I had a look at the Nya Dagbladet website. My quick impression is that it looks like a somewhat milder and less sensationalist version of Breitbart News. The top stories were (and I only read the headlines and leads): (1) the newspaper itself being close to bankruptcy due to its bank account having been frozen, (2) an ex-CEO of Barclays’ being connected to Jeffrey Epstein, (3) high levels of shoplifting in Sweden, (4) record number of calls to a national child abuse hotline in Sweden, (5) a Swedish pediatrician’s having been subjected to hate due to a study of his which suggested that the risk of children needing emergency care for COVID-19 was low, (6) more on the frozen bank account, (7) Kiersten Hening getting a $100K settlement after BLM kneeling controversy and (8) EU and NATO collaborating more closely.
I can’t imagine a good rationale for giving a grant to Nya Dagbladet or associated ventures, and can only assume that FLI agreed to give the grant based either on material provided by Nya Dagbladet itself and/or other people (but without doing any independent review).
Tegmark’s brother, Per, seems to be affiliated with the Populist, anti-vax right in Sweden (note,this is only after a very cursory Google search). The reasons this seems to be relevant is that Per has been a contributing writer for Nya Dagbladet in recent years.
Do you have a source for this? I wasn’t able to find anything myself with a quick search.
Do you have a source for this? I wasn’t able to find anything myself with a quick search.
One source is the Expo article itself:
The only connection that Expo has been able to establish between Max Tegmark and the extreme right-wing media platform Nya Dagbladet is in the form of Tegmark’s brother, the journalist Per Shapiro, who for the past few years has been a recurring writer for Nya Dagbladet. Shapiro also runs the conspiracy theory-promoting podcast Folkets radio, whose episodes are presented on Nya Dagbladet’s website under the heading “radio reports”. Max Tegmark has, himself, appeared on his brother’s podcast. Whether this connection is significant with regards to the promise of funding from Max Tegmark and the Future of Life Institute to Nya Dagbladet is one of the questions we have been trying to put to them, but neither Max Tegmark nor his brother Per Shapiro have commented.
Shapiro told Expo that he is happy to answer questions concerning his journalism, but that he does not want to answer questions concerning whether he has been involved in contacts between Nya Dagbladet and FLI.
I believe Joshua was talking about the claim that Per Shapiro was a contributing writer for Nya Dagbladet.
There’s no direct evidence in the Expo article as far as I could tell for the fraternal link, but there’s definitely external evidence. For example, here’s a tweet from Max himself, linking to Per’s podcast and calling him ‘my brother Per’ (subject to accuracy of Google Translate).
Brother is used as a term of affection in a fair few languages (including Swedish), so I wouldn’t just trust a tweet. The Swedish wikipedia article on Per, however, confirms more definitively that they are brothers: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_Shapiro
These are some of the incidents that article cites as being representative of Nya Dagbladet’s problems, are they as described?
On its website, Nya Dagbladet publishes right-wing extremist content such as the racist myth of an ongoing “population replacement”, Holocaust revisionism, claims that Muslims are attempting to conquer Europe, and conspiracy theories related to the covid-19 pandemic.
For several years, Nya Dagbladet has also had a pro-Russian orientation. In September, the platform published an article based on a fake report incorrectly said to have been produced by an American think tank. The article became notorious after it was shared by the Embassy of Russia in Sweden.
I’m not an authority here, but from scanning the front page yesterday and today I see quite a lot of anti-vax/covid-19 conspiracy sentiment, some pro-Russian/anti-Ukraine sentiment, some anti-immigration/anti-globalism sentiment, and I didn’t see anything suggestive of Holocaust denial, neo-Nazism or replacement theory but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. (There was one article critical of the Israeli government but I don’t think that counts as anti-Semitic.) There’s also a lot of culture war and freedom of speech stuff. There was a 9/11 truther article on the front page though it’s 6 years old. (I didn’t read any opinion pieces.)
Machine translation usually works pretty well between Swedish and English in my experience. They are quite similar, both germanic languages.
There are a bunch of op-eds claiming that the last US election was stolen, a news story about “Ukraine refuses to accept the Russian offer of ceasefire”, one about “Serbian army goes on high alert due to increased aggression from Kosovo” (context: Serbia is a russian ally with a similar history of losing control of areas with other ethnic groups they previously subjugated). An Op-ed titled “The image of slavery needs nuance”. An editorial titled “Why civilians are not the targets of russian shelling”.
The sane articles do not stand out on their own but the selection of topics is quite narrowly focused on those subjects that conspiracist like to read about such as electronic surveillance and covid policy.
Listened to it while doing other stuff so might not be 100 % accurate.
To my understanding Tegmark appears for 10 minutes, doing a normal AI-risk spiel. I think the angle relevant to the podcast is the risk of concentration of power in the hands of a few. So some accusations of big tech capturing AI conferences etc.
There’s a small segue talking about covid where Tegmark states he felt it was such an infected discussion that he couldn’t talk about it openly in some work environments for fear of repercussions.
I had a look at the Nya Dagbladet website. My quick impression is that it looks like a somewhat milder and less sensationalist version of Breitbart News. The top stories were (and I only read the headlines and leads): (1) the newspaper itself being close to bankruptcy due to its bank account having been frozen, (2) an ex-CEO of Barclays’ being connected to Jeffrey Epstein, (3) high levels of shoplifting in Sweden, (4) record number of calls to a national child abuse hotline in Sweden, (5) a Swedish pediatrician’s having been subjected to hate due to a study of his which suggested that the risk of children needing emergency care for COVID-19 was low, (6) more on the frozen bank account, (7) Kiersten Hening getting a $100K settlement after BLM kneeling controversy and (8) EU and NATO collaborating more closely.
I can’t imagine a good rationale for giving a grant to Nya Dagbladet or associated ventures, and can only assume that FLI agreed to give the grant based either on material provided by Nya Dagbladet itself and/or other people (but without doing any independent review).
Do you have a source for this? I wasn’t able to find anything myself with a quick search.
One source is the Expo article itself:
The claim from Expo is easily verified
Sorry is there anything in that link that suggests Per Shapiro and Tegmark are brothers?
I believe Joshua was talking about the claim that Per Shapiro was a contributing writer for Nya Dagbladet.
There’s no direct evidence in the Expo article as far as I could tell for the fraternal link, but there’s definitely external evidence. For example, here’s a tweet from Max himself, linking to Per’s podcast and calling him ‘my brother Per’ (subject to accuracy of Google Translate).
Thanks, this is pretty convincing to me.
Brother is used as a term of affection in a fair few languages (including Swedish), so I wouldn’t just trust a tweet.
The Swedish wikipedia article on Per, however, confirms more definitively that they are brothers: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_Shapiro
He’s confirmed it himself now too: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5vFmMXWsh6PaYjqab/linkpost-fli-alleged-to-have-offered-funding-to-far-right?commentId=4o9Ev4GeeA67rAHJG
Thanks!
Good to know what the typical spread is like.
These are some of the incidents that article cites as being representative of Nya Dagbladet’s problems, are they as described?
I’m not an authority here, but from scanning the front page yesterday and today I see quite a lot of anti-vax/covid-19 conspiracy sentiment, some pro-Russian/anti-Ukraine sentiment, some anti-immigration/anti-globalism sentiment, and I didn’t see anything suggestive of Holocaust denial, neo-Nazism or replacement theory but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. (There was one article critical of the Israeli government but I don’t think that counts as anti-Semitic.) There’s also a lot of culture war and freedom of speech stuff. There was a 9/11 truther article on the front page though it’s 6 years old. (I didn’t read any opinion pieces.)
As a counterpoint, there’s one mostly sane article about the invasion of the Brazilian Congress (except for referring to the Capitol Hill attack as happening under “mysterious circumstances”, which sounds pretty conspiratorial). There are also a bunch of articles that seem basically harmless, like this one about 165K chicken being killed due to risk of salmonella.
Machine translation usually works pretty well between Swedish and English in my experience. They are quite similar, both germanic languages.
There are a bunch of op-eds claiming that the last US election was stolen, a news story about “Ukraine refuses to accept the Russian offer of ceasefire”, one about “Serbian army goes on high alert due to increased aggression from Kosovo” (context: Serbia is a russian ally with a similar history of losing control of areas with other ethnic groups they previously subjugated). An Op-ed titled “The image of slavery needs nuance”. An editorial titled “Why civilians are not the targets of russian shelling”.
The sane articles do not stand out on their own but the selection of topics is quite narrowly focused on those subjects that conspiracist like to read about such as electronic surveillance and covid policy.
I think this is the podcast Tegmark appeared on with his brother, if you’re interested in telling us about it.
Listened to it while doing other stuff so might not be 100 % accurate.
To my understanding Tegmark appears for 10 minutes, doing a normal AI-risk spiel. I think the angle relevant to the podcast is the risk of concentration of power in the hands of a few. So some accusations of big tech capturing AI conferences etc.
There’s a small segue talking about covid where Tegmark states he felt it was such an infected discussion that he couldn’t talk about it openly in some work environments for fear of repercussions.