Sweden 2007

 

A total of 118 antisemitic hate crimes were registered in 2007 by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, compared to 134 in 2006. The majority were classified as “hate speech.” One-third were perpetrated by neo-Nazis or other right-wing extremists.

 

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

The number of Jews in Sweden is estimated at 18,000-20,000, according to the Council of Swedish Jewish Communities (Judiska Centralrådet), representing about 0.2 percent of the total population of 9.2 million. Approximately half of all Swedish Jews reside in the bigger cities such as Gothenburg, Malmö and Stockholm. Smaller Jewish communities exist in Borås, Eskilstuna, Helsingborg, Jönköping, Karlstad, Lund, Norrköping, Uppsala, Varberg and Västerås. The various communities are independent, but linked through the Council of Swedish Jewish Communities.

The Jewish Communities in Gothenburg and Stockholm are unified communities, meaning that all synagogues, Conservative as well as Orthodox and Progressive, belong to the same organization. There is a Jewish elementary school, a junior high school and a variety of communal organizations. The Jewish library in Stockholm provides 23,000 titles. Paideia, the European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden offers a one year highly intensive study program. The bimonthly Judisk Krönika (Jewish Chronicle) and weekly Jewish radio programs provide information about Jewish cultural events. There is an annual Jewish film festival in Stockholm. Shechita (Jewish Ritual Slaughter) is prohibited and kosher meat is imported from abroad.

 

POLITICAL PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

Extreme Right-Wing Parties

Since its founding in 1988, the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna − SD) have grown from a small group of marginalized neo-Nazis into a political party that won several municipal seats across Sweden in 2006 (see ASW 2006). SD have demonstrated support for Israel and denounced antisemitism on several occasions; however, their stance toward the Muslim population has become increasingly islamophobic.

With a populist agenda modelled after Denmark’s Dansk Folkeparti, the SD seek to gain parliamentary seats in the 2010 election. Their campaign includes projecting what could be termed a “conservative yet concerned” image; they thus distance themselves from more vocal racist and extremist groups on the subject of immigration. Nevertheless, the evening paper Expressen and the anti-racist periodical Expo reported that several SD representatives donated money to militant right-wing extremist groups, such as the Swedish Resistance Movement and the neo-Nazi network Info-14. Some members of SD are also members of the National Socialist Front (see below).

The National Democrats (Nationaldemokraterna − ND) are a breakaway group from the SD. The party is represented in the local government of Södertälje and Nykvarn south of Stockholm. In recent years the party has undergone further radicalization as activists from several neo-Nazi groups, such as National Youth (Nationell Ungdom − NDU), have been signing up as members.

Founded in 1994, the National Socialist Front (Nationalsocialistisk Front − NSF), gradually filled the vacuum created in the extreme right movement after the demise of the White Aryan Resistance (Vitt Ariskt Motstånd −VAM –White Aryan Resistance, a militant racist group formed in the 1980s). Led by Anders Ärleskog and Daniel Höglund and with close to 500 members, it is Sweden’s largest and most traditional neo-Nazi organization, whose ideology includes virulent antisemitism and racial biology reminiscent of the Nazi era. A large number of NSF members have been convicted of violent crimes. NSF supporters took part in a number of demonstrations in 2007 (see below). The NSF’s attitude toward the Holocaust is that the figures are vastly overrated. Besides their web magazine Den Svenske Nationalsocialisten, the NSF cooperates with the publishing house Logik Förlaget, a distributor of Swedish and foreign antisemitic books and music.

 

Extremist Right-Wing Groups and Activity

The anti-racist magazine Expo reported a total 1,142 activities carried out by right-wing extremist groups in Sweden during 2007, 68 percent of which were attributed to the NSF, 24 percent to the SMR and the rest to the Info-14 network, including so-called independent nationalists. Right-wing extremists operate mainly in the Stockholm region and in the southern and western part of Sweden. While the level of neo-Nazi activities has not risen over recent years, confrontations between right and left-wing extremists have become more violent.

Under the banner of holy racial war, the Swedish Resistance Movement (Svenska Motståndsrörelsen − SMR), founded in the mid-1990s, has become the most militant of Swedish right-wing extremist groups. SMR is led by Klas Lund, one of the most notorious neo-Nazis in the country. Internecine conflict within the Nazi movement resulted in attacks by SMR members on members of a local Nazi network in Helsingborg. This led to the exclusion of SMR from one of the largest demonstrates of the Swedish extreme right, the People’s March (Folkets Marsch – see below). SMR has been trying to regain its reputation within the Swedish Nazi movement by radicalizing its image and fighting back, apparently with some success, as former critics, such as the Info-14 network, have expressed solidarity with the group.

Info-14, which describes itself as an “independent patriotic news medium,” seeks to replace the traditional group structure of right-wing extremists with a network of independent groups modelled after similar networks in Germany. The “14” in the name refers to the popular neo-Nazi slogan “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children,” coined by American white supremacist David Lane (d. 2007), who was inspired by Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Their homepage, established in 1995, informs of right-wing extremist activities and incites to political violence. During 2007 the group tried to conduct a campaign in schools to recruit new members among students.

Info-14 arranges the two largest annual meetings of neo-Nazis in Sweden; the People’s March in Stockholm on Sweden’s National Day, June 6, and the Salem March on December 8 or 9, organized in memory of a youth with links to extremist right-wing groups, who was murdered in 2000. Both these events are met with a strong opposition, mainly from AFA (Antifascistisk Aktion) activists.

In July more than one hundred neo-Nazis marched to the German embassy in Stockholm in order to demand the immediate release from jail of Canadian Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel (see General Analysis). The demonstration was organized by the NSF, Info-14, the Danish Danmarks Nationalsocialistiske Bevægelse and the German Nordisches Hilfswerk. A letter was delivered to the ambassador and representatives from the various organizations spoke of Jewish world conspiracies and alleged that Sweden was a dictatorship.

During the annual demonstrations organized by the NSF in memory of Swedish King Charles XII on November 30 in Lund and Stockholm, a leading activist, Jonas Andersson, urged participants to struggle against Communists and Zionists. (By his brilliant military campaigns and victories, King Charles XII brought glory to Sweden in the early eighteenth century.)

The Nordic Publishing House (Nordiska Förlaget), founded in 2002, became an organization, the Nordic Association (Nordiska Förbundet), in 2004. Influenced by the US National Alliance, it has thousands of registered users on its Internet platform. It describes itself as an ideological association of various enterprises, projects and private individuals, aimed at maintaining the interests and survival of the people of the North.

The Nordic Publishing House is by far Scandinavia’s largest distributor of extremist right-wing propaganda, literature and music. Its list includes David Duke’s Jewish Supremacy and Holocaust denier Lars Adelskogh’s En tom säck kan inte stå (An empty sack cannot stand), of which a new edition was published in 2007. The Nordic Association and Nordic Publishing House circulate the magazines Nordisk Frihet and Folkets Nyheter.

 

ANTISEMITIC ACTIVITY

Violence and Harassment

The governmental Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRÅ) groups hate crimes into four subcategories by motive: xenophobic, antisemitic, homophobic and islamophobic. The Council registered 118 antisemitic hate crimes in 2007, 3 percent of the total of 3,536 and a slight decline from the 134 reported in 2006; hate crimes in general increased by 8 percent. Most antisemitic hate crimes were classified as “hate speech” (including physical and verbal harassment, printed and online material and messages, telephone threats, and graffiti).

Of the total number of antisemitic crimes, 45 were cases of physical and verbal harassment and threats against individuals; another 45 were directed against Jewish institutions and facilities (including 12 incidents of defacing with graffiti or vandalism of cemeteries and Jewish institutions). One-third (34 percent) of all antisemitic hate crimes were perpetrated by neo-Nazis or other right-wing extremists, the highest percentage of ideologically motivated incidents in all sub-categories. There were 12 incidents of antisemitic defamation and four of unlawful discrimination.

 

Internet

Radio Islam www.radioislam.net is an antisemitic website available in 18 languages. Police investigations into the Radio Islam website, following complaints by the Swedish Committee against Antisemitism (Svenska kommittén mot antisemitism − SKMA) and others, have not led to any charges to date. The Swedish authorities have found it difficult to prove who is responsible for the content on the site. The case is further complicated from a legal point of view by the fact that the site is stored on a US server.

With thousands of registered users www.nordisk.nu is today the largest nationalist Internet forum in Sweden. The offer of a “portal for Nordic identity, culture and tradition,” is addressed to those who are tired of being called “racist,” “fascist” or “Nazi.” The site attracts not only right-wing extremists but people without any ideological connections. Registration is free of charge, but donations are welcomed. The forum was founded by persons close to the above-mentioned Nordic Association.

A recent addition to the nationalist scene is the Swedish version of www.metapedia.org, launched in October 2006. In addition to texts denying the Holocaust, it includes a calendar of extreme right events and a register of Jews and Jewish-owned companies in the Swedish media industry. Metapedia is a professional-looking site, very similar in layout to the widely used Wikipedia.

Midgård is a publishing label, which records and sells both Swedish and international neo-Nazi music. It also offers a range of books and fanzines.

Websites that mimic legitimate Holocaust information sites are reportedly thought to be genuine among some young students searching for material on the Holocaust. The websites www.levandehistoria.com and www.sannhistoria.org are deceptively similar to www.levandehistoria.se the URL of the government agency Living History Forum.

The Flashback Forum www.flashback.info with discussion forums on everything from celebrity gossip to economics, includes a Holocaust denial page with heated debates and many active online users.

 

RESPONSES TO ANTISEMITISM

The absence of a public statement from the Swedish government following the Holocaust denial conference held in Tehran, December 11-12, 2006, was criticized in parliament and in newspapers, such as Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s largest daily, Expressen, a major evening paper, and Göteborgs-Tidningen, a local evening paper in the Gothenburg area.

The Council of Swedish Jewish Communities and the SKMA wrote a letter to the government, protesting the absence of a clear stand against the conference and the statement it issued saying that it was satisfied with the collective statement put out by the EU. Foreign Minister Carl Bildt responded that Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust and denial of the right of the State of Israel to exist were unacceptable, and that the Swedish government promoted human rights and fought antisemitism, racism and religious intolerance. No official public statement was ever issued.

A second debate in connection with the Tehran conference arose simultaneously. Jan Bernhoff, a teacher at the Åsö municipal adult education school (Komvux) in Stockholm gave a lecture at the conference based on his 2007 MA thesis, “Holocaust Demography,” which claims that only 300,000 Jews were murdered during World War II. The anti-racist magazine Expo revealed that Bernhoff had lectured at the school on World War II history during 2006. Among others claims, he alleged that not Hitler but England and Poland should be blamed for starting the war and that Hitler had been unjustly accused. Bernhoff also contributed to the antisemitic cartoon competition organized by the Iranian state. All this was known to his colleagues at the time, but no measures were taken. Only when his participation at the conference became public knowledge and aroused controversy was he eventually suspended from his position for the rest of the term.

Minister of Education Jan Björklund expressed his concern and Lotta Edholm, the commissioner responsible for education in Stockholm, made it clear that in her view a Holocaust revisionist was not suited to transmitting the values inherent in the Swedish curriculum.

In March 2007, the Israeli-born anti-Zionist musician Gilad Atzmon was invited to Stockholm by the Worker’s Education Association (Arbetarnas Bildningsförbund − ABF), the oldest and largest adult education organization in Sweden, the Swedish Association of Christian Social Democrats and the Brotherhood Movement (Sveriges Kristna Socialdemokrater/Broderskapsrörelsen) − all three affiliated with the Social Democratic Party; and Folket i Bild/ Kulturfront (FiB/K), an “anti-imperialist” magazine, to speak at a seminar on Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan. Atzmon is well-known internationally for his antisemitic views, which range from allegations of Jewish control of public opinion to Jewish responsibility for antisemitism and claims that Israel is a Nazi state. In addition, he propagates the myth of a Jewish world conspiracy, questions the Holocaust and supports neo-Nazi falsifications of history.

The SKMA protested the invitation, demanding that the Social Democratic organizations withdraw it. However, both the Christian Social Democrats and the ABF defended their decision. International Secretary of the Christian Social Democrats, Ulf Carmesund, claimed that Atzmon was merely critical of Israeli policy. Furthermore, according to the logic of the organizations, if the spokesperson is a Jew, then his statements cannot be antisemitic. Atzmon himself responded that to claim his texts were antisemitic was in itself Zionist propaganda.