Simon Lindberg
By Theodore Shoebat
An anti-migrant activist in Sweden recently praised Hitler and said that “he was a very good person for the German people.” According to a report from RT:
RT’s interview with the Nordic Resistance Movement’s Swedish leader Simon Lindberg went from migrant talk to a shock endorsement of Adolf Hitler’s policies and blaming of Jews. His party is about to run in the general election.
The Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) held a rally in Stockholm on Saturday, facing off counter-protesters, who decried its members as neo-Nazis. The pan-Nordic group was registered as a political party in Sweden back in 2015 and is now readying for its very first general election in two weeks.
Lindberg described the ultimate goal of the NRM as “securing the existence of our people.” The phrase is an apparent nod to the so-called ‘14 words’ slogan, coined by David Lane – notorious white supremacist and neo-Nazi from the US.
“We want to take back the country from the traitors at the parliament,” Lindberg told RT’s Maria Finoshina, claiming that “between 20 and 30 percent of the inhabitants in Sweden is non-European.” The Swedes are soon to become a minority, the NRM leader believes, and eventually even can “cease to exist” in their own country.
“It’s already too late to just stop the immigration. We must kick them back,” he added.
Members of the NRM do not like being described as neo-Nazis, branding those who call them so “brainwashed,” but at the same time do not hide their fondness for the policies of National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), better known as the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler. But Lindberg went even further, and didn’t shy away from praising Hitler personally and on camera.
Calling the Nazi leader “a very very good person for German people,”he claimed that Hitler “freed Germany from the globalists and the bankers, that have a grip over Sweden today.”
“He did what was necessary to secure his people’s freedom,”Lindberg went on. “We’re National Socialists, as Hitler was and we do whatever it takes to take our nation back.”
Germany’s infamous Fuhrer is surrounded with “a million lies,” which many “not so [well-thinking]” people do believe, Lindberg claimed. Other extremely controversial statements of the NRM leader included branding the Holocaust “probably the biggest lie in history,” as well as a bizarre claim that “Jews declared war on Germany.”
Since this post is on Nazis in Sweden, and in light of the upcoming elections in Sweden next month, I would like to post an article we wrote last year on the Sweden Democrats, a nationalist party with Nazi roots.
The far-right anti-immigration party, the Sweden Democrats, are the third largest party in Sweden, holding 49 out of the 349 seats in the Swedish parliament. The second largest party in Sweden is the center-right Moderate Party, which has 84 of the 349 seats in the Swedish parliament. The leader of the Moderates, Anna Kinberg Batra, recently invited the Sweden Democrats to join forces. There are other parties that are with the Moderates (in a coalition called the Alliance): the Christian Democrats, which currently holds 16 out of the 349 seats, the Centre Party (22/349 seats), and the Liberals (19/349 seats). If these parties make an alliance with the Sweden Democrats, they will defeat the currently ruling coalition of the Swedish parliament: The Social Democrats (113/349 seats) and the Green Party (25/394 seats). One Swedish reports states:
“Breaking a longstanding taboo, Sweden’s conservative Moderate Party last week opened the door for a cooperation with the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, causing a deep rift within the stunned four-party centre-right opposition Alliance.”
Anna Kinberg Batra shakes the hand of Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson in the Swedish parliament. Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT
“It hasn’t worked to pretend that such a large party in parliament doesn’t exist,” Kinberg Batra told public broadcaster SVT. Kinberg Batra made her statements after calling on her Alliance partners to submit a joint budget to parliament and accept the far-right’s votes — indirect support which would,as a result, prevail over the minority left-wing government of the Social Democrats and the Greens. The same could be seen for the Netherlands. It will be unreasonable that the second largest party in the country would be ignored by the top party.
Kinberg Batra, leader of the center-right Moderates
Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the Sweden Democrats
The Counterjihad, especially its acolytes in America, provided tremendous amounts of support and energy for the Nazi parties in Europe. A good example of this is the relationship between one of the leading figures of the Counterjihad, Robert Spencer, and the Nazi founded Sweden Democrats party. In 2010, Robert Spencer wrote: “I spoke in Sweden at the invitation of the Sweden Democrats last July; you can see the videos here and here.” The videos are no longer there. But, the fact remains that Spencer spoke for the Sweden Democrats and has continuously supported them on his website, using his audience and the hysteria of the right-wing to bolster their position as being amongst the saviors of Europe. Let us see some information on the Sweden Democrats, in order to show their Nazi sympathies and connections.
Within the Sweden Democrats there are politicians who use a calculative strategy to subtly and elusively introduce Nazi sympathies. For example, one member of the Sweden Democrats, Stellan Bojerud, once wrote:
“I admire the efforts that a number of SS officers and frontiersmen did in honest battle between nations and I condemn as hard as I can the abuse that not only SS but also other Nazi organizations did to achieve the Holocaust.”
While he praises the SS — who carried out extermination orders — he condemns the Holocaust. By condemning the Holocaust, he attempts to cancel out expected criticism, while at the same time praising the Nazi SS. This is paralleled to the strategy that was put together by Nazi identitarians after the Second World War; the strategy was to belittle Nazi atrocities while praising the resistance that was done against the Third Reich. By downplaying Nazi atrocities and praising anti-Nazi resistance, they could change the national consensus — by breaking the taboos of using Nazi themes — in favor towards fascism, while at the same time not appearing as Nazis. All of these strategies are done in a very calculated and sophistical way for the purpose of mass manipulation to reintroduce fascism. Brendan Peter Simms, a Professor of the History of International Relations in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, wrote about this strategy:
“Historians played down the Nazi genocide and exalted ‘German’ resistance to Hitler—it was part of a national survival strategy. … Using private correspondence, diaries and published materials, [historian] Mr. [Nicholas] Berg exposes a concerted strategy within the West German historical profession to play down the Nazi genocide and exalt German resistance to Hitler.”
The Sweden Democrats was founded by an ex-member of the Waffen SS named Ulf Ranshede, in 1988. Gustav Ekstrom was another member of the Sweden Democrats; he was also a member of the Waffen-SS for which he worked as a Nazi propagandist, disseminating and advertising articles for them for the purpose of recruitment. He also served as a propagandist for the SS-Hauptamt, working in a building that was once a Jewish retirement center that was stolen by the Nazis. In 1933 he helped form the Swedish Socialist Coalition, and in 1936 he became the national secretary for the Nordic Youth, and then in 1941 he joined the Waffen-SS. At the age of 88, he was elected into the Sweden Democrats.
Ulf Ranshede (circled), one of the founders of the Sweden Democrats
In 1994, a man named Jimmie Akkesson — who is now the current leader of the party — joined the Sweden Democrats while it was still under Nazi leadership. Akkeson, in a 1994 letter, wrote:
“The first contact with SD [Sweden Democrats], we had some time in December the same year (1994, editor’s note), and during a meeting on New Year’s Eve, we decided to start working politically, and that a local SDU [Sweden Democrats Youth] department would eventually be formed”
Although Akkesson denies holding any Nazi sentiments, the fact that he joined the Sweden Democrats when it was under Nazi leadership, indicates otherwise. When Akkesson joined the party, it was under the leadership of Anders Klarström , who was convicted of possessing illegal firearms, and also of sending a death threat to a Jewish theater director named Hagge Geigert. Geigert was very outspoken against racism and Klarstrom, upset about this, told him that he was a “Jew pig” and that he would burn him alive. Klarstrom was also a member of the neo-Nazi Nordic Reich Party.
Anders Klarström
Klarstrom was also a musician who performed for a band called Commit Suiside. Another member of this band was a man named Ulf Ekberg, who once wrote these lyrics for the band:
“Men in white hoods march down the road, we enjoy ourselves when we’re sawing off niggers’ heads/ Immigrant, we hate you! Out, out, out, out! Nordic people, wake up now! Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot!”
Ulf Ekberg
Jimmie Akesson began working in the party in 1994, when Klarstrom was still the leader of the Sweden Democrats. Apparently Klarstrom’s Nazi ideology did not bother him. People will argue that in 1995 Klarstrom resigned from the Sweden Democrats, thus proving that the party was purging itself from Nazi influence. But, in 1999, the Sweden Democrats worked with an official SS member, named Franz Schonhuber. Franz was a member of the Waffen-SS and the founder of the German far-right party, the “Republicans.” As we read in one report: “the old Waffen-SS soldier Franz Schönhuber is a guest at an SD election meeting along with Yvan Blot, one of Front National’s chief ideologues. Schönhuber visited Sweden before, back in the day when Anders Klarströms was SD leader.” So Franz was active with the Sweden Democrats when the neo-Nazi Klarstrom was the leader, and he continued to be active with them after he resigned, proving that the party still had Nazi sympathies after its claimed purge.
Franz Schonhuber
The other figure mentioned as being in the meeting with the SS member, Franz Schonhuber, was Yvon Blot. Blot was the major ideologue for the Front National Party in France and was close to Jean-Marie Le Pen. Blot was elected into the European Parliament as a member of the Front National in 1989. In 1974, he established a significant organization for the French New Right, called the Club de L’horloge (the Clock Club).
Blot saw the New Right as a cultural revolution, oriented towards ethnocentric ideology, specifically reverence for the Indo-European race. Blot wrote: “The Revolution and its values, hitherto associated with the left, were relocated in a lineage which saw 1789 as the reassertion of the pure origins of Indo-Europeanism”. (Wolfreys 1993:419, in Douglas R. Holmes, Integral Europe, p. 83)
In other words, the French Revolution of 1789 — with all of its beheadings of Catholics, its cannibalism and sadism — was the manifestation of the superiority of the Indo-European race. The ideologue who taught this, Yvon Blot, is a close ally with the Sweden Democrats.
Yvon Blot
The French New Right was really the archetype for the Identitarian and Alt-Right movements in the West today. Yvon Blot was one of the pioneers of the New Right, he has worked with the Sweden Democrats, and the Sweden Democrats are in deep with the Counterjihad movement, as can be seen in their association with figures like Robert Spencer. There is indeed an interconnection between the Alt-Right and Counterjihad; the latter provided the informational leverage (flooding the internet with stories on terrorism and the migration crises) by which the New Right (or Alt-Right) could provide justification for itself, and gain popularity by making itself out to be a savior type against a perceived invasion by immigrants.
The Prime Minister of Sweden, Stefan Lofven, declared that when the current leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Akkesson, joined the party, Swastikas began to be used in the political organization’s meetings. The Sweden Democrats, of coursed, denied the claim.
These populist political parties, fueled by the information machine of the Counterjihad movement, are gaining leverage solely because of the recent and current migration crises. These parties were nobodies until the migration crises; this has been the cause, for the most part, for parties like AfD (Alternative Party for Deutschland), Front National, and the Sweden Democrats. This rise in political influence and leverage for these parties, springs from the mass migration of Muslims, and as long as the crises continues, what will increase is the popularity for these parties. Elias Groll, writing for Foreign Policy, made this interesting observation back in 2014:
“Sweden has failed to integrate its massive immigrant population — a problem that will continue benefitting the Sweden Democrats.”
In a 2015 report by The Economist, it also agrees with this observation:
“As refugees poured into Europe this year, right-wing populists switched back to denouncing immigration. Television footage of chaos at the border served as perfect campaign propaganda.”
Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the Sweden Democrats, himself admitted that he and his party are using the migration situation to boost up their position. “We now have a platform for our ideology, and that is very important because we know that we have a big opportunity to get even more supporters,” said Akesson back in 2010.