Andreas Malm received Jan Myrdal's big prize – the Lenin Award at Varberg Theater on Saturday 15 November 2025. At the same ceremony, Jan Myrdal's small prize – the Robespierre Prize was awarded to Andi Olluri.
Watch Bengt Löfgrens film from the award ceremony with interviews with both laureate Andreas Malm and Lasse Diding:
Watch the award ceremony in its entirety here:
This year’s two awards were traditionally celebrated in front of a packed auditorium at Varberg’s historic theatre. Both of this year’s awards had a strong connection to Palestine and in front of the 300 enthusiastic listeners, George Totari’s legendary KOFIA also played and for the first time the ceremony did not end with the Internationale but instead the band’s world hit Leve Palestina which has been played around the world at demonstrations against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The Robespierre Prize went to the young media critic Andi Olluri from Gothenburg who was presented by both Anders Mård from the board of the Jan Myrdal Society and last year’s laureate Fanny Klang, after which the award winner gave an appreciated acceptance speech in which he pointed out the media’s strongly biased reporting of the genocide which was underpinned with illustrative examples.
When last year’s Lenin Award laureate Martin Hägglund was forced to go to the USA at the last minute due to illness in the family, Lasse Diding had to step in and present this year’s award winner Andreas Malm. Before that, a look back was taken at the 16 previous laureates, and we can certainly be proud and satisfied with the wide range of left-wing laureates who all in different ways reflect Jan Myrdal’s broad social critical engagement in different genres.
Andreas Malm, who is still relatively unknown in Sweden, has become an international authority in the last 10 years, which started with his thesis Fossil Capital, which was immediately read by Naomi Klein who praised it in her great book on climate in 2016. This was followed up with The Progress of This Storm and How To Blow Up a Pipeline, and all three of these have become classics for the Greta Thunberg generation and have made, as last year’s laureate, Yale professor Martin Hägglund, directly pointed out when he heard who had received this year’s award, Andreas Malm about ten times as famous abroad as in Sweden.
In his acceptance speech, Andreas, among other things, discussed Lenin’s role in today’s climate movement, while he had never actually read Jan Myrdal. He may be forgiven for this, as well as for leaving The Young Left of Sweden at the age of 15 to become an anarchist by desecrating a bust of Lenin in the party headquarters in Alingsås.
Everyone is now very welcome to immediately start nominating laureates for next year! The award has so far managed to consolidate its position as the most hated prize by the reactionaries, which we should feel very proud of.
