Living with the far right - Asia Times

Living with the far right - Asia Times
By Ritt Goldstein

FALUN, Sweden - As headlines of riots in England glaringly depict the anger exploding with the increasing pain of neo-liberal policies, it's important to recall that much of Europe's hardship was effectively blamed on societal outgroups in recent years -- particularly immigrants and Muslims -- the rise of Europe's far right having targeted them for the economic suffering so many now feel.

In the 1930s, populist far right groups rose with similar scapegoating, and such tactics are far easier again today than addressing the difficult structural problems that failures in policy and leadership have brought.

Scandinavia has a history of its lands providing societies that have been a model globally, fostering a deep-felt faith in the region's governments and its society. Given this, perhaps it's understandable that many Scandinavians see their own recent societal problems as originating through externally introduced factors, immigrants again bearing the brunt of such blame.

Just days ago, I read that the "Nordic far right is now so entrenched in the political establishment that experts say the 'extreme' label is no longer suitable", (Agence France-Presse/The Local, July 28), and just months ago a gunman was randomly shooting immigrants in the south Sweden city of Malmo. One of Sweden's English-language media outlets (The Local) headlined "Malmo shooter targeting immigrants: police". And then the tragedy of Anders Behring Breivik's massacre in Norway.

While far-right gunmen aren't everyday events, this journalist can personally speak to less obvious assaults that defy belief, events that suggest a newly-felt legitimacy for the exercise of a "quieter violence", the exercise of an ugly bias that we term xenophobia.

Merriam-Webster defines xenophobia as "fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign", and in April 2010, Sweden's Amnesty Press published an article titled "Framlingsfientlig retorik i politik och media" (Xenophobic rhetoric in politics and media). Framlingsfientlig is an interesting word, however, for while it is usually translated as "xenophobic", it might be literally translated as "enemy of strangers", the Amnesty article addressing some of the most readily seen symptoms of this problem's rise in Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden.

More than rhetoric though, this journalist believes he has witnessed in Sweden what are the worst kinds of failures, failures by both local authorities and the legal system. When it's said that the Nordic far right is "entrenched in the political establishment", is this now part of what that means? To my eyes, it appears a foreigner, an immigrant, a so-called "stranger", can today often be met with a virtually insurmountable bias.

Notably, during autumn of 2010 I interviewed Swedish legal scholar Eric Bylander. Professor Bylander observed that political changes here might mean Swedish courts could be used as "a political arena in a way that hasn't been common in Sweden". Bylander also spoke of the potentially chilling effect that might have on those of foreign origins.

What has often come to my mind lately is Hollywood's depiction of "troubled' towns in the 1960s US Deep South, places with casual malice and brutality, and the assorted other unpleasant issues such films can portray. This is not to imply that every town in Sweden and every Swede suggests such a place, as that isn't what's occurring. But, particularly "troubled" areas do seem to exist, as well as an increasing acceptance of so-called framlingsfientlig ideas and practices.

While membership in xenophobic political parties is limited, the actual votes these groups have been receiving indeed exceeds their membership, with sympathies for aspects of their xenophobic agenda felt by even more still.

The Amnesty article noted that all four of the Nordic countries cited have framlingsfientlig parties. Today, those parties now hold seats in their nations' parliaments; though, only Sweden's framlingsfientlig party, the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna or SD), has neo-Nazi roots. As to what such a political climate can mean, the Swedish daily Expressen headlined July 29 "The terrorist Breivik lived in Sweden" ("Terroristen Breivik bodde i Sverige"), reporting that it's thought he formed a large part of his political opinions here.

In a November 2010 Asia Times Online article, Rise of far right an ominous echo, I addressed the SD's election to parliament, quoting political scientist Cristian Norocel - of both Stockholm University and Finland's University of Helsinki - as observing that some of the SD's positions paralleled a number of aspects of "very early National Socialism [Nazism] in Europe." And the very fact of the SD's successes does provide comment on the changing nature of Sweden's attitudes and society.

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