Life Trajectories Into and Out of Contemporary Neo-Nazism

Becoming and Unbecoming the Hateful Other

Christer Mattsson, Thomas Johansson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367248628
• eBook ISBN: 9781000707953
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides the first comprehensive sociological study of the contemporary National Socialist movement in Sweden, including how it has developed since the 1990s until the present. It covers the ideas and political aspects of the movement, as well as the subjective and very personal stories told by young men and women who in some cases have left the movement and in others remained.

Through a large number of detailed stories of the movement's violence, hatred, and ideology, as well as stories of the life plans and dreams involved in re-entering society, the study on which the book is based provides knowledge, hope and new directions for studies on the National Socialist movement. Additionally, the book provides innovative research on the relation between the life trajectories of National Socialists and their significant others, allowing us to establish better and more scientific strategies for preventing radicalization and promoting de-radicalization.

The book is aimed at students of sociology, social science and researchers studying hate movements and violent extremism. It is also meant for professionals such as teachers, social workers and youth workers who may encounter radicalization in their work as well as being a vital contribution for policymakers within the field.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Introduction

By the end of the 1990s, the Western world, including Sweden, was facing numerous National Socialist terror attacks and murders. The attacks resulted in grief, but also in attempts to fight the National Socialist movement and to develop methods that would prevent recruitment to such movements. Today, the National Socialist movement is mobilizing heavily once again, gaining political influence in Sweden, especially through the increasing support for its views expressed in the media and in the everyday political debate. Moreover, the National Socialist movement in Sweden is now deeply entangled in the global National Socialist movement. The movement’s ideas, knowledge and action plans are currently being spread across the globe through the Internet and social media.

Our book provides the first comprehensive, qualitative and sociological study of this political movement in Sweden, including how it has developed from the 1920s to the present. We are using Sweden as a case study to gain an in-depth understanding of the movement’s development. In particular, we will look more closely at a number of individual and biographical trajectories in and out of the National Socialist movement. Our study is largely based on the experiences of individuals and the relations between these individuals and significant others, that is, people who have been important and played key roles during periods when the individuals transitioned into and out of the movement. It is not only important to understand the rationales employed by National Socialists, but also to understand how this movement has been able to gain ground and contribute to normalizing racism in the public political discourse (Mulinari & Neergaard, 2014). Hence, we have used Sweden as a case in order to generate thick, rich data and examine how individuals’ lived experiences at the micro-level can help us understand shifts at the macro-level.

To situate the Swedish case as well as generate data that can help us understand the influence of the globalization of the National Socialist movement, the study also looks at developments in other Western countries (cf. Braunthal, 2009). Themes covered in this comparison include transnational connections between different national, race ideological and National Socialist movements in Europe, changing patterns of rhetoric, and framings of the ideological content. In addition, we take a closer look at subjective processes, such as identity construction and disengagement. Bringing in voices from both active and formerly active National Socialists enables us to make connections between the structural transformations of these movements and subjective processes.

The study covers the period from 1995 to 2019 – from when the first of our informants became radicalized until when we conducted our final analysis. This period of more than 20 years is the basis for our data on individuals’ lived experiences as well as on National Socialist ideological productions, for example, newspaper articles, speeches and websites. We have also contextualized the movement by offering a thematic description of its history, from the 1920s until the 1990s. This part also includes an analysis of how the history of the National Socialist movement has been written previously (see Chapter 2).

Our ambition in writing this book is to generate knowledge about the growth of violent racist milieus, as represented by the National Socialist movement. Another aim is to bring clarity to the relation between this movement and mainstream society, while also providing guidance concerning how such milieus could be countered in an appropriate, efficient manner.

Aims and positioning of the book

In writing this book, we strive to provide an analysis of recent developments within the National Socialist movement and of the movement’s relation to society as a whole. Therefore, we take our starting point in how society has related to the National Socialist movement after WWII. We offer some historical background, but our main interest is in the shifting periods between when society had the movement on the agenda and took action against it, and periods when the movement fell into the shadows. Our starting point is the denazification processes that took place during the years immediately after WWII. This historical development sets the standard for how the Western world relates to National Socialism and the movement’s presence in society. We find that society tends to view the National Socialist movement as a phenomenon that surfaces from time to time, and to believe that swift and resolute action will make it retreat. There is, as we will show, little insight into how this swift and resolute action actually helps shape a stronger National Socialist movement that is gradually becoming resistant to such measures. In addition, there is a lack of understanding of the continuity within the movement. Without this continuity, there would not be an organizational body capable of creating institutional memories from previous experiences when the movement, on an individual and a collective level, is engaged in confrontations with society. Studies from many European countries have shown that there are similar long-term patterns and continuities in how the National Socialist movement operates. In a study on the white power movement in America, Kathleen Belew (2018) shows how, in the 1970s and 1980s, the movement consolidated around a sense of betrayal after the Vietnam War. People from a number of militant groups, including Klansmen, neo-Nazis, skinheads and white separatists, came to the conclusion that there was good reason to wage a war against their own country. Belew also shows that a number of militant actions and terrorist attacks have been motivated by a coherent worldview of white supremacy, anticommunism and a sense of a growing threat to the white race. This war against the nation also escalated, making tragic headlines in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

It has often been taken as self-evident that the National Socialist movement challenges and threatens democracy, if not at a constitutional level, at least in local or regional settings and by hollowing out trustful relations between individuals, groups and institutions in society. The mere presence of National Socialists at rallies and public meetings, as well as the spread of propaganda in Sweden, calls for action on the part of various authorities. In our study, we have investigated how the public debate and demands for police action play out with regard to police authorities’ consideration of the NMR’s (Nordiska motståndsrörelsen, Nordic Resistance Movement) applications to hold public rallies (Chapter 3). We have seen a confounded debate in which the police are asked to set the constitution aside to safeguard democracy, based on rather vague understandings of relevant laws and the rationale of an organization such as the NMR. The police, on the other hand, have fluctuated between strictly upholding public physical safety during rallies and reinterpreting legal practices based on the NMR’s changes in their esthetics and rhetoric – due to previous convictions for hate speech – changes made to allow the same messages to be spread without risk of conviction. These confrontations create meaning and cause the National Socialist milieus to reflect on their own identity and future strategies. In society, these confrontations provide an opening for the normalization of racism, because they allow the National Socialists to become the scapegoats, distorting an understanding of racism that is not dressed up in National Socialist rhetoric or esthetics.

This book offers the reader an in-depth case study of historical and recent developments in the National Socialist movement in Sweden. The case study is analyzed in relation to national and recent political developments in Sweden, Scandinavia and Europe. The innovative features of the book include the use of case studies of young people, providing the reader with a close reading of their ambitions, wishes and reasons for participating in the National Socialist movement. The book makes use of subcultural theory and social psychology to present new theoretical constructs concerning how young people come to be hateful others. The main themes and objectives of the book are:

• To provide a political and social background and context for recent developments in the National Socialist movement in Sweden.
• To position and discuss the Swedish case study in relation to international developments.
• To explore the role of the media and the Internet.
• To zoom in on the identities, emotions and ideas of a number of young men and women by following them through their entry and exit processes.
• To analyze what it meant for these young people to participate in a hate movement, and what kept them in the movement.
• To discuss policy, social pedagogical methods and various exit programs.

The book is structured into three main parts. The first part (Chapters 2, 3 and 4) focuses on the historical roots, developments and politics of the National Socialist movement in Sweden. In particular, we use recent research to look closely at the ideology and actions of the Nordic Resistance Movement. These three chapters offer a historical and sociocultural analysis of the National Socialist Movement in Sweden. In the second part of the book (Chapters 5, 6 and 7) we turn our attention to the narratives of young adults who were active in different National Socialist organizations during their youth. This part of the book brings us closer to questions concerning their motives, understandings and emotional attachments. We also use two case studies to explore in some depth how significant others both facilitated and obstructed the exit processes in various ways (Chapter 7). The overall ambition of the book is both to take a closer look at and penetrate the socioemotional aspects of the National Socialism movement, and to situate this knowledge in a contemporary understanding of what factors contribute to recruitment to the movement. The third part of the book consists of Chapters 8 and 9. In Chapter 8, we bring all of the previous chapters together in an elaborate analysis in which we allow the structural context (Chapters 1–3) and the lived experiences of individuals (Chapters 4–7) to come together, thus fulfilling the specific aims of the book. Chapter 9 presents some methodological issues and the research process.

The National Socialist movement – Definitions and limitations

This study is neither historical nor based in political science. It is primarily a sociological and social psychological study focused on how the National Socialist movement and society relate to and create each other. Therefore, we have been more interested in the National Socialist milieu as a social habitat, rather than in defining its sharp ideological and organizational borders. Consequently, we pay more attention to the complete sociocultural environment, as the breadth of the borders that marks the territory in which individuals are radicalized into the movement, but also – as we will show – where ideas and rhetoric pass from the National Socialist movement into society as a whole. We have, therefore, deliberately included milieus that currently refrain from National Socialism, but that are partly or completely rooted in National Socialism or a race-based ideological movement.

We do not want to use the term right-wing extremism, both because it is vague and because it does not clearly relate to a social milieu, but rather to political ideas and organizations. We have also excluded terms such as white power or white supremacists, which confound our analytical sharpness. The main reason for using the term National Socialist movement is that the milieus we have studied are in one way or another rooted in the early pre-WWII National Socialist and Fascist organizations and ideological traditions. We do realize that significant factions within these milieus would no longer call themselves National Socialists, but this is also part of the focus of the study: how the National Socialist movement has merged into society by adopting aspects of societal esthetics to convey core messages of extreme racism to mainstream society.

When we define the National Socialist milieus, we make use of the concepts of organizational belonging and ideological continuity. The organizational belongings and labeling of National Socialists and their development over time are not difficult to trace, i.e., there has always been continuity when organizations from past generations have been handed over to new activists and in their re-organization of National Socialist organizations or milieus. Regarding ideological developments, this is a bit more difficult, because not all organizations have retained the National Socialists label, though they have maintained ideological beliefs that are true to the ideology of National Socialism. For this reason, we make use of the key signifier of National Socialism, namely the belief in a race ideology. Once again, this race ideology has also shifted throughout the movement’s long history. However, there are crucial components that have always been part of this race-based ideological stance:

• The belief in a Jewish conspiracy to control the Western World.
• A radical rather than a conservative nationalism.
• The purity and purification of white people.

Antisemitism is a core idea within the National Socialist ideology and movements. National Socialism cannot be comprehended without understanding its adherents’ belief that there exists a constant, ongoing struggle against a global Jewish conspiracy. This idea of a Jewish conspiracy helps the movement explain everything its members hate about society, and to explain their own very limited influence on society. Consequently, they often justify their limited influence on and support from white people using the notion that white people have been manipulated by the Jewish conspiracy. This manipulation causes white people to believe in coexistence and a multicultural society, while their own white children are being threatened with extinction by immigration.

The National Socialist movement has always been nationalistic, but from a radical rather than a conservative point of view. This means that followers have not been particularly interested in maintaining the nation’s old traditions and values, but instead in creating a totally new norm system and a new people who are aware of their racial belonging – a people who understand the importance of protecting themselves from other people who will weaken their race, culture and self-awareness. This leads to the idea of purity, in which the people can have either a singular ethnical identity or a mixed one, in which case they are no longer pure.

The last bullet point is more fluid in the long tradition of National Socialism, but the core element of this point is related to radical nationalism, which professes the following. Society, as we know it, will be overthrown and replaced by a “true” democracy, characterized by strong solidarity with pure people and the elite, and ultimately guided by a strong leader. This is often expressed in corporatism and anti-capitalism, but the basic idea is that liberal democracy is the result of the Jewish conspiracy, which is threatening white people and thus must be overthrown. These core ideological beliefs help us define the milieus we are studying; they also form a starting point for investigating how messages, language and claims from the National Socialist movement enter mainstream society.

Theoretical and methodological starting points for the book

The book belongs within sociology and pedagogy; its gaze on subcultural expressions of white supremacist milieus and National Socialist organizations is derived from social psychology. In the following section, we present our theoretical foundation and the key terms used in our analytical work.

Becoming and unbecoming the hateful other is the core concept of the book. On the one hand, we aim to analyze the structural aspects and self-image of the National Socialist movement in Sweden. We are particularly interested in how the “hateful other” positions itself in relation to society and “common culture”. The hateful other, as we have utilized the term, is a position that is both sought by those who radicalize into National Socialism and provided and constructed by the surrounding society. Consequently, the hateful other is the hating and the hated National Socialist.

Through a textual analysis of how four key terms – democracy, immigration, globalization and Swe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Historical perspectives on the contemporary Nordic and global National Socialist movement
• 3. Lost in translation: A case study on a National Socialist rally
• 4. The fear of mass invasion
• 5. Becoming a National Socialist
• 6. Disengaging and de-radicalizing from the National Socialist movement
• 7. Leaving hate behind: National Socialists, significant others and disengagement
• 8. Conclusions and discussion
• 9. Method and methodology
• Index