some people engage in a discussion about whether student unions should be so-called apolitical or not. But what constitutes the student union's distinctiveness in comparison with other student organizations is that the core business is political work, albeit at the local and university level. And how you then choose to organize yourself - in parties, sections or completely personal mandates - you have to decide. But do your political deed with pride. Do not belittle it and never stop demanding the change you know is necessary.
SFS's almost 100-year history and diligent struggle for our issues have also given us the opportunity for a strong and central role in the political debate. A legacy that commits and that it is important that we manage well. We are and will be one of the strongest voices in the field of higher education policy. As a national student vote, we and no one else have the foremost interpretive precedence for student interest. But we have a duty to constantly seek cooperation and do common cause together with those who share our views. In striving to reach our goals, every partial victory is important. Alliances and sensitivity do not jeopardize our independence, it is a prerequisite for success.
However, when I now and for the last time get to welcome you and inaugurate this year's council, I want to convey a partly new message. A humble call, an unreserved demand and a desperate appeal at the same time. A message about one of our biggest challenges. An information about something we honestly are too bad at and that we have in common with all other political actors, with civil society, with companies and with institutions. Namely, our position and our claim oblige not only towards the students we represent - but towards society as a whole - the society we are part of - as the political force we are and should be.
We must dare to be more than purely educational policy and we must see and relate to our time and the society we operate in. In that respect, we have an important lesson to do. Along with climate and the environment, today fascism is once again the greatest threat to us all.
Today, more than half of Europe's national parliaments include right-wing extremist parties - fascists and neo-Nazis. The last time this was the case was in the 1930s. In more than 30 Swedish municipalities, the Swedes' party - pure neo-Nazis - is running in the autumn elections. It is a neo-Nazi degree of organization that has not existed in Sweden since the Second World War. Let it sink in.
The growing foothold and legitimacy of fascism is no longer an imminent risk, it is an actual development and a threat to us all. Nor is it a development we can passively wait for to reverse. We must be an integral part of the resistance. Nor is it a struggle we can leave to the established parties, NGOs, media and Facebook initiatives. We can not and must not think that it is not our business. It is a struggle we must furiously wage.
Once upon a time, the student movement was a national, international and global peace and rights movement. We have a huge challenge in re-establishing a modern version of that movement. For the progress of fascism is an immediate and absolutely decisive threat to the establishment of the Knowledge Society our vision states that we want to establish.
And our responsibility here is as much a civic as a purely academic one.
A few weeks ago, an unclear decision was made that was poorly communicated at one of our larger universities. This meant that all parties - all - were welcome to campaign on campus. The media image that emerged, however, was that the Swedes' party is welcomed like any other party. But the Swedes' party is not just any party. The debate that followed scared me deeply - for real. A fear you should all share. The question was made difficult and sensitive. The question was asked what an authority may or may not do. The question must be clear and unequivocal. The question must be what an authority - what the academy - just like parties, interest groups and citizens - should - do. The question must be that students and staff should have an obvious right to be able to go to their workplace and place of study without having to feel insecure and offended. The question must first and foremost be about the fact that the Nazis have nothing to do with a university at all. And if it is not uncontroversial to draw a line at neo-Nazis on a campus, that infamous border will never be drawn before it is too late.
The Swedish student movement also has corpses in the closet. Fascism has also grown in our ranks and we must never allow events such as the Bollhus meeting and what took place in Uppsala and Lund during the 30s and 40s to occur again. Carry it with you when we this weekend discuss the Knowledge Society we want to see and carry it with you every day after we parted on Sunday. Academic activity is the opposite of xenophobia and intolerance. It presupposes curiosity and openness. We have to tone down my friends and we have to do it properly. In word and deed, we must show that the Swedish National Union of Students never tolerates fascists standing unchallenged or using our democratic Knowledge Society to overthrow it.