Silence on racism is growing

Since World War II, the relationship between the media and extreme nationalist movements and movements based on racial ideology has been complicated. On the one hand, the world of white supremacists, with their secretiveness, uniforms and extremism, combined with the violent acts of members and sympathisers, exerts a strong attraction. On the other hand, there has been a debate during large parts of the post-war period, in the media and beyond, about how any attention actually favours such groups rather than helps combat them. Another issue generating discussion is whether people with racist or extreme nationalist views should be allowed to appear in the media or not. Some claim that such people are allowed to appear to far too great an extent, while others believe they should be allowed to speak to a greater extent.

Media coverage of extreme nationalists and racial ideologies in the post-war period has often seesawed between silence, belittling, demonization and ridicule. That being said, it is important to emphasise that there is a great deal of good journalism on the topic. One recurring feature in media coverage as well as public discourse is the inability to acknowledge that intolerance in various forms is part and parcel of Swedish reality. Sweden does not constitute the historical exception we visualised when the image of “good Sweden” was constructed after the Second World War. “Good Sweden” is a country whose self-image could be summarised as “anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance have existed and still exist, but not here or in any case not to that great an extent”.

In this debate, intolerance in its various guises was relegated to the extreme end of the political spectrum – or was viewed as boyish pranks and explained away as ignorance. This is found, for instance, in the public discourse about attacks on refugee camps in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

During the post-war period, these phenomena came to be attributed largely to the political margins or to “young, angry, frustrated, ignorant and marginalised men” who do not really mean what they say. To a certain extent, intolerance gradually ceased to be viewed as an ideological phenomenon and instead became a problem of the individual.

This attitude was manifest on a broader scale for the first time in conjunction with “the swastika epidemic” of 1959/60, when a wave of anti-Semitic graffiti, vandalising of Jewish cemeteries and the like swept across Europe. In its wake, an intense debate ensued over how this was possible. But in the Swedish discourse, the phenomenon was not as a rule linked to Sweden or some home-grown tradition. An example of this is from a January 1960 leader in the newspaper Skånska Dagbladet that was typical of the time:

How can hatred of a people hibernate and spring to life anew in a democratic country like ours? One explanation may be that it is groups of young people with Nazi sympathies who are influenced by swastika-painting Nazis in Germany, groups that do not know about Hitler’s acts of violence. The Federal Republic of Germany should take responsibility for the anti-Semitic wave now extending across Europe. Swastika painting and attacks on Jewish synagogues began in Germany. The campaign has spread from here to other countries.

The historian of ideas Henrik Bachner wrote in Återkomsten [‘The Return’], his doctoral dissertation about Swedish reactions to the anti-Jewish wave:

The reactions suggest that the spread of the anti-Jewish epidemic to Sweden was troubling. It raised questions about aspects of Swedish history that few wanted to consider, reminded people of a past that few wanted to recall. Anti-Semitism did not fit into the selective image of Sweden and Swedish history now being chiselled out. Nor did race-based biology and other undesirable philosophical notions that had been touched up and removed from the picture. When anti-Jewish bigotry once again made its presence known, there was clearly a strong force compelling people to deny and redefine these things as something else. What was anti-Semitism in West Germany was in Sweden an inability to leave things alone, youthful troublemaking and immaturity.

These are explanations that, after initial indignation, are repeated time and time again in the media and public debate. In the decades after the Second World War, a stereotypical image of people expressing various forms of intolerance was also created – in the first place, it was young men with little education, second a few marginalised Nazis and third solitary individuals from the Swedish majority. In many cases, it is difficult determining how to deal with deviations from this pattern in the debate.

An example of this inability to see the complexity of intolerance is the debate over Radio Islam. Radio Islam started local broadcasts in the Stockholm region in 1987. The radio station was said to be “anti-Zionist” and “pro-Palestinian”. When the broadcasts began, the person in charge of the station, Ahmed Rami, maintained that the radio station’s aim was to strengthen the friendship between Swedes and Muslims living in Sweden and deepen political knowledge about the question of Palestine. However, from the very beginning, Radio Islam’s broadcasts were tinged with anti-Semitic elements. According to Henrik Bachner, Radio Islam was supported in this view by a number of commentators, who argued that the local radio station represented a legitimate viewpoint within the scope of the debate on the Middle East.

A partial explanation for this, as has been suggested previously, may be that Rami was to start with beyond the scope of this debate. We were dealing with an anti-Semite who did not correspond to the stereotypical caricature; that is, he was not a national socialist or an ethnically Swedish lone activist – on the contrary, he belonged to a minority group.

The Radio Islam affair also highlights other aspects of the inability to handle this complexity. One person who came to figure in the Radio Islam debate was Sister Marianne, who was part of the “Sanctuary Movement”, formed in 1987, which hid refugees who were threatened with deportation. She quickly became one of the prominent figures in the anti-racist movement. She took part in conferences, wrote op-ed pieces and made statements in the press. In autumn 1987, she was interviewed on Radio Islam. In the interview, she said among other things, “Jews are obsessed with all that Holocaust stuff. That irritates me. Obviously, the persecution of Jews and the World War II death camps are shocking. But the Jews were not the only people subject to massacre.”

In an interview with the newspaper Sydsvenska Dagbladet, she further clarified her point: “When people say that the Germans did away with the Jews, it is as terrible for me as refugees being turned away from Arlanda [Airport].”

Reporter: “Does this lessen the guilt of Germans?”

Sister Marianne: “Yes, since in Hungary the German army approached the Western powers, Britain, and asked if they could take care of the Jewish question. Britain said no. So the Germans were forced to take care of, how should we put it, for the Germans, it was a job of doing away with them.”

Reporter: “What were the Germans forced to take care of? Couldn’t they let the Jews live?”

Sister Marianne: “How naive are you? They were set on annihilation. When they are suddenly saddled with several more million Jews, then they have to try to get rid of them. And they tried to get rid of them in a decent way, by asking the Great Powers, ‘You have the chance to save these lives’, but the Great Powers didn’t do it.”

Reporter: “Was it Britain’s fault that the Jews were killed?”

Sister Marianne: “Yes, obviously.”

Sister Marianne’s statements created a stir, and after a wave of protests she faded from the spotlight in 1988. But not entirely – she was still invited to conferences. In 1994 she again wound up in the media spotlight when she once again stated in an interview in the newspaper Expressen that “the Jews were obsessed with the Holocaust” and added “the Holocaust is not about racial discrimination, but rather about how people were afraid of the Jews’ positions of power in society. That’s because, like all easterners, they were good at business.”

The case of Sister Marianne may seem paradoxical, but it highlights another aspect of the complexity involved in various forms of intolerance, that is, that there is no contradiction between a negative attitude toward one minority group and a positive attitude toward another. It is entirely possible to be both “pro-immigrant” and “anti-immigrant”. There are numerous examples of groups and individuals who demonstrate strong solidarity and generosity with one ethnic/religious minority or group of refugees but at the same time can demonstrate complete antipathy toward another.

In the same way that the anti-refugee and anti-immigrant camp is not against all refugees, immigrants and minority groups, the “pro-immigrant”/anti-racist camp is not always in favour of all refugees, immigrants and minorities. Just because an individual belongs to a minority does not necessarily mean that those involved make common cause with other minorities. However, in the public debate there is seldom space for nuances and grey areas. Above all, there is no space for the very common “both and”. Someone who was once known for being “a pro-refugee humanitarian” tends as a rule to always be on “the side of good” in the debate, while someone who became known for being “racist” tends to always be placed on “the side of evil.”

Another example of the inability to highlight the complexity is what has occurred over a long period of time in the Swedish city of Södertälje, where the Muslim population has been subjected to harassment from a group belonging to a Christian minority in the area. The situation attracted attention in the local press, and the anti-racist magazine Expo did a long story – but the harassment, which has continued for a while, got minimal coverage in the media and in the public political debate.

As the freelance journalist Sakine Madon writes on the Newsmill debate website: “My guess: the left ducks the issue because those doing the harassing in Södertälje come from an immigrant background. The same so-called anti-racists who are looking for Islamophobia under the tiniest rock care very little when Muslims cannot live in Ronna or Hovsjö.”

And it can be added that when the perpetrators cannot be easily recognised and fit into the well-known template, the problem is ignored or defined as something else. In Malmö, there is a similar problem. Here, it is the Jewish population that is being harassed and feels insecure. There is the same silence here apart from the report in Skånska Dagbladet – although a debate has now flared up over the mayor of Malmö Ilmar Reepalu’s statements in conjunction with his being interviewed in Skånska Dagbladet.

The situation in Malmö is not new either. This development has, on the contrary, been under way for a long while without having attracted attention to any great extent. Södertälje and Malmö do not risk being transformed in the mind of the public into a new Sjöbo, Klippan or Trollhättan – communities that became symbols of racism and intolerance in the 1980s and 1990s. The silence is not simply over how this course of events cannot be fitted into the well-known pattern of young frustrated organised or unorganised men, but must also of course be seen in light of the silence that has gradually settled over the first decade of this century.

A great deal has happened in the last twenty years. In the 1980s, the great awakening began – racism, anti-Semitism and intolerance assumed an ever larger presence in the social debate. At the same time, opposition to taking in refugees intensified and became increasingly visible. Conflicts on the building of local mosques, the establishment of the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats together with local parties of the discontent, New Democracy’s entry into Parliament in the early 1990s, the referendum in Sjöbo in 1988, the growing militarisation of the racially ideological underground world – all this became subject to extensive media coverage and political debate. In contrast, the first decade of the 21st century is characterised by an ever growing silence. The debate revolves around whether the Sweden Democrats will get into Parliament or not and how the political parties and media should conduct themselves: debate or not debate, cover or not cover. This concerns not only what is happening in Södertälje and Malmö but also elsewhere in the country.

The people behind the statistics are conspicuous by their absence, as is the complexity of the issue. The parts played are not determined by stereotype, and Sweden is not the country where “intolerance exists, but not intolerant people, and especially not here”.