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| DUH AIN'T THAT THE TRUTH |
An anti-nazi march by local residents in the Karrtorp neighborhood of Sweden's capital was attacked by members of the neo-nazi Swedish Resistance Movement on Sunday. The attack left three people hospitalized. The protest location was chosen because neo-Nazi graffiti recently was found on buildings there.
A group of three dozen or so nazis showed up with bottles and large fireworks and threw them at the marchers as the passed. The attackers carried makeshift shields, knifes. Two people were stabbed.
It appears that the police were aware of the potential for the attack on the march as early as friday.
The non violent march by residents had around 200 to 500 participants.
The Local from Sweden reports:
More than half of the 26 people arrested in Sunday's neo-Nazi riot in Stockholm are younger than 20. Experts warn attempts to denazify Sweden are failing, as a new generation of "social outcasts" emerges.
Police in Stockholm are holding 26 people in custody on suspicion of violent rioting and serious assault. More than half of those detained are under the age of 20 including one minor, reported Dagens Nyheter newspaper on Tuesday.
The paper added that one of those arrested has a previous conviction for attempting to stab to death a left-wing activist.
The marchers regrouped and a counter attack launched by ANTIFA, Revolutionary Front, and others turned on the nazis and drove them off.
The Eagle reports:
Video footage published by state broadcaster SVT showed families with baby carriages escaping the scene as firecrackers exploded in the middle of the crowd and people were heard screaming. Later, the crowd moved toward the attackers chanting anti-Nazism slogans and forcing them to retreat.
According to libcom.org,
The rally was populated with everyone from elderly pensioners to young families with baby strollers in tow. From reports and information coming out, as people who needed to protect their own families withdrew, local residents, Revolutionary Front, and Anti Fascist Action launched into a counterattack and pushed back the initial SMR attack. SMR was effectively and rather quickly pushed back and forced to retreat due to a substantial portion of the rally participants pushing SMR out of the square and into the woods. The rally turned into a march following and undermining SMR's efforts to disrupt. Small skirmishes and altercations continued as the police were unwilling or unable to maintain the control the strive for.
The Revolutionary Front, one of the groups that fought back, stated:
From within the Swedish Nazi-movement Svenska Motståndsrörelsen (SMR) [who] are [considered] the hardest and most violent. They thrive on their self made myth that they are the hardest aryan supermen the north has ever seen. Yesterday this myth was busted once again. Armed to the teeth, with knifes, shields and pyrotechnics 30 nazis attacked a peaceful demonstration filled with elderly and children. Unfortunately for them, we and our comrades from AFA Sthlm were there. After their initial progress throwing everything they had at us we pushed them back together with the local people from the area. Bleeding they ran, leaving their comrades behind to be treated the way we treat nazis. The end result was clear, 28 arrested nazis, 1 stabbed, several bleading - no arrested socialists.
The following is from The Local.
Swedes plan new anti-Nazi rally after attack
Several thousand Stockholmers say they will take to the streets of Kärrtorp on Sunday to protest racism anew, after a plethora of scrawled swastikas sprouted up again after last weekend's violent counter-demo by neo-Nazis.
"See you on Sunday at 12! Because Nazism and racism have no place in our society, because the streets and the squares belong to all of us, and because we will never be scared into silence," the event organizers Linje 17, named after the local metro line, wrote on their new event page on social media site Facebook. By Tuesday, more than 5,000 users had said they would attend the event, which was posted on the site only hours prior.
"Together we are strong, another world is possible," they concluded. The organizers have applied for but not yet been granted or denied permission from the Swedish police to assemble.
Sweden was left shocked by the attack with fireworks and bottles slung into the crowd of anti-racism protesters on Sunday. One mother who attended the event with her children said the fireworks were heavy duty and loud enough to startle the adults and frighten the children.
"Children were crying," she said.
Olle Eriksson attended the event with his four-year-old daughter. "We are more than them. We are right and they are wrong. No pasaran!" he wrote on Facebook after the attack.
"On Sunday, fascists tried to scare us off the streets," Eriksson told The Local. "But they didn't succeed, and were instead driven away by (demo) participants and the police. This Sunday, we're gonna meet again, and hopefully we'll be even more people this time."
Eriksson, who comes from a smaller Swedish town, said there were quite clearly a lot of neo-Nazis in Sweden during his teenage years. At that time, however, they were clearly identifiable as skinheads and there was a more cohesive "neo-Nazi culture".
"Now they are back, but today they look just like anyone else," he lamented.
"With a fascist party in parliament, the boundaries have shifted," freelance journalist Eriksson said in reference to the populist, anti-immigration party the Sweden Democrats. "People don't raise their eyebrows any more. But at the same time, the fact is that the majority of Swedes don't want these dark forces. Not on our streets, not in our parliament."
Hermes Holm was not at Sunday's original demo but now plans to attend the new rally.
"It's always the 1990s for me, because I don't look Swedish," Holm, who has Greek heritage, told The Local.
He was concerned that initial media reports at first stated that Sunday's "demonstration had gone awry", which he said felt like the peaceful protesters were blamed for taking along their children and placing them in harm's way.
"You have to be able to stage a peaceful protest against Nazism without being dubbed a demonstrator," he said.
He instead blamed the violent flare-up on what he feels is an increasingly divided Swedish society.
"Sweden has a lot of people who don't feel important, and that's a very broad and multi-faceted political problem," the Stockholm-based PR consultant said. "It's a kind of poverty of the soul created by politics that have social effects. Racism and Nazism afford an immediate reward to its propagators."
"The worst thing that could happen now is that people put on a muzzle and stop working against Nazi reactions for fear of stirring up violent reactions," Holm added. "We have to have a progressive dialogue about equality, class and race in Sweden."
Swedish police initially denied knowledge of any plausible threat to the anti-racism protesters who had a permit to assemble this past Sunday. On Tuesday, the police said they had been aware of the potential of a counter-demo, but said the information was not passed along in a manner that would have allowed them to ensure proper backup to the few officers on the ground.
As a band of mostly youths attacked the peaceful demo, police had to push the neo-Nazis from the Swedish Resistance Movement out of the suburb into a patch of forest.
Swedish police detained 26 people, of whom more than half are younger than 20 years old. Just two days after the attack, metro workers in Kärrtorp saw three young men flee the scene after spraying the station with graffiti.
The police confirmed vandals had scrawled swastikas across Kärrtorp and nearby Bagarmossen.
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