Nils Torvalds in politics
Some of you might find it interesting that Nils Torvalds, a journalist and the father of Linus Torvalds, was today elected as one of the three vice spokespersons of the Swedish People’s Party. The party, founded already in 1906, defends rights of the Swedish speaking population (5.5 %) and positions itself somewhere in the centre-right. In March 2007 parliamentary elections the party got 4.57 % of the votes. Torvalds, on the other hand, is a former Communist Party member who still seems to be quite on the left: he’s critical towards globalisation and NATO and emphasizes social policy issues. His platform from the March 2007 parliamentary elections includes two interesting points which I translate here:
- “We have a copyright law that makes majority of our children criminals – this is not wise.
- The law must be changed to meet the people’s morals instead of following the needs of monopolies to make big profits.”
Perhaps we can see some influence of his son here – although Linus is very non-political.
