Lundsberg is capitalism

Lundsberg is a Swedish boarding school. To attend the school for a year will set you back 35,000 USD.

In 1981, the book Evil¹ was published. The author, Jan Guillou, had attended another private school, but really, the book is about all boarding schools, especially those with cult-like qualities, which, to repeat, makes the book about all boarding schools.

The book shows how older students abuse younger students. Staff aren't enforcing rules: they make sure that the unwritten rules live on. Physical assult is commonplace. Older students rule the younger ones. Mind you, a sure-fire sign of private schools is sexism, so the abuse that happens at these schools is mainly perpetrated by and against male students.

In 2013, Lundsberg was temporarily shut down² when a student ended up in hospital after being assaulted by at least nine other students.

In 2025, four students were sentenced for assault against other students³, against protests of the students and their parents. What were the protests about?

A month ago, Sveriges Television (SVT), the state-owned TV network, published Arvtagarna⁴, a three-part documentary series that showed the school as utterly corrupt, rotten to the core, and cult-like. SVT have gathered all of their text articles about the recent look into Lundsberg on a web page⁸.

SVT have dug deep into Lundsberg. To find people willing to speak about what's happened at Lundsberg is hard. They found two sets of parents who were willing to speak on camera, along with one anonymised student. It's quite easy to see what happens next: Lundsberg denies charges, says most students are happy according to surveys, blames parents. Nothing's wrong if nothing's heard, right?

But things are now both heard and seen.

The documentary makers got over video and images that were posted to a now-deleted Instagram account. The account showed racist, nationalist, homophobic, sexist, extremely violent, bullying behaviour: students physically assaulting each other, going all-out anti-semitic, anti-arab, anti-everything-except-themselves tirades, while beating the shit out of certain students. And Lundsberg do nothing.

In fact, beatings is so engraved into their culture, that the school has every year received reports from staff and students alike on this culture. And if it goes on every year, it's the school that is singular, not the violence. The violence is built into the school culture in a way that staff simply duck and cover. The violence seeps into the children of the wealthy. It makes them think they should behave this way, because adults say so; when adults are silent, they consent; kids have no fucking clue and must be reared somewhat. But Lundsberg doesn't show this. It's the equivalent of putting your kid in front of a snuff film to not have to take responsibility.

Some of the film materials have been anonymised by SVT. A video example is found at the top of an article⁷.

In the documentary, Lars Jonsson⁵, Director of Operations, is quoted from a police interview. He doesn't realise that whatever he says will be available to the public. During the interview, Jonsson says Lundsberg is 'some kind of cult⁶' and alludes to being owned by the parents of the school. They have the money, so they're in charge.

A week before SVT started broadcasting their documentary series, Lundsberg sent the parents of all students an email⁹ where Jonsson writes 'the school is not the same as it was at the time of the occurrence'. Jonsson means the occurrence in 2025, where four students were barred from the school and sent packing the same day. I mean, it would have been good if the school followed their own policy on zero-tolerance against any kind of discrimination, xenophobia, etc. but of course they don't.

The first parent who called out Lundsberg about what happened in 2025 is public. She's a public figure, a TV show host, a businessperson. She's also fucking stupid. In the documentary series, she's flabbergasted that all of these things could happen to her son (who was at the least subjected to racism, nationalism, and physical violence). I think any sane person would think 'How could you think he would not be subjected to this shit, because it's gone on and on for a hundred years?' Then again, rich people aren't rich because they're extraordinarily intelligent; they're just part of the same cult of which Lundsberg is a symptom.

Wealthy people band together. To paraphrase James Madison, the fourth president of the USA, as he wrote in The Federalist Papers, No. 10¹⁰, the lords should 'protect the minority of the opulent against the majority'. That's the point of capitalism: to focus power and keep it, idealism be damned.

So, you send your kids where the money is, hoping it'll rub off on your offspring. You don't want them to be normies; you want them to be moneyed, to be the elite. So they'd better hang out with the elite or they'd be excluded, right?

Imagine living with that constant fear. To have to band together with oppressors, with people who hold monetary profit as more dear than friendship, love, and passion. That's the core of capitalism. Makes me recall the old video of Robert Hare¹⁴, the person who made the psychopathy checklist, where he compares psychopaths with corporations; the same type of comparison can be made with capitalists: glib, cynical, unable to empathise.

The Swedish School Inspectorate¹¹ is a Swedish government agency. They have the power to shut down Lundsberg. On the other hand, the current Swedish prime minister is a lobbyist who has, together with his wife, invested a lot in Swedish privately-owned schools; I've written about this before¹²; there is a Google-translated version¹³ of my Swedish original text.

In other words, there has to be real change for real change to happen; surprise! Actually, schools should not be run as companies. I can't see Lundsberg changing without having to be forced to change.

All is not lost; all can change. To paraphrase Ursula Le Guin's Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award Acceptance speech¹⁵:

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.