Nooshi Dadgostar becomes leader of the Left party

From: Åsa Linderborg

Published: October 31, 2020 at 11:00
Updated: October 31, 2020 at 11.14 a.m.

Today he replaces Jonas Sjöstedt. Nooshi Dadgostar doesn’t seem to be afraid of anyone. And she thinks it should be easier for them to leave her.

Isn’t it hard to stay? I ask. It is so strict that it is so easy to make a mistake! The right does not accept that a member of a left party lives in a condominium, and the left gives the baton to those who do not understand what the word “non-binary” means.

Nooshi dadgostar laugh softly. Well, maybe … He says that leftists should also be allowed to live. An individual cannot lay train tracks, so he must drive sometimes or regularly.

– It is sad if you feel that there is an ideal of purity that you must fulfill in order to join the Left Party. More people should feel welcome, thresholds should be lowered.

Are porn surfers welcome too?

I ask the somewhat awkward question that the Left Party in 2000, under Gudrun Schymans management, excluding the porn actor Göran Eurenius. He was not even welcomed since his film career ended. It’s hard to navigate porn if there’s no movie to jerk off to, one presupposes the other.

– Yes I think so. That is not the goal of being on the left, but rather the goal is to change the whole of society.

The generation

Nooshi welcomes me at the Left Party premises in the Riksdag. He belongs to a whole new generation of politicians now emerging in the West: the 1990s with immigrant backgrounds, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the United States and Hadia Tajik in Norway. Right now, there is a debate in Norway about whether Hadia Tajik, who is the deputy leader of the Labor Party, can actually wear high heels and a sparkly blouse. That said, it is easy to make mistakes.

Nooshi Dadgostar was born in 1985 in Ängelholm. The parents fled Iran in connection with the 1980 revolution, and Ayatollah Khameneis purges of Marxists and Communists. In the early years, they had five pieces of furniture and just one space. They moved to Gothenburg when Nooshi’s mother was going to study nursing. The father is an architect and sound designer.

It’s Friday afternoon when we meet. At home waiting Nadja, 1 year, and man Martin.

When I think of Jonas Sjöstedt, I see in front of me a man sitting on a train all the time. How will the party understand that you are a parent of young children and cannot visit all districts at once?

– There I will probably benefit from the crown, ha ha. But I long to do more laps.

It was Göran Persson’s cuts that made Nooshi join the Young Left when he was 14 years old. I was 16 when George W. Bush visited Gothenburg. Nooshi is an activist in that traditional left-wing way, she has organized people physically, not just in Facebook groups. The biggest project was to stop sales in the Stockholm suburb of Alby.

– It’s been a long journey here, she says.

I don’t like being in the center

It is said that you have never signed up for this, that you “take one for the team” for lack of other candidates?

– Maybe … I’m not the one who always wants to be in the center. But I like being on stage.

Now she faces her biggest challenge: replacing the leader of Sweden’s most popular party while grappling with the prejudices that young women with immigrant names often face.

I think a lot about the younger left and the language. Do you call yourself a “racist”?

– I try to use words that more people understand. I usually say that I have an immigrant background.

There are anti-racists who affirm that there is racism in all people. At least in all white people.

– I do not think so.

I have a special relationship with the Left Party, it should be informed. My mother’s grandfather is one of the founders and my mother has represented V in the Riksdag. Before this interview, I read the proposal for a new party program. I have plowed many party programs over the years, but this time I had to work hard, because the text is dead of stone; polite, anxious, defensive and academic. The focus is on feminism, anti-racism and minorities in an almost parodic way, taking into account all those who believe that the problem of the left around the world is that it has lost the class question. Above all, it is a complete contrast to the involvement of Jonas Sjöstedt and Dadgostar in social and economic problems.

I notice that I cannot refrain from debating. What was intended to be an interview will be something else, it is not clear what.

The program proposal establishes that there is a third gender. Does this mean that V means that gender is not primarily biological, but social or an identity?

– What is called gender is largely a social construction, isn’t it?

Of course, but if you write “experienced genre”, it forces you in certain specific situations. Should a man who identifies as a woman, or vice versa, have access to the changing room in a bathhouse or sports facility, for example? It’s not a thought experiment, I ask why an acquaintance was at such an event this week. It had gotten quite loud.

Nooshi can’t really answer that, he says the party’s program has been postponed and will be adopted later, perhaps only at the next congress four years from now. I still bite into the text, because it is an expression of a direction of will about the path to be taken on the left.

You write about LGBTQAI +. What does AI + mean?

The question is too difficult and I understand it. Nooshi responds that he does not want to comment on the details of a program that has not yet been developed.

Isn’t there a risk that identity-minded members will run over those who don’t know this at all? Or those who dare not open their mouths because they fear that the cunning will embarrass them?

– Yes, everyone should feel involved in all decisions. We need to educate people and take a closer look, experts shouldn’t decide this.

“The party is good”

The problem is that many on the left, who are aware of these issues, have drawn different conclusions. They believe that many are gallimatias or even dangerous. An example is the question of at what age to allow gender corrections: 15 or 18 years? When I wonder if V has internal divisions, Nooshi responds that the party is doing well and that it is growing very fast. That may be so, but if all the members were faced with these difficult issues, the party would end up in the deepest confusion.

Most parties face the same problem. In 2013, the Center Party wrote a program of ideas that was so “normative-creative” (it proposed, among other things, polygamy), that Annie Lööfs the future was at stake. Last fall, I watched the meeting of the party of moderates, where there was a proposal to introduce gender-neutral social security numbers. It could have happened, if it weren’t for a last minute representative who worked in the health service, that it could mean life or death for the ambulance staff if the sex of the person they are going to treat is not known.

The Left Party simply does not seem to understand what contradictions, sooner or later, must surface. By comparison, a single phrase is used to define class society: “Those who live on wage income and lack power over their work belong to the working class. Against these is the small group that owns the capital ”.

That’s a pretty rough description. The entire middle class disappeared. Don’t you have to try a little harder at that?

– Ha ha ha!

Nooshi is easy to laugh, it is said that he is unpretentious and so it seems. He talks for a long time about how the party will win over the working class in general, which includes everything from the subway driver and care attendant to the smithy worker in Sandviken.

– The important thing for me is that we do not separate, because then we weaken against capital.

What do you know about Sweden that Stefan Löfven doesn’t know?

– The Social Democrats have launched the project to change Sweden. They have achieved nothing in 25 years.

Nooshi is not even afraid of the Social Democrats, of course. He talks for a long time about the bourgeois offensive, which attracted the Social Democrats. This is something she’s rooted in, it shows. He says that there is almost no difference between the Social Democrats and the Liberals. See only the LAS question.

– We must be able to rally around the central issues of power. Especially since “culture warriors” want to talk about flag politics and other things.

Does that mean that these problems are not important? Doesn’t the Left Party have to deal with the thorny thistles that grow in all multicultural societies, like handshakes and separate bath times?

Can the Left Party really grow without taking a stand on the values, culture and the individual’s own choices? Shouldn’t it be possible to also speak of something other than structures?

– Yes, but what I miss in the debate is the question of power. The Center Party is very good at working on the other side, the capitalists. We need to participate and redistribute power together among employees.

Now you will be a public figure, monitored, commented on and photographed for many years. It can be quite consumed, are you ready for that?

– I’ve heard everything possible about me, but it’s hard to prepare. I understand if everyone plays their part in this, but it saddens me when I am misunderstood.

When you’ve done something good, do you normally celebrate it?

– Then I have a glass of prosecco. Or a Fanta. It depends on what you have to do the next day.

If you had to put a soundtrack to your next years as party leader, what would you choose for the song?

– You can’t stop us at the med. Christina Aguilera.

Published: October 31, 2020 at 11:00

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