Confronting the New Fascism in Sweden

During the second half of the 20th century, many terms coined by psychologists were picked up by the general public and developed currency in popular discourse. One of the most frequently used is the word “projection”. It is now commonly understood to mean “unconsciously ascribing to others negative characteristics which you yourself possess”.

Never has the power of projection been more evident than in the political culture of Sweden. From an outsider’s perspective, Sweden displays all the attributes of a fascist state: only one political point of view is considered acceptable, and any dissent against it is vigorously punished, by both official and unofficial means. Those who oppose the reigning ideology may lose their jobs or be prosecuted. They are vilified and scapegoated in the (largely state-owned) media to the point where compliant Swedish drones are made to understand that all dissidents are fair game, and deserve anything bad that happens to them.

Sverigedemokraterna in the crosshairsNow, that sounds like fascism to me. But the Swedish media reserve the term for Sverigedemokraterna (the Sweden Democrats, SD), the only significant political party that opposes mass immigration and challenges the reigning Multicultural ideology. For such blatant heresies they are denounced in the press, beaten up by gangs of “anti-fascists” in the street, and have their homes and cars vandalized. Known supporters of SD may lose their jobs or pensions.

Yet all of this is acceptable, you see, and even commendable, because the Sweden Democrats are fascists. As you will learn from the article below, this “fact” has been proven by scientific research, so we know it must be true.

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Before presenting the translated article, some background is necessary. A scandal surrounding Sverigedemokraterna arose last fall, when an incident that occurred more than two years previously came to light through the release of a video to the press.

In the summer of 2010, Kent Ekeroth and Erik Almqvist — both later elected to the Swedish parliament for Sverigedemokraterna — became involved in an early morning brawl in the city of Stockholm. In a movie clip filmed with a mobile phone, Erik Almqvist was heard to shout abuse at a 21-year-old woman, and used the derogative word babbe about the immigrant comedian Soran Ismail.

Later in the video, the two politicians were seen picking up iron rods for their defense, an incident that caused a major Twitter campaign and media uproar in Sweden. After this incident Islam-critical blogs became known as “iron rod blogs” in Sweden.

As a consequence of the affair, Erik Almqvist resigned his seat in the Swedish parliament, while Kent Ekeroth resigned from his positions in the parliament, but retained his seat.

This incident, which was immediately seized on by the media powers-that-be as a welcome “gotcha” moment concerning SD, is what is referred to in the article below (which was published last November) as “yesterday’s events”.

Many thanks to our Swedish correspondent Skånska for translating this piece from Dagens Nyheter. Skånska’s commentary and explanations have been placed in square brackets:

“The Sweden Democrats are a fascist party”
by Henrik Arnstad

15 November 2012

Problematic terminology. A new fascism celebrates triumphs in Europe. This applies not least to the Sweden Democrats, who advance in a country where fascism has up until now been weak. Today’s confusion of concepts must end and it is time to name SD properly in the public discourse, writes historian and journalist Henrik Arnstad.

The Sweden Democrats (SD) are gaining even more sympathizers, and thus it is time for Sweden to leave the widespread ignorance of fascism behind. Sweden — as well as all of Europe — needs to confront the presence of an ideology that has the potential to dominate the 21st century.

The core of the fascist ideology is nationalism. A popular ultra-nationalism, with the aim of saving the nation from decay and degeneration with national rebirth as a real political objective.

First, however, the cancer tumor on the nation’s body must be fought. For Hitler, it was about the Jews and the solution was the Holocaust. [Typical Swedish academic nonsense: the definition of die Judenfrage and die Endlösung were not synchronous; they were more than six years apart, partly during wartime. Auswanderung came first, even to Madagascar!]

For SD, it is about Islam, which has to be cleared away – if nothing else, by means of genocide.

If we are to understand SD, it is of the utmost importance that we realize the optimism in this. Today fascism is Sweden’s only political movement that is confident of the future. For the voters, SD paint in beautiful colors an ethnically cleansed, mythical and revitalized nationalist Sweden. Compare, for example, the Social Democrats’ pessimistic nostalgia. Therefore fascism is advancing in the polls.

Today we live in a Europe where a new fascist politics celebrates triumphs. This applies not least to SD, advancing in a country where previously fascism was weak. This new politics is called by international research “neo-fascism”, and is the result of an intellectual work which began in France in the years after 1968.

Under the intellectual leadership of the philosopher Alain de Benoist the movement Nouvelle Droite (the New Right) formulated the future of fascism — it was about building a new political brand after Adolf Hitler, after World War II and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The fight for one’s own “biological race” was condemned, not least because science left racial biology behind.

Instead the new fascism was formulated:

  • The pluralistic and multicultural society shall be abolished in favor of an ethnically homogeneous society.
  • Western democracy — based on universal human rights and individual freedom — shall be replaced by a democracy based on the idea of an “organic society”.
  • The cosmopolitanism of the modern era shall be defeated through a celebration of authentic national culture.
  • Insight must be reached that European cultures find themselves facing an acute threat; they have almost gone off the rails. Multiculturalism and multi-ethnicity undermine homogeneous cultural and ethnic identities in Europe.
  • The new fascism shall be presented as an innovative third way between the traditional left and right.

Strategically, the very word “fascism” should be fought — it should not be used due to its nature as a term of invective. When France as the new fascist pioneer country put into practical politic service — through the party National Front — the political thoughts of Nouvelle Droite, new standards were created, which today apply to neo-fascism. All references to interwar fascism are clinically removed, as well as all open violence. The riding boots have been replaced by polished shoes, the leash by a necktie.

Even the Swedish SD eventually learned the lesson (even if yesterday’s events show that the traditional biological racism remain underneath the cleaned surface).

However, ideologically speaking, fascism is still fascism. Racism is manifested — then as now — deriving from ultra-nationalism, in an ongoing negotiation about who is included or excluded. In the 1930s, the Jews were diverse and in a whimsical fashion alternately included and excluded in the concept of “the nation” (prime example is Mussolini’s Italy).

In the past, SD members were hatefully anti-Semitic and the party leader spoke of “Jewish pigs”. Today, SD includes Swedish Jews in “the nation” — which may change tomorrow.

The neo-fascists of SD do not want to abolish parliamentary democracy, unlike, for example, Adolf Hitler. Instead, the tyranny of the majority society shall prevail, and, via democratic decision, vulnerable minorities shall be racially oppressed. Neo-fascism does not threatens the parliamentary system, but the basic idea of every human’s equal value in a liberal democracy.

How then might the traditional parties take action to handle SD and neo-fascism? I think we can actually learn from history.

1.   Never cooperate. Swedish politicians have done the right thing, never having collaborated with SD. The moment when in particular the traditional Right is tempted to form alliances to meet the Left, fascism will win score really big successes. That was how both Hitler and Mussolini gained power.
2.   Never any political leakage. Every now and then you hear voices about “daring to debate,” [våga ta debatten] which means buying into SD’s formulation problem. This is a path dangerous to life. That Germany accepted Hitler’s idea of “the Jewish question” meant no setback for his party, on the contrary. That the “Jews” were discussed as a social problem rather than what they really were — a community resource — set a course towards disaster.
3.   Dare to use the correct terminology. Consensus is total in the community of international experts on research into fascism: the new European parties are fascist. Today’s conceptual confusion must end; it’s time to begin naming SD properly in public discourse.

The last point is the most difficult one. It seems painful, distressing and traumatic for the West to accept the return of fascism.

Nevertheless, it is important. The entire Swedish political spectrum need to rethink the issue. Both the bourgeois bloc [MFCK-borgerlig] and the Red-Green [SMV vänster] bloc have a new main enemy — whose goal is not to defeat the Right or the Left. SD’s party secretary Björn Söder today talks about reaching more than fifty percent of the voters.

Fascism does not share political power; fascism wants the power all to itself. Fascism has always been underestimated, but fascism should never be underestimated. We have moved into a new fascist era, but have historical experience that we may take advantage of in this new era. If we — this the second time — dare to look the black and brown ideology straight in the face.

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Henrik Arnstad is a historian and a journalist.

For five years the author has been studying the ideology of fascism based on modern international research. In the spring his book will be published: “Beloved fascism: The ideology and history of the black and brown movements.”

20 thoughts on “Confronting the New Fascism in Sweden

  1. What the Hell is wrong with these people? Are there no Swedish words for “self-preservation”. Or how about “Survival”? Has Sweden turned into an extended, lethal “Dumb Blonde” Joke?
    It’s hard for me to sympathize with people who don’t want to survive.

  2. The text is a jargon-laden way of saying “GODZILLA IS COMING, RUN FOR THE HILLS!”

    Talk about scare tactics. When he writes “Consensus is total in the community of international experts” he of course forgot to define this community of experts. A not-so-fancy way of saying “shut up, the scientists have spoken”. Are we talking about the same experts who tried to rub diversity in the face of traditional ethnic europeans? Perhaps the same experts that have doctored hockeystick graphs to convince us that polar bears are running around our backyards and taking over our public spaces.

    Hey, we may soon have a polar bear elected for office, since irresponsible propaganda from the Right/GOP/Tea Party/SD/UKIP has swamped us in unassimilable immigrants from the North Pole. And the polls (not those people betrayed by 0bama)show that the polar bears’ birthrate is on the rise.

    RUJV

  3. “Henrik Arnstad is a historian and a journalist.”

    There are a few typos in there. It should read “Henrik Arnstad is a ahistorian and a journolist”.

    RUJV

  4. This is repugnant. It is so completely derisive & dismissive of people who hold a different point of view from the writer as to make them appear less human than he.

    So two men grab iron rods to protect themselves against attack and are, ipso facto, branded thugs for so doing?

    Then what, pray tell, would this writer call the tactics of EXPO? Or is EXPO the leftist exception because it labels itself anti-fascist and thus may attack those with whom it disagrees and do so with impunity? Nice little totalitarian polity they’re operating.

    It’s intellectually painful to read this kind of deeply dishonest writing all the way through to its conclusions. One comes to recognize in such thinking a cogntive blindness which is far more serious and pervasive than mere projection.

    Take the following piece of verbal mendacity:

    The neo-fascists of SD do not want to abolish parliamentary democracy, unlike, for example, Adolf Hitler. Instead, the tyranny of the majority society shall prevail

    Notice that Hitler and SD are nudged up against one another? This is a notoriusly favorite disingenuous verbal tick of the Left. I don’t think they can help themselves, even though Hitler’s version of things was definitely socialist, as is theirs. They have put much effort and intellectual strain in attempting to move him rightward but the only people they convince is True Believers like themselves.

    Notice, too, that democracy comes under fire as “the tyranny of the majority”. That rhetorical dishonesty leaves one with what choices exactly? Rule by an elite who know what is best for everyone and can therefore rule by diktat due solely to their superiority? My, my.

    The USSR tried that. So did the medieval Church. Both brought disaster and corruption in their wake. Millions of ruined lives to show for those efforts, though the truth finally won out.

    Sweden is a sad place. Recently, a Swede told me that when they want to break out of the straitjacket, people go to Norway to let loose. God help them if that’s the best they can do.

    Sweden appears to be dying from the inside out. I’d rather have messy, hard-to-manage America than have to reside in say, Rosengard.

    If present-day Sweden is the result of what its elites have foisted off on Swedish citizens in the name of some fantasy multiculturalism, God help future Swedes. It will be ugly.

  5. @RUJV–

    I, too, am fond of the soubriquet “jornolist”. One of the reasons I like it so much is that it is a self-designation. They never planned to let that one escape into the public sphere, exposing as it did their oh-so, too-too precious irony.

    Gag me.

  6. There are many aspects of this article I find offensive, but I’ll limit myself to two:

    1. The extraordinarily patronising tone and intellectually abysmal substance of it. It is like reading the transcript of a naive but well meaning primary school teacher’s lecture to his/her class of seven year olds. And this was was published in a major Swedish newspaper. “This new politics is called by international research “neo-fascism” …” Oh, so rather than write “I call/is called be me”, its “international research” that does the defining; well then its settled, who could argue with definitions which were created by international research .

    The repeated invocation of Jews, Nazis and the Holocaust in his attempt to hammer home his contention that the Swedish Democrats are wicked evil people with an inhumane agenda. Time and time again the primary school teacher appropriates the tragedy of mid C20th Jewish experience for polemic gain. The disgusting reality of course is that the Swedish Left, as with the Left of the entire Western world, is the driving force of hysterical and venomous anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist and, they can deny it ’til they’re blue in the face (but no sensible adult would accept such denials), anti-Jewish rhetoric. I have a gut hunch that the Swedish Democrats probably have, like Geert Wilders PVV and the Swiss People’s Party, the most pro-Israel policies of any Swedish political party. Yet Mr Arnstad has the temerity to opine that the Swedish Democrats’ acceptance of Jews as part of the Swedish nation “may change tomorrow”. Yes, of course, Swedish Jews should not be fooled by the SD; they are far better off supporting the political party that produces such odious creatures as the mayor of Malmo (and refuses to repudiate him).

    One wonders if Mr Arnstad, when writing such fatuous nonsense, is cynically conscious of what he is doing. I hope that is the case because the alternative is that he is so lacking in intellectual firepower he doesn’t realise how dumb he is.

  7. If he really was a historian, he would have discovered that both fascism and nazism is left wing politics. Moussolini founded his party “fasces” after being politically active on the far, far left side for years. Hitler founded his party and called it NSDAP or the “national socialistic german workers party”, where the brownshirts spend their days fighting the communist in the streets of Berlin. The communist shared so much of its ideology, that it threatened the growth of nazism in Germany. Later on, when communism was no longer a threat, germany made friend with their closest friends in europe, the soviets. Remember that Hitler and Staling took Poland together and was allied all the way up till 1941.
    Now, these two ideologies is the ones tha the “historian” want to connect with right wing SD today.
    Sweden has managed to hire left wing extremists in all their newspapers, tv-channels ad academica and now very frightened by the fact that internet helps people getting their own information from sources beyond the left wing sensorship.
    Well, they have only seen the begining of the end of the ’68 regime that tries to ruin the best countries in the world.

  8. The socialist are more than happy to associate right wing policies with Nazism but seem less happy with the connection of socialism and communism.This whole simplistic critique could equally be presented as radical socialism is identical to genocidal murderous communism.The socialists have their roots in Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung.We should remind people more often of the historical cost in blood of socialism.

    http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2010/03/the-communist-holocaust/

  9. The guy does not have an academic degree! He claimed to have a masters degree in history but no such thing could be found! He explained the situation by stating that he had been too busy doing other things (presumably by writing about the nazification of his fellow countrymen).

  10. Simply end the welfare state and your problem with criminal immigrants will largely solve itself within a few years.

  11. Another small town wannabe.Seemingly there is a dime a dozen in Swedish Academia these days. Come on, give me a break.

  12. Five years to produce such a disappointig result seems to much time, even for a mentally challenged fellow like this. I wonder if he gained his position thruogh some affirmative action program? Does anyone know wether he has been diagnosed ADD (attention deficit disorder)? Nondisjunction anomaly perhaps? Trisomy 21 to be precise.

  13. It wouldn’t surprise me if this “expert” would consider it ethical to capture “fascist” SD women, and use them as breeding slaves to make little “Anti-Fascists”.

  14. As I believed I mentioned yesterday I have been told that in at the foundation of the Bilderberg group were former communist Dennis Healey, ex-Nazis – was that Prince Bernhardt? – and the Rothschilds.

    Now, one would not have thought that the Rothschilds would have wanted anything to do with ex-Nazis (who were a bit naughty to the Jews) nor would former communists.

    Perhaps this goes to expose the true nature of Bilderbergerism. The ex-Nazis could sit down with former communists because they were both of the Left and the Rothschilds were there because they had a little plan that they wanted the Left to help them with i.e. the collapse of European Christian Civilisation (both the communists and the Nazis were keen on that) and the creation of a totalitarian one world state.

    Right, gentlemen, so we all agree, that’s splended. Let’s get started with the European Coal and Iron Community then.

    And don’t forget that Churchill was spot on when he said that the new fascism will be anti-fascism.

  15. No Swedish culture
    No Swedes

    Mona Sahlin, leftist, once laughed in a response, and said there is no Swedish culture

    “And what do we have, Midsommarafton, and such dorky things..?”

    Fredrik Reinfeldt, PM, has said that there are no such thing as Swedes. Everyone on Swedish soil, is a Swede.

    What leftists and other politicians are doing all over the West, at every occasion, is as true dhimmies, to actively working on denying our culture.

    Midsommarafton: Midsummer pre-Christian celebration

  16. The article is wrong about Hitler and Holocaust.

    Truth about Holocaust, media, academics, historians cover up:

    Let’s be fair and remember who actually invented Holocaust. According to numerous historic documents Holocaust was invented in Israel occupied by muslims in 1920s by grand mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Husseini (interesting fact: Haj Amin Husseini was an Ottoman Empire army officer in 1914-1917 and participated first-hand in Armenian genocide). Husseini’s idea and ultimate goal were to make Israel free of Jews completely and create Islamic state. He organized killing Jews in Israel on regular basis for decades in 1920s and 30s. To fulfill his goal, he contacted Hitler in 1941 and asked him for help when Hitler was planning military occupation of ME. He also gave Hitler the Holocaust idea and helped him to implement Holocaust in Europe. Husseini organized in Europe two islamofascist brigades which operated under SS supervision, had their own concentration camp, and killed thousands of Europeans, including Jews.
    According to testimony by Nazi war criminals to Nuremberg Criminal court in 1946, the Mufti’s influence was critical to the German decision to annihilate the Jews of Europe. At the Nuremberg Trials in July 1946, Dieter Wisliceny testified:
    “The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan… He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chambers of Auschwitz.”

    Nuremberg Criminal court declared Husseini war criminal, but, Britain and France helped him to escape to Egypt and later to palestine where he organized Fatah.

    Arafat was his nephew and lieutenant in Fatah. After Husseini died, Arafat organized PLO that committed numerous murders around the world killing Europeans, Americans and Israelis.

    So, commemorating Holocaust, we must remember that palestinian muslims hold Holocaust “patent” and still continue their Holocaust agenda. PLO and Fatah were organized on Nazi and SS ideology and uphold their fundamentals.

    Thus, the only way to solve this historic problem and prevent future is to outlaw and totally exterminate PLO and Fatah.

    Mark Bernadiner, PH.D.
    Pearland, TX

    References:

    1. The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini
    Chuck Morse, Universe, Inc., September 11, 2003, 186 pp
    2. Nazi Roots of Modern Radical Islam
    Tom Knowlton, DefenseWatch, 12-18-2002
    3. Photos and Documents,
    http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/gallery/
    4. Muftism and Nazism: World War II Collaboration Documents,
    http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/nazis.html
    5. Islam’s Nazi Connections,
    Serge Trifkovic FrontPageMagazine.com, December 05, 2002
    6. Palestine is our land and Jews are our dogs, Prof. Francisco Gil-White
    Pen State U., January 2003

  17. Very interesting, Mark! I so often find history to be a different story than in our official books (especially schoolbooks) That is why I love to discover such gems as your posting. I have much more interesting stuff on the subject, like nazi troops ending up in egypt and ME as instructors to train palestine terror groups, etc. Many of europes communist terrorist also have their training done in these camps! I urge you to look more into that subject, there is much more to be found.

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