SWEDEN 2001-2

 

Unofficial figures for 2001 showed a rise in the number of antisemitic incidents, due mainly to the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A sharp increase in incidents was reported in the first months of 2002. Pro-Palestinian rallies were characterized by a strong left-wing element, whose slogans were sometimes antisemitic. The September 11 events caused a split in the xenophobic extreme right.

 

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

Sweden has a Jewish population of about 18,000 out of a general population of 8.9 million. The majority, approximately 10,000, live in the larger cities, Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö. Smaller Jewish communities can be found in Boras, Uppsala, Norrköping and Helsingborg. The various communities are independent, but linked through the Council of Swedish Jewish Communities.

A Stockholm based magazine, Judisk Krönika, appears bi-monthly, as well as Tachless, the magazine of the Jewish congregation. Shechita (Jewish ritual animal slaughter) is prohibited and kosher meat is imported from abroad.

By hosting the January 2000 Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, attended by forty-five heads of state, who declared that the Holocaust “challenged the foundations of civilization,” Sweden became a leading force for raising awareness of the Shoah. Its Living History Project has become a model of Holocaust education. As an outcome of that parley, plans were announced to establish the European Institute of Jewish Studies in Sweden, Paideia. The institution was inaugurated in September 2001 with an academic conference. In January 2001, Stockholm was the venue for the Second International Forum for Combating Intolerance, which had as its goal “counteracting and preventing xenophobia, racism, antisemitism and other extremist ideas and movements.”

 

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

Political Parties

Developments on the far right have left the Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats – SD) the single surviving xenophobic party, with a nation-wide organization and potential to expand its electoral base (see ASW 1999/2000). In its campaign for the September 2002 general election, the party has been courting the xenophobic fringe in the hope of establishing itself as the single, undisputed “nationalist” alternative.

Much of the party’s activity in 2001 was directed at strengthening its organizational machinery while toning down more blatant racist rhetoric. Party propaganda focuses on three populist themes:

• Anti-immigrant rhetoric based on the premise that immigrants are behind most violent crime – in particular rape and robbery – and that Muslim fundamentalism is a threat to Swedish culture.
• Conspiracy theories claiming that mainstream political organizations, the media and politicians are “betraying” or “selling out” the nation to a foreign “army of occupation” – the immigrants. Much of the rhetoric is directed against individual politicians, such as Minister of Integration Mona Sahlin.
• An anti-European Union (EU) campaign portraying the EU as a threat to democracy in Europe.

The party has been successful, particularly in schools and at the local level. Mikael Jansson, party chairman since 1995, is a shrewd political organizer who has devoted much time to improving the party’s image. As a result of his actions, more notorious Nazi activists have been pushed to the sidelines (see ASW 1998/9).

The September 2001 local church council elections were a test of the SD’s strength prior to the 2002 general elections. As usual, voter turnout was low – about 12 percent – and although the mainstream parties campaigned heavily to keep the SD out of church councils, the party won one percent of the vote and several seats on local councils.

A book published in November 2001, Sverigedemokraterna – Den nationella rörelsen (Sweden Democrats – The National Movement, by Stieg Larsson & Mikael Ekman; Ordfront, 2001), describes political hate campaigns and criminality among leading SD activists. Despite the SD’s claim to be a law and order party and its allegation that immigrants were responsible for the majority of violent crimes committed in Sweden, the authors say that 23 percent of 330 “leading Sweden Democrats” (members of the national party executive or activists who ran for public office between 1988 and 1998), had been convicted for various crimes – higher than the ratio for immigrant crime and far higher than that for democratic politicians.

            The SD’s success was marred only slightly by the emergence of the Nationaldemokraterna (National Democrats – ND), a breakaway group formed by hardcore SD activists in August 2001. The nominal party leader is Anders Steen, previously a SD councilor in south Stockholm, but actual power is held by Tor Paulsson, previously a SD national party organizer.

The split was the result of an ongoing dispute within the anti-immigrant right. Although the SD was formed and led for many years by activists schooled in traditional neo-Nazi organizations, and the party belongs to the nationalist movement, it may be assumed that a majority of the vote is not ideologically fascist but expresses populist dissatisfaction with the mainstream parties. Hence, much of the party’s success has depended on its ability to able to distance itself from the fascist image, a tactic that alienated the ideological party hardcore.

After Steen and Paulsson were expelled from the SD and formed the ND, they managed to recruit a substantial part of the SD youth organization as well as a number of veteran activists in the Stockholm area. They have also attracted a steady flow of hardcore neo-Nazi activists, who view the new party as a prospective “respectable” cover.

The ND splinter has indeed damaged some of the streamlined SD machinery, and the ND rhetoric is vehemently contemptuous of former comrades and party leaders. However, despite their boasts that an overwhelming majority of the SD have broken with the “corrupt leadership,” the ND are, in fact, an insignificant group. An indication of the relative strength of the two parties may be seen in the result of mock elections held in schools nationwide (with the participation of about 15 percent of students), in spring 2002, when the Sweden Democrats won 3.8 percent of the vote compared with 0.5 percent for the National Democrats.

 

Extra-parliamentary Groups and Racist Violence

As in 2000, but in contrast to 1999, there were no major violent racist acts recorded in 2001. There were a few reports of violence on the local level, some involving neo-Nazis or skinheads. However, annual statistics compiled by the Swedish Security Police (Säpo) indicate a slow but steady growth of racially motivated crime. According to the police, cases of “racially motivated crime” increased from 2,703 in 1999 to 2,896 in 2000. Statistics for 2000 indicate that 2,092 cases of racially motivated crimes had a direct link to groups and activists of the white power movement. Homosexuals remain the largest single group likely to become victims of Nazi related violence.

            Sweden remains a major producer of white power music, although a growing proportion of records, videos and other merchandise is created for markets outside Sweden (Germany being the largest). The two leading white power companies are Nordland, owned by American white supremacist William Pierce (died July 2002), and Ragnarock Records, run jointly by former Norwegian Nazi leader Erik Blücher (aka Erik Nilsen) and Blood & Honour/Scandinavia (B&H). B&H was founded by Blücher and the German-born neo-Nazi Marcel Schilf., who died in early 2001. Ragnarock/B&H are also the center of the British Combat 18’s international operations, although the latter’s activities declined considerably in 2001 (see UK). It was reported in March 2001 that Ronald Schröder, 25, also German, who organized the music trade for the extreme right, was to take over the leadership of B&H.

Ragnarock/B&H propaganda is anti-Jewish and anti-ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government), and is a militant defender of neo-Nazi violence and terrorist activities.

For many years the fastest growing national socialist organization in Sweden, the Nationalsocialistisk Front (National Socialist Front – NSF) suffered a serious setback in 2000 when its founder and charismatic party leader Anders Högström defected. Högström made a clean break not only with his party, but with the Nazi movement altogether. He has since appeared as a guest speaker at various anti-racist meetings and in schools. The party is now led by propaganda chief Björn Björkqvist and by party organizers Anders Ärleskog, Himmler Pettersson and Bo Nilsson, a convicted arsonist.

Ideologically, the NSF line marks a departure from the revolutionary “holy racial war” romantics of the neo-Nazi movement in recent decades. NSF calls for a return to a more traditional national socialism, and has adopted much of the style of the original Brownshirt ideology of the 1930s. It is vehemently antisemitic, in contrast to other Nazi groups, such as the Nordic Reich Party which in the 1960s and 1970s publicly toned down its antisemitism. The NSF is based in Karlskrona in south Sweden.

The Svenska Motstandsrörelsen/Nationell Ungdom (Swedish Resistance/National Youth - SMR/NU), together with Anti-Antifa (see below), is one of the most professionally organized and impenetrable groups. Formed in 1997 as an umbrella organization for pro-terrorist hardliners of the splintered Stockholm Nazi milieu, the SMR includes among its founders former White Aryan Resistance (VAM) activist Klas Lund, who has past convictions for manslaughter and bank robbery. NU was originally launched as a “patriotic” and “nationalist” youth club. Its cover was blown almost immediately, however, and NU has become the leading neo-Nazi organization in the greater Stockholm area. Experts believe that NU is actually a recruiting ground and training facility for future SMR members, à-la The Turner Diaries. Several members of SMR/NU were sentenced in 1999 for involvement in various violent crimes and terrorist offenses, among them the murder of an anti-Nazi trade unionist.

SMR/NU are closely aligned with the so-called Anti-AFA, a secretive organization claiming to be the “intelligence apparatus” of the neo-Nazi world. Similar groups exist in Germany and Britain, among others. Police who raided the group’s computers discovered “anti-nationalist enemy” lists containing the names of hundreds of known anti-fascists, journalists and police officers.

A key individual in the Anti-AFA network and increasingly important leader of the militant extreme right is Robert Vesterlund, a former skinhead and youth leader of the Sweden Democrats. Vesterlund's magazine, Info-14, has glorified the murder of police officers, and published the names and pictures of police officers investigating neo-Nazi violence. Although not formally attached to a particular party, Vesterlund enjoys considerable respect across the extreme right spectrum.

In December 2000, 17-year-old skinhead Daniel Wretström was beaten to death by a youth gang of mixed Swedish and immigrant origins in Salem, south Stockholm. He has since become a neo-Nazi martyr and the most important rallying point for neo-Nazis and the extreme right in Sweden. Shortly after his murder, more than 1,000 neo-Nazis held a torchlight meeting at the scene of the killing, the largest Nazi demonstration in Sweden since the 1940s. Again in December 2001, on the anniversary of Wretström’s death, Nazis of all stripes gathered at the scene. Both events were organized by Robert Vesterlund. In 2001 Vesterlund was arrested on illegal arms charges, and sentenced to one year in prison. He was due to begin his sentence in the course of 2002.

 

ANTISEMITIC ACTIVITY

Unofficial figures for 2001 show a rise in the number of antisemitic incidents, due mainly to the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A sharp increase in incidents was reported in the first months of 2002, including the display of banners equating the Star of David with the swastika at anti-Israel rallies.

Two violent incidents were recorded. In January 2001, two Israeli Jews were beaten by two Palestinians in Stockholm. One of them required medical attention. On 19 September a Jewish youth was assaulted by a skinhead in the Stockholm subway. The attacker was arrested. At least 16 telephone threats were received by the Göteborg Jewish community. A Göteborg rabbi was also the target of several bomb threats, forcing the police to evacuate his building, and in March a fake bomb in a suitcase was planted at the entrance of the Göteborg Jewish Community Center. Also in March, a rabbi and his son were harassed in Stockholm by two men who shouted antisemitic slurs. In June the wall of the old Jewish cemetery in Malmö was smeared with antisemitic graffiti.

A memorial to Raoul Wallenberg was defaced with spray paint on 24 August 2001, a day after it was unveiled by King Carl Gustav XVI of Sweden in the presence of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and diplomats from various countries. Wallenberg helped thousands of Jews escape deportation to death camps from Nazi-occupied Hungary.

 

Propaganda

Compared with the situation in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when outspoken antisemitism was still more or less taboo even among hard-line neo-Nazi groups, there has been a dramatic increase in antisemitic propaganda in recent years and today antisemitism is again a central theme in extreme right ideology, especially of militant neo-Nazi groups. The adoption of anti-Jewish rhetoric by some “respectable” xenophobic organizations and academic right-wing groups is a disturbing tendency (see ASW 2000/1). The “radical-conservative” Salt, for example, launched in 1999, mocked the 2000 Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust and published an in-depth interview with British Holocaust denier David Irving.

Anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian rallies and demonstrations were characterized by a strong left-wing element, whose slogans were sometimes antisemitic, as in equating the Star of David with the swastika. In Stockholm a rally organized by the Liberal Party Youth Organization (LUF), with a large Jewish turnout, was attacked by pro-Palestinian counter-demonstrators, many of them Swedish left-wing activists. The LUF rally was calling for peace in the Middle East, as well as an end to antisemitism and islamophobia. The counter-demonstrators shouted slogans such as “Kill the Jews.”

Left-wing antisemitism was noted on the Internet, particularly on chat sites. Classic antisemitic texts appeared on the Indy Media site, for example. However, the editors subsequently cleaned up the site after it was fiercely criticized in the media.

Nordland and Ragnarock continue to disseminate antisemitism through white power CD records, videos and various publications. The NSF, through its propaganda chief Björn Björkqvist, leads much of the ideological antisemitic rhetoric.

 

Reactions to the September 11 Events

The September 11 attacks caused a split in the xenophobic extreme right, with the Sweden Democrats taking a hard-line anti-Muslim and anti-Arab stand, and Nazi organizations such as the National Socialist Front adopting an antisemitic and anti-Israel position. The Swedish National Socialist, homepage of the NSF, described the events as “an attack on the New World Order,” which they view as a Jewish conspiracy.

The NSF also published a text by chief ideologist Björn Björkqvist, entitled “By the Same Coin.” If, as the Swedish authorities claimed, the September events were “an attack on democracy,” said Björkqvist, they were “revenge for all the lives Democracy has claimed.” He went on to catalog the death toll in various countries due to “American aggression,” as well as within the US, such as the FBI assaults on the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, and on the white separatist Randy Weaver and his family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

In contrast to the neo-Nazis, the SD uncharacteristically came out in support of Israel and in favor of fostering anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments in Sweden. Richard Jomshof, chief editor of the party mouthpiece SD-Kuriren, claimed the terrorist attacks put “Islam in focus.” The World Trade Center bombings, he said, “show clearly, in fact, how dangerous Islam is as a religion … We must understand that Islam differs from other world religions in its vast unrepentant fanaticism” (www.sverigedemokraterna.se/sd-kuriren – 14 Sept. 2001).

The SD also disseminated various conspiracy theories, among them one on its homepage which claimed that the Swedish government “helped finance” the plane bombings because it sponsored various immigrant projects and immigrant organizations in Sweden.

Fearing an increase in violent anti-Arab actions following the terrorist attacks, the Swedish police formed a special task force headed by the Criminal Intelligence Bureau (KUT), a division of the National Police Authority, to monitor developments. According to KUT, in the aftermath of 11 September there was a marked increase in islamophobic incidents, with 5–10 cases reported daily. Significantly, the rate of anti-American incidents equaled that of anti-Arab ones. Noteworthy incidents included assaults on an Arab Göteborg taxi driver and on a Muslim woman in Södertälje, an arson attack on a mosque and derogatory treatment of three Swedish-Arab citizens by the pilot of a SAS commercial airliner.

 

Internet

Several extreme right homepages originate in Sweden or Norway, including patrit.nu, and those of NSF and National Youth.

An investigation by the anti-fascist Expo magazine in early 2001 focused on a chat page, passagen:politik, run by Scandinavia Online, a company partly owned by Swedish Telecon (Telia). Originally intended as a forum for general political debate and exchanges of views, it became over the years a vehicle for the dissemination of neo-Nazi and racist propaganda. Despite complaints from the public, Scandinavia Online failed to take any action. Expo concluded it was one of the largest sources of racist and antisemitic propaganda in Sweden (for example, it published lists containing names of Swedish Jews). When Expo went public with its findings, Scandinavia Online closed the page.

Ahmed Rami, the operator of Radio Islam, remains the main disseminator of propaganda denying the Holocaust, with most of his activities in recent years being limited to the Internet. In spite of his Moroccan background, Rami has won the endorsement of several white power groups, including the NSF.

 

RESPONSES TO racism AND ANTISEMITISM

The Swedish Committee Against Antisemitism (SCAA) continued to arrange lectures on antisemitism, Holocaust denial, neo-Nazism and white power music throughout the country, mostly for educators. It cooperated for a second successive year with the Stockholm school authorities and the University of Uppsala in giving an in-service training course on the Holocaust for high school teachers, including a study tour to Poland.

The Living History project, initiated by Prime Minister Göran Persson (see above and ASW 1999/2000), held seminars and organized events to help combat antisemitism and Nazi revisionism of the Holocaust. Preparations continue for transforming Living History into an official government bureau later in 2002.

The announcement that Lars Hillersberg, a left-wing artist known for his satirical work, had been awarded a lifetime minimum salary by the Ministry of Culture, aroused protests due to the fact that some of Hillersberg's drawings are alleged to be antisemitic. At the height of the controversy, Expo Foundation, together with the Jewish cultural organization Tsimmes, organized a public debate which received substantial coverage.

Top Swedish artists appeared at a concert entitled “Artists against Nazis,” in January.