A-Infos (en) Sweden, From Salem to Stolberg: Right-Wing Martyrs and Right-Wing Violence by the Embryo collective*

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, Cyklopen, an
autonomous cultural centre in the south of Stockholm was burned to the
ground; on December 1, 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!”

(...)

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.

Read on. Post it widely. Discuss it. Act accordingly.

http://anarkisterna.com/blog/2009/02/24/from-salem-to-stolberg-right-wing-martyrs-and-right-wing-violence/

In Solidarity
/Embryo collective


==========================================
* About embryo

We are the Laughing Losers, time after time beaten to the ground, always rising to our 
feet again. Embryo is a small collective with great ambitions: to be an Anarchist think 
tank or that annoying kid in class pointing out that things aren’t always what they seem. 
Society, people and power are far more complex than that. We publish reflections, 
discussions and news. So far, texts are mainly written in Swedish, but the numbers of 
texts in English are increasing.

Embryo is our zine in which we put our thoughts in print and is the result of the 
discussions on anarkisterna.com. Embryo is released irregularly, always way beyond 
deadline. Please order old issues and contribute to the coming ones!

Anarkisterna.com is not a mega-site claiming to cover all Anarchist directions. It is what 
we make of it and a complement to many other great places in cyberspace about Anarchist 
ways of living and struggling.
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