Sasha
24th February 2009, 11:23
From Salem to Stolberg: Right-Wing Martyrs and Right-Wing Violence
tisdag 24 februari, 2009 kl. 1:16 f m On December 6, 2008, the eighth so-called “Salem March” took place in the Stockholm suburb of the same name. The Salem March is a meeting of the (northern) European right to commemorate Daniel Wretström, a 17-year-old youth with connections to the extreme right. Wretström was fatally injured during a fight with a group of young migrants at a Salem bus stop. The Salem March has developed into the biggest annual meeting of the extreme right in Scandinavia.
During the week leading up to last year’s event there was a series of neofascist attacks in Stockholm, in particular directed at left-wing activists. Apart from a number of assaults and threats (for example, open gatherings of neofascists outside of antifascists’ homes), this included two particularly deplorable incidents: on November 29 (http://anarkisterna.com/blog/2008/11/30/kulturkampanjen-the-cyclops-burnt-to-the-ground/), Cyklopen, an autonomous cultural centre in the south of Stockholm was burned to the ground; on December 1 (http://anarkisterna.com/blog/2008/12/03/nazis-tried-to-kill-union-activists-and-their-child/), two activists of the anarcho-syndicalist union SAC and their three-year old child had to flee from their third-storey apartment after gas had been poured through the door’s mail slot and set on fire – the family lost everything except for the clothes they were wearing.
The attack on Cyklopen was celebrated in various neofascist media outlets. Not least in Germany. Comments posted on Altermedia included “This rocks! :)”, “Simply badass…..;-))))” and “Burn Motherfucker… BURN!” Similar reactions could be found on the Rocknord Forum: “This is what I call a great First Advent! Too bad that the house was empty!”
Antifascist activists in Sweden saw the attacks as an attempt of the far right to draw attention to the Salem March and to present themselves as a powerful political force. This hardly worked. Despite structural and institutional discrimination of migrants in Sweden, there is little public sympathy for neofascist violence. The public outcry after the Stockholm attacks was strong, also among the bourgeois media, and explicit opposition to the Salem March was stronger than ever before. Even within the extreme right, the attacks seemed to deepen divisions. Already earlier in the year, the “Swedish Resistance Movement” (Svenska Motståndsrörelsen) and the “People’s Front” (Folkfronten) declared that they would not partake in this year’s Salem coalition. Accordingly, attendance at the march was lower than in previous years.
This, however, did not put an end to discussions about Salem within the extreme right in Germany. German neofascists had paid a lot of attention to the Salem March from its beginnings. The references became particularly frequent after an incident in 2008: on April 4, Kevin P., a youth with contacts to the “German National Party”, NPD, died from stabbing wounds after a confrontation with a group of young migrants in Stolberg, a small town near Aachen in North Rhine-Westphalia. As in Salem, a martyr for the nationalist cause was created, serving as a justification for the “defense” of an allegedly threatened “national identity”.
The motto of the Salem March – “Against Anti-Swedish Violence” – echoes this sentiment. Such slogans refer to an important part of right-wing politics and tactics. An Opferkult [literally: cult of sacrifice] is created and sustained by yearly rituals of commemoration. This creates a common self-image of warriors, resilient, upright, brave. It forms a crucial element of fascist ideology and justifies all means in the fight against its – true or alleged – opponents. The attacks in Stockholm and the connections that the extreme right establishes between Salem and Stolberg follow this logic.
The connections between Salem and Stolberg were made explicit at last year’s Salem March by the German Neo-Nazi Patrick Müller. In his speech he identified migrants as violent aggressors and the extreme right as victims – not only of migrant violence but also of state politics and the media. Eventually, he turned to Stolberg: “On the 4th of April foreigners killed a young nationalist in Stolberg near Aachen. He was on his way home after attending an NPD meeting. Kevin was only nineteen years old. He had to die because of his commitment to Germany and to his people.” The final words of Müller’s speech are particularly troublesome given the attacks in Stockholm the week before: “Do not lose sight of our goal! Save our peoples from their death. If you want to change the situation that we are in, do it radically! For Daniel, for all of our victims, and of course for our future!”
The political right ignores the social contexts in which incidents like those of Salem or Stolberg occur and turns them into confirmations of an imagined “threat”. At the same time, the threat that they themselves pose for their political opponents is much more real. This has been proven not only by the fires in Stockholm, but also by numerous attacks – often with fatal consequences – against migrants and left-wing activists all across Europe. In Germany, huge weapon arsenals were confiscated during police raids in recent months. There is a pattern that reaches from Salem to Stolberg: violence is justified by so-called anti-violence demonstrations.
The challenge for antifascist activists lies in finding effective means of resistance. The Swedish example confirms the difficulty to establish the right balance between two necessities: broad public support against the activities of the extreme right on the one hand; and retaining a critical voice against structural discrimination and (party) political hypocrisy on the other. The former is required to prevent the extreme right from occupying public space – the protests against the “Anti-Islamization Congress” in Cologne last year were one example. The latter, however, remains mandatory for any wider struggle against the institutionalization of right-wing sentiments, racist attitudes, law and order politics, and authoritarian discourses.
The situation in Salem confirms that – within current political realities – effective resistance against public gatherings of the extreme right relies on broad coalitions. One of the reasons why the Salem March can continue derives from an early split within its opponents. While mainstream leftists and liberals now hold an anti-racist rally in Stockholm, far from the actual march, militant antifascists attempt to confront the march directly. This renders the Stockholm rally merely symbolic, while politicians and police commanders can portray the confrontations in Salem as yet another case of “extremist clashes”. The latter also allows the police to justify a heavy-handed treatment of “left-wing troublemakers”. Last year, more than 500 antifascist activists were taken into “preventive custody” before ever reaching Salem, and numerous Danish and Norwegian activists were returned to their respective home countries.
Also in Stolberg divisions within the resistance against the right-wing “commemoration” events have already become apparent. On the night before one of last year’s marches, a “BürgerInnenfest” [roughly: a "citizens' festival"] was organized that explicitly distanced itself from plans to confront the neofascists the next day. However, many “citizens” still joined those protests too.
In Salem, an interesting initiative, organized by local residents, emerged last year. People positioned themselves along the march’s route in reflective yellow vests, holding up signs with the names of people murdered by neofascists in Sweden since the 1980s. While this time the protest might have resulted in little more than sympathetic media coverage, it sets an important example. The approach could be turned into effective resistance if it was embraced by a broad coalition bereft of ideological in-fighting.
Each broad coalition must of course hold those in power accountable for the role they play in the everyday racism that plagues our societies and allows neofascist tendencies to flourish. In Sweden, for example, politicians discuss a “Sweden Contract”, a sort of official commitment to the Swedish state and nation that might soon be required of migrants in order to obtain residency. Similarly, a “naturalization test” has recently been introduced in Germany, demanding applicants for German citizenship to prove their knowledge of German state law, culture and history. In this context it seems ludicrous when Prime Minister Angela Merkel reacts to a neofascist murder attempt of a Bavarian chief of police by calling on “the citizens’ courage to fight racism wherever it shows”. After all, it is Merkel’s government that has cut funding for several anti-racist organizations and projects.
In other words, when we speak of broad coalitions, we mean coalitions “from below”; coalitions that form apart from “official politics”. In Stolberg, Neo-Nazis parade through migrant neighborhoods. Coalition partners have to come from these neighborhoods, not from political parties.
Neofascists have registered events in Stolberg until 2018. The significance of this must not be underestimated. It reaches far beyond a small North Rhine Westphalia town. Sacrifice and martyrdom have long been essential elements of right-wing ideologies. In Stolberg this even led to the reconciliation of hostile neofascist factions: in April 2008, the NPD, Freie Kameradschaften and the so-called “Autonomous Nationalists” united to demonstrate strength in the face of a “common enemy”. Stolberg is no local problem. It is an expression of a far-reaching political danger that demands adequate resistance.
In the wake of the Stockholm attacks, the “Network Against Racism (http://nmr.nu/)“, the main organizer of the counterdemonstrations in Salem itself, has announced to expand its network and to consider new forms of resistance. Given the public solidarity that the victims of the attacks have experienced, this might very well prove successful.
Solidarity has also come from Germany. Various events have been organized in support of Cyklopen and the SAC activists. This is particularly encouraging since effective antifascist resistance depends on international solidarity. The links that the political right establishes from Salem to Stolberg have to be met by links that are established by us. Needless to say, ours have to be – and will be – stronger.
/Antifascists from Stockholm and Aachen
tisdag 24 februari, 2009 kl. 1:16 f m On December 6, 2008, the eighth so-called “Salem March” took place in the Stockholm suburb of the same name. The Salem March is a meeting of the (northern) European right to commemorate Daniel Wretström, a 17-year-old youth with connections to the extreme right. Wretström was fatally injured during a fight with a group of young migrants at a Salem bus stop. The Salem March has developed into the biggest annual meeting of the extreme right in Scandinavia.
During the week leading up to last year’s event there was a series of neofascist attacks in Stockholm, in particular directed at left-wing activists. Apart from a number of assaults and threats (for example, open gatherings of neofascists outside of antifascists’ homes), this included two particularly deplorable incidents: on November 29 (http://anarkisterna.com/blog/2008/11/30/kulturkampanjen-the-cyclops-burnt-to-the-ground/), Cyklopen, an autonomous cultural centre in the south of Stockholm was burned to the ground; on December 1 (http://anarkisterna.com/blog/2008/12/03/nazis-tried-to-kill-union-activists-and-their-child/), two activists of the anarcho-syndicalist union SAC and their three-year old child had to flee from their third-storey apartment after gas had been poured through the door’s mail slot and set on fire – the family lost everything except for the clothes they were wearing.
The attack on Cyklopen was celebrated in various neofascist media outlets. Not least in Germany. Comments posted on Altermedia included “This rocks! :)”, “Simply badass…..;-))))” and “Burn Motherfucker… BURN!” Similar reactions could be found on the Rocknord Forum: “This is what I call a great First Advent! Too bad that the house was empty!”
Antifascist activists in Sweden saw the attacks as an attempt of the far right to draw attention to the Salem March and to present themselves as a powerful political force. This hardly worked. Despite structural and institutional discrimination of migrants in Sweden, there is little public sympathy for neofascist violence. The public outcry after the Stockholm attacks was strong, also among the bourgeois media, and explicit opposition to the Salem March was stronger than ever before. Even within the extreme right, the attacks seemed to deepen divisions. Already earlier in the year, the “Swedish Resistance Movement” (Svenska Motståndsrörelsen) and the “People’s Front” (Folkfronten) declared that they would not partake in this year’s Salem coalition. Accordingly, attendance at the march was lower than in previous years.
This, however, did not put an end to discussions about Salem within the extreme right in Germany. German neofascists had paid a lot of attention to the Salem March from its beginnings. The references became particularly frequent after an incident in 2008: on April 4, Kevin P., a youth with contacts to the “German National Party”, NPD, died from stabbing wounds after a confrontation with a group of young migrants in Stolberg, a small town near Aachen in North Rhine-Westphalia. As in Salem, a martyr for the nationalist cause was created, serving as a justification for the “defense” of an allegedly threatened “national identity”.
The motto of the Salem March – “Against Anti-Swedish Violence” – echoes this sentiment. Such slogans refer to an important part of right-wing politics and tactics. An Opferkult [literally: cult of sacrifice] is created and sustained by yearly rituals of commemoration. This creates a common self-image of warriors, resilient, upright, brave. It forms a crucial element of fascist ideology and justifies all means in the fight against its – true or alleged – opponents. The attacks in Stockholm and the connections that the extreme right establishes between Salem and Stolberg follow this logic.
The connections between Salem and Stolberg were made explicit at last year’s Salem March by the German Neo-Nazi Patrick Müller. In his speech he identified migrants as violent aggressors and the extreme right as victims – not only of migrant violence but also of state politics and the media. Eventually, he turned to Stolberg: “On the 4th of April foreigners killed a young nationalist in Stolberg near Aachen. He was on his way home after attending an NPD meeting. Kevin was only nineteen years old. He had to die because of his commitment to Germany and to his people.” The final words of Müller’s speech are particularly troublesome given the attacks in Stockholm the week before: “Do not lose sight of our goal! Save our peoples from their death. If you want to change the situation that we are in, do it radically! For Daniel, for all of our victims, and of course for our future!”
The political right ignores the social contexts in which incidents like those of Salem or Stolberg occur and turns them into confirmations of an imagined “threat”. At the same time, the threat that they themselves pose for their political opponents is much more real. This has been proven not only by the fires in Stockholm, but also by numerous attacks – often with fatal consequences – against migrants and left-wing activists all across Europe. In Germany, huge weapon arsenals were confiscated during police raids in recent months. There is a pattern that reaches from Salem to Stolberg: violence is justified by so-called anti-violence demonstrations.
The challenge for antifascist activists lies in finding effective means of resistance. The Swedish example confirms the difficulty to establish the right balance between two necessities: broad public support against the activities of the extreme right on the one hand; and retaining a critical voice against structural discrimination and (party) political hypocrisy on the other. The former is required to prevent the extreme right from occupying public space – the protests against the “Anti-Islamization Congress” in Cologne last year were one example. The latter, however, remains mandatory for any wider struggle against the institutionalization of right-wing sentiments, racist attitudes, law and order politics, and authoritarian discourses.
The situation in Salem confirms that – within current political realities – effective resistance against public gatherings of the extreme right relies on broad coalitions. One of the reasons why the Salem March can continue derives from an early split within its opponents. While mainstream leftists and liberals now hold an anti-racist rally in Stockholm, far from the actual march, militant antifascists attempt to confront the march directly. This renders the Stockholm rally merely symbolic, while politicians and police commanders can portray the confrontations in Salem as yet another case of “extremist clashes”. The latter also allows the police to justify a heavy-handed treatment of “left-wing troublemakers”. Last year, more than 500 antifascist activists were taken into “preventive custody” before ever reaching Salem, and numerous Danish and Norwegian activists were returned to their respective home countries.
Also in Stolberg divisions within the resistance against the right-wing “commemoration” events have already become apparent. On the night before one of last year’s marches, a “BürgerInnenfest” [roughly: a "citizens' festival"] was organized that explicitly distanced itself from plans to confront the neofascists the next day. However, many “citizens” still joined those protests too.
In Salem, an interesting initiative, organized by local residents, emerged last year. People positioned themselves along the march’s route in reflective yellow vests, holding up signs with the names of people murdered by neofascists in Sweden since the 1980s. While this time the protest might have resulted in little more than sympathetic media coverage, it sets an important example. The approach could be turned into effective resistance if it was embraced by a broad coalition bereft of ideological in-fighting.
Each broad coalition must of course hold those in power accountable for the role they play in the everyday racism that plagues our societies and allows neofascist tendencies to flourish. In Sweden, for example, politicians discuss a “Sweden Contract”, a sort of official commitment to the Swedish state and nation that might soon be required of migrants in order to obtain residency. Similarly, a “naturalization test” has recently been introduced in Germany, demanding applicants for German citizenship to prove their knowledge of German state law, culture and history. In this context it seems ludicrous when Prime Minister Angela Merkel reacts to a neofascist murder attempt of a Bavarian chief of police by calling on “the citizens’ courage to fight racism wherever it shows”. After all, it is Merkel’s government that has cut funding for several anti-racist organizations and projects.
In other words, when we speak of broad coalitions, we mean coalitions “from below”; coalitions that form apart from “official politics”. In Stolberg, Neo-Nazis parade through migrant neighborhoods. Coalition partners have to come from these neighborhoods, not from political parties.
Neofascists have registered events in Stolberg until 2018. The significance of this must not be underestimated. It reaches far beyond a small North Rhine Westphalia town. Sacrifice and martyrdom have long been essential elements of right-wing ideologies. In Stolberg this even led to the reconciliation of hostile neofascist factions: in April 2008, the NPD, Freie Kameradschaften and the so-called “Autonomous Nationalists” united to demonstrate strength in the face of a “common enemy”. Stolberg is no local problem. It is an expression of a far-reaching political danger that demands adequate resistance.
In the wake of the Stockholm attacks, the “Network Against Racism (http://nmr.nu/)“, the main organizer of the counterdemonstrations in Salem itself, has announced to expand its network and to consider new forms of resistance. Given the public solidarity that the victims of the attacks have experienced, this might very well prove successful.
Solidarity has also come from Germany. Various events have been organized in support of Cyklopen and the SAC activists. This is particularly encouraging since effective antifascist resistance depends on international solidarity. The links that the political right establishes from Salem to Stolberg have to be met by links that are established by us. Needless to say, ours have to be – and will be – stronger.
/Antifascists from Stockholm and Aachen