The past weekend may well be considered a high-water mark for Swedish fascism. The boost in confidence the movement as a whole received with the solid electoral gains of the Sweden Democrats party in 2014 has begun to have an impact.
Readers have probably already heard about the rampage of members of the Swedish Resistance Movement (SMR, by its Swedish initials) through downtown Stockholm last Friday. Dozens of masked youth clad in black (reported as 200 in the
media) targeted people of apparent non-Swedish appearance in the neighborhood of the central subway station. Though the anti-immigrant sentiment whipped up following the New Year's Eve incident of mass sexual assault in Cologne undoubtedly had an impact, the decision by the Social Democratic government to deport some 80,000 refugees from Swedish soil also sent a clear message that even the center left sees the wave of mass immigration as a problem to be eliminated rather than the humanitarian crisis it actually is. Such actions by a ruling government can only encourage those who stand further to the right.
Despite the relative absence of violence associated with it, the "People's Demonstration" called for the following day was no less disquieting. The reports following the demonstration put the attendance at around 300 people, which may be one of the largest such demonstrations in the past few years. It also marks the first time, as one observer noted, that several different fascist and neo-Nazi organizations (SMR, Nordic Youth, members of the former Swede's Party, and former Sweden Democrats) appeared together at the same event. One speaker of note was Annelie Sjöberg, a member of the Centre Party, who is currently employed by the Municipality of Söderköping. The Centre Party is a parliamentary party with no known direct connections to the far right, but the fact that even a low-level civil servant would agree to speak in front of them, and publicly acknowledge it in the mainstream media, is a development that should not be ignored.
A counter-demonstration organized by the Allt åt Alla (Everything for Everyone) activist network managed to occupy approximately half of the small park where the People's Demonstration was to be held, and kept up a spirited barrage of chants, boos, and vuvuzela playing throughout the event. It was a large enough group that the police brought in to maintain order decided to separate the two groups with a cordon of police vans, but it was not large enough for the counter-demonstrators to push for anything more significant than vocal disruption. At best, during the first hour of the gathering, we were at least of equal size to the fascists, but as the event continued our side began steadily losing participants until a few handfuls were left at the very end.
The course of this counter-demonstration shows the limitations of a single group or network trying to organize a mass event in an environment where the radical and revolutionary left is fragmented and apparently largely passive. There appeared to be no effort to reach out to other organizations on the left to build and organize the event, and apart from a handful of speakers at the very beginning there was no real attempt to provide it with any meaningful structure. A serious, coordinated effort by a group of left organizations in the weeks running up to the demonstration would have yielded better results, with a clearer sense of direction that would both have drawn greater numbers to the event and encouraged people to stay on past the first hour.
One immediate response to the "People's" Demonstration was the hashtag
#inteerkvinna ("not your woman"), with which Swedish women made it clear that they didn't buy into the racists' message that they needed to be protected from immigrants and refugees.
Efforts like this are not enough, however, when the leader of the Sweden Democrats is confident enough to send out a mass
email to municipal politicians in the Moderate Party (the former ruling center-right party) inviting them to dialogue and collaboration. Anna Kinberg Batra, the leader of the Moderates, distanced herself from the initiative, saying that the Sweden Democrats were no alternative, but without an organized, militant radical left exerting the same kind of influence as the Sweden Democrats (both outside of, and potentially within, the Riksdag), there will be nothing to stop individual Moderates from reaching back out, either now or in the near future.
Combating the rising tide of fascism in Europe will not be a quick or easy task. But there is much more the left can do, and the existing parties and organizations need to be willing to reach out and collaborate in order to achieve this.
