Tommy Tainant
Diamond Member
'Hate is always local': the Swedish city that said no to neo-Nazis
On an August afternoon in 1995, John Hron, a defiant anti-racist, was tortured and beaten to death by neo-Nazi skinheads beside a picturesque lake near his home town of Kode in Kungälv, Sweden. He was 14.
Neo-Nazis were gaining a foothold in Kungälv, an industrial borough of 20,000 people on the west coast, for the first time since the second world war. Sweden’s economy had stuttered in the early 1990s after a financial crisis and its politics were in flux.
Twenty-four years later, Sweden’s neo-Nazis are again targeting Muslims and Jews, buoyed by anti-immigrant sentiment in the country that has seen the radical nationalist Sweden Democrats make electoral gains.
After terrorists attacked two mosques in New Zealand in March, killing 50, the massacre was hailed by members of the so-called Nordic Resistance Movement, an openly Nazi group.
How a small town tackled its neo nazi problem. Its an interesting read and perhaps a sign that we should look beyond the racism and see what is causing this poison.
On an August afternoon in 1995, John Hron, a defiant anti-racist, was tortured and beaten to death by neo-Nazi skinheads beside a picturesque lake near his home town of Kode in Kungälv, Sweden. He was 14.
Neo-Nazis were gaining a foothold in Kungälv, an industrial borough of 20,000 people on the west coast, for the first time since the second world war. Sweden’s economy had stuttered in the early 1990s after a financial crisis and its politics were in flux.
Twenty-four years later, Sweden’s neo-Nazis are again targeting Muslims and Jews, buoyed by anti-immigrant sentiment in the country that has seen the radical nationalist Sweden Democrats make electoral gains.
After terrorists attacked two mosques in New Zealand in March, killing 50, the massacre was hailed by members of the so-called Nordic Resistance Movement, an openly Nazi group.
How a small town tackled its neo nazi problem. Its an interesting read and perhaps a sign that we should look beyond the racism and see what is causing this poison.
