SWEDEN 2004

 

Swedish NGOs reported 65 antisemitic incidents in 2004, mostly cases of harassment, but also 4 of physical assault. In a report rating intolerance among students in relation to Jews, Muslims, homosexuals and immigrants, the Living History Forum found a high degree of tolerance toward the Jewish minority in Sweden.

 

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

Sweden has a Jewish population of about 18,000, or 0.2 percent, out of a general population of 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 slaughter) is prohibited and kosher meat is imported from abroad. According to a report of the Swedish Animal Welfare Agency, while they saw no obstacles to the performance of ritual slaughter, the laws made it impossible for the time being.

 

POLITICAL organizations and GROUPS

Political Parties

Since the 2002 elections when they won 1.44 percent (76,000 votes) of the vote, the Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats – SD) have remained the undisputed nationalist alternative in Sweden and the single largest party outside parliament. More than half of the 50 seats they hold in local councils are located in the southern region of Scania.

SD propaganda focuses on three populist themes: anti-immigrant rhetoric claiming that immigrants are behind most violent crime and that Muslim fundamentalism is a threat to Swedish culture and the Swedish judicial system; conspiracy theories alleging that mainstream democratic organizations, the media and politicians are ‘betraying’ or ‘selling out’ the nation to a foreign ‘army of occupation’ – the immigrants; and anti-European Union campaigning in which the EU is perceived as a threat to democracy in Europe.

Mikael Jansson, the party chairman from 1995 till 2005, invested considerable effort into changing the fascist image of the party in order to make it more attractive to populist voters dissatisfied with the mainstream parties (see ASW 1998/9). However, the party has been plagued by power struggles in recent years.

Nationaldemokraterna (National Democrats – ND), have four seats in local councils in the greater Stockholm area, are a breakaway group formed in 2001 by hardcore SD activists who were expelled after clashing with Jansson’s faction over ‘liberalization’ of the party. The ND split in late summer 2004 following an internal power struggle and half the executive left, taking three of the local Stockholm area seats with them. Part of the conflict centered on handling of the ‘Jewish question’, with the antisemitic line prevailing. The new leader, Thomas Johansson, is trying to rebuild the party. Those who left returned to SD or moved to more hard-core neo-Nazi organizations. The ND view the SD as their main enemy and are extremely contemptuous of former comrades and party leaders.

 

Extra-parliamentary Groups

Although Sweden remains a major producer of white power music, a growing portion of records, videos and other merchandise is sent to overseas markets. The Nordic Publishing House was the main white power propaganda disseminator in 2004, replacing Nordland, owned by the late US white supremacist William Pierce, and Ragnarock Records, run by Erik Blücher and Blood & Honour/Scandanavia, which dominated in the 1990s.

For many years the fastest growing national socialist organization in Sweden, Nationalsocialistisk Front (National Socialist Front – NSF) suffered a serious setback in 2000 when its founder and charismatic party leader Anders Högström left the Nazi movement (see ASW 2001/2). The organization is now led by Anders Ärleskog and Daniel Höglund. In 2003 propaganda chief Björn Björkqvist also defected but in 2004 he returned to the party and remains influential.

The vehemently anti-Jewish NSF calls for a return to a more traditional National Socialism, and has adopted much of the style of the original brown shirt ideology of the 1930s. The NSF base has been moved from southern to mid-west Sweden, near the town of Vara. During 2004 the Front arranged several white power music nights with hundreds of participants.

The Svenska Motståndsrörelsen/Nationell Ungdom (Swedish Resistance/National Youth – SMR/NU) are one of the most professionally organized and impenetrable groups on the extreme right. Svenska Motstandsrörelsen (SMR) was formed in 1997 as an umbrella organization for pro-terrorism hardliners of the splintered Stockholm neo-Nazi milieu. Among its founders was the convicted criminal, former White Aryan Resistance (VAM) activist Klas Lund. After its merger with Nordland Records, SMR expanded rapidly, until the death of Nordland owner William Pierce in 2002. In 2004 Klas Lund was convicted of possession of an illegal firearm. Shortly after beginning his jail sentence he escaped and hid for more than six months until the police found him in Norway with the Norwegian Resistance Movement.

National Youth (NU) was originally launched to pose as a ‘patriotic’ and ‘nationalistic’ youth club. Its cover was almost immediately blown and NU has become the leading neo-Nazi organization in the greater Stockholm area. Several members of SMR/NU were convicted of involvement in various violent crimes and terrorist offenses in 1999, among them the assassination of an anti-Nazi trade unionist. NU activities, mainly in the larger cities of Stockholm and Göteborg, increased in 2004 after two years of a negative spiral.

SMR/NU was once closely aligned with the so-called secretive Anti-AFA (Anti-fascist) organization, which claims to be the ‘intelligence apparatus’ of the neo-Nazi world. Anti-AFA compiles lists of ‘anti-nationalist enemies’, including journalists, police officers, politicians and anti-racist activists. Police raids have secured several files from the computers of neo-Nazis, containing hundreds of these names. A key individual in the Anti-AFA network is believed to be Robert Vesterlund, a former skinhead and SD youth leader, and publisher of the magazine Info-14 (see ASW 2001/2). Following conviction of the compiler of the enemy list in 2003, 280 out of the thousand persons on it sued him for at least 10,000 SEK each.

Since the murder of 17-year-old skinhead Daniel Wretström by a youth gang of mixed Swedish and immigrant background in the town of Salem, south of Stockholm, in December 2000, the town has become a rallying point for neo-Nazis and extreme rightists in Sweden on the anniversary of his death. The Salem Fund, set up by the Nazi prison organization Yellow Cross, together with the pro-terrorist Info-14 and Blood & Honour for organizing the annual commemoration, is supported by the entire nationalist spectrum, except the Sweden Democrats. There was a decline in the number of participants, from 2000 in 2003 to 1,400 in 2004.

Led by Curt Linusson, a former UN peace-keeping officer in Bosnia, the Legion Wasa is a paramilitary unit made up of a criminal neo-Nazi hardcore, many of whom are associated with the NSF. Linusson says his force is preparing for a “forthcoming racial conflict” against the Jews. The Legion, which holds maneuvers in forests in central Sweden, has organized several rallies against the construction of a mosque in the town of Skövde. In early 2003 Linusson held abortive negotiations with the Iraqi embassy in order to send an armed volunteer squad to assist Saddam Husayn in his conflict with the US. In 2004 a former activist of the Legion was prosecuted for creating a terrorist cell in Sweden aimed at launching a holy racial war.

Begun as a publishing house in 2002, Nordiska Förbundet (Nordic Association) became an organization in 2004. It is influenced by the US National Alliance and especially by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who has interviewed leading activists from the association on his radio show. The publishing house distributes antisemitic books such as Duke’s Jewish Supremacy and Lars Adelskogh´s Holocaust denying work An Empty Sack. The organization, in cooperation with the publishing house, circulates the magazines Nordic Freedom and Peoples' News.

 

Race Crime

Annual statistics compiled by the Office for Defense of the Constitution of the National Police Board (NPB) were not published for the year 2004 due to a change in monitoring methods. The year 2003 witnessed a rise of 5 percent in hate crimes, from 3,736 in 2002 to 3,914. Of the total, 1,539 crimes were linked to the far right wing, compared to 1,374 the previous year.

 

Antisemitic activity

Many in the Jewish community feel it wise to hide their identity, although they believe only a small percentage of the 400,000 Muslim immigrants to be a threat, according to an assessment of antisemitism in Sweden published in Israel's leading newspaper Ha’aretz. Lena Posner-Koeroesi, president of the Stockholm Jewish community, claimed that whenever officials want to take action on antisemitism, they group it together with Islamophobia and homophobia. Researcher Mikael Tossavainen drafted a report issued by the Council Against Anti-Semitism that surveyed antisemitism among Muslim immigrants. The report aroused controversy due to Tossavainen's interviewing of school teachers, who noted Muslim pupils’ objection to studying the Holocaust. He also stated that Swedes were unaware of what was going on in the large Muslim communities in the suburbs. Swedish Islamic studies scholar Jan Samuelsson claimed in the mainstream Dagens Nyheter (20 Oct. 2004) that Arabs would hate the Jews as long as Israel occupied Arab lands, an idea that met with understanding among Swedes. Prof. Henrik Bachner of Lund University, said events in the Middle East might sharpen antisemitism but were not the origin of it. Bachner stressed that analogies between Israel and the Nazis and the use of terminology drawn from the Christian tradition, such as “the crucifixion of Arafat” in Aftonbladet before Easter 2003, reflected tolerance of antisemitism (Amiram Barkat, “Jews in Sweden Are Afraid to Be Known as Jews,” Ha’aretz, 10 Feb. 2004)

There were 65 unofficial reports of antisemitic incidents in 2004, mostly cases of harassment (threats and verbal abuse), and 4 of physical assault. This compares with police reports for 2003 of 3 cases of minor assault, 35 cases of harassment and 9 cases of vandalism of Jewish sites. Most offenses were committed in the metropolitan areas of Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö where the majority of Jews reside.

 

Violence, Vandalism and Harassment

Much antisemitic crime in 2004, particularly violence and vandalism, appeared to be triggered by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On 30 March, for example, four youths of Middle East origin entered a Jewish-owned shop in Mälmo and assaulted the shopkeeper and a Jewish customer. The shopkeeper was hospitalized. A Jewish boy was also attacked by youth of Middle East extraction in Göteborg, in February.

At a soccer match held on 13 June between a local Maccabi team and a team of immigrant players, spectators shouted “Death to the Jews” and “Crush Zionism.” After the game the coach of the opposing team approached one of the Jewish players and hit him in the face, starting a brawl that ended with the hospitalization of one of the Jewish players.

A group of youths shouted “We’ll kill you” at a Jew standing near a synagogue in Malmö. The police arrested one of them.

The Jewish cemetery in Stockholm was desecrated twice; 17 gravestones were broken in April and 4 in September.

 

Propaganda

Since the September 11 attacks antisemitism has remained a cornerstone of neo-Nazi ideology while Islamphobia is primarily the province of the more ‘respectable’ Sweden Democrats. The National Democrats propagate both, although when discussing conspiracy theories, Jews are usually referred to indirectly as ‘Illuminati’, ‘Free Masonry’ and ‘international capitalism’. Jews are seen as ‘the threat from above’, controlling the political establishment, the media and the police, while Muslims are viewed as ‘the threat from below’, seeking an immigrant takeover. The white population is therefore perceived as being squeezed in a grip between the two.

The Nordic Association was the most dominant among ultra-conservative and xenophobic organizations in disseminating anti-Jewish propaganda in 2004. As noted, it is greatly influenced by US extreme rightists, such as David Duke.

Holocaust denier Ahmed Rami, the operator of Radio Islam, remains the chief disseminator of propaganda denying the Holocaust, although most of his activities in recent years have been limited to the Internet. In spite of his Moroccan background, Rami has gained the approval of several white power groups, including the NSF. In 2004 Rami was invited to speak at the Nordic Association where he accused Judaism of “everything that is evil.”

The Malmö city library hosted an exhibition in April 2004, which presented Israel as a state built on “expulsion and terror” and which justified suicide bombing. At its inauguration, the display was supported, inter alia, by a Malmö politician from the Conservative Party, who said killing Jewish children was justified, and a Social Democrat, who said bombing Jewish civilians was self-defense, Jewish terrorists had created the State of Israel and the task of his party was to represent Muslims, not Jews, in Malmö’s high-immigrant density suburb of Rosengärd.

 

opinion polls

In 2004 the Living History Forum published a major survey on intolerance which was distributed among 10,000 students in Sweden aged 14−18. Over 75 percent of the students actually completed the survey, which covered antisemitism, homophobia, Islamophobia and xenophobia.

Eighty-three percent of respondents agreed with the statement that most Jews were good people and 72 percent said they would not mind living next to a Jew. Twenty-two percent, however, opposed Jews having the right to build religious buildings, while 23 percent opposed Muslims having the right to build mosques. Twelve percent agreed with the statement that there were too many Jews in Sweden. Ninety percent did not support the statement that Jews were unreliable.

In order to measure the level of antisemitism, the compilers of the survey inserted a number of prejudices, such as “A Jew is a stingy person.” Ten similar statements formed a battery of measurable parameters. Five percent agreed with certainty or with some certainty that the scurrilous portrait was correct. The general index of intolerance against Jews was 1.04 (1.00 marking absolute tolerance). Thus, the majority of the students felt positively toward Jews in Sweden; just under 6 percent, however, had an index higher than 2.5, indicating high intolerance. The findings indicate that the rate of antisemitism among Muslim immigrants was no higher than among other sectors of society that identified themselves as non-religious.

 

RESPONSES TO EXTREMISM AND ANTISEMITISM

In May 2004 the Jewish Central Council in Sweden wrote to Archbishop K.G. Hammar, breaking off contacts with the Swedish (Lutheran) Church. Hammar had initiated the decision of the Swedish Church to boycott products originating in the territories occupied by Israel. His campaign had the backing of 12 organizations that want the EU to break its trade agreements with Israel. The Council letter protested a lack of sympathy with the Jews of Sweden and pointed out that singling out Israel for boycott, when many other states could be accused of the same infractions, was an expression of antisemitism.

Seminars and other events were held during 2004 under the auspices of Sweden’s Living History Project, initiated by Prime Minister Göran Persson following the January 2000 Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust. The project has become a model for Holocaust education in Europe. Sweden initiated and remains an active member of the International Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. Paideia, the European Institute of Jewish Studies is based in Sweden.

The Swedish Committee against Antisemitism (SCAA) continued to arrange lectures and courses on antisemitism, Holocaust denial, neo-Nazism and white power music throughout the country, mostly for teachers and school personnel.

Educational seminars on antisemitism and Islamophobia were an important part of the anti-fascist Expo Foundation’s activities in 2004.