Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #707 Update on Euro Fascism

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Intro­duc­tion: Dri­ven, in part, by the social dis­lo­ca­tion caused by the glob­al finan­cial col­lapse, fas­cism in Europe is gain­ing momen­tum. Much of the broad­cast explores fas­cism in Swe­den, a coun­try not gen­er­al­ly not­ed for its reac­tionary pol­i­tics. A dri­ving force in Swedish fas­cism for decades was the late Per Eng­dahl, whose New Swedish Move­ment coa­lesced in the 1930’s along­side the oth­er fas­cist move­ments of Europe.

Eng­dahl was instru­men­tal in the preser­va­tion of overt, above-ground Euro­pean fas­cism in the imme­di­ate post-World War II peri­od. Shep­herd­ing an impor­tant meet­ing of fas­cist lead­ers at Mal­mo, Swe­den in 1951, Eng­dahl has also been a con­trib­u­tor to an impor­tant fas­cist jour­nal called Nation Europa.

Although Swe­den is gen­er­al­ly viewed as a qua­si-social­ist nation, con­tem­po­rary fas­cist ele­ments thrive in the cor­ri­dors of pow­er in that coun­try. Many of that coun­try’s most pow­er­ful indus­tri­al­ists and financiers enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly backed Hitler. “Neo”-fascist and Nazi ele­ments have links to the Swedish intel­li­gence ser­vice, and Ikea founder and Sweden’s rich­est man Ing­var Kam­prad has an overt Nazi her­itage. (Kam­prad is pic­tured at left.)

Among those brave enough to resist the encroach­ment of fas­cism in Swe­den was the late author Stieg Lars­son. (Lars­son is pic­tured at right.) Dying on Novem­ber 9th, a sig­nif­i­cant date for the Nazis, his death has been attrib­uted to “nat­ur­al caus­es.”

Author Christo­pher Hitchens opines that if Larsson’s heart attack was, in fact, an assas­si­na­tion that would mean “med­ical mur­der.” Giv­en the links between Sapo (the Swedish intel­li­gence ser­vice) and Swedish Nazi ele­ments, that is not a pos­si­bil­i­ty that can be dis­missed.

Much of the sec­ond side of the pro­gram updates con­tem­po­rary Euro­pean reha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Axis pow­ers of World War II.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Cred­i­ble indi­ca­tions that Stieg Larsson’s nov­els were por­tray­als of real events; Larsson’s edi­to­r­i­al super­vi­sion of an anti-fas­cist mag­a­zine; the Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vice’s refusal to release its file on Adolph Eich­mann; the Ukraine’s reha­bil­i­ta­tion of SS col­lab­o­ra­tor and war crim­i­nal Stephan Ban­dera; the resus­ci­ta­tion of fas­cist and Nazi sym­pa­thies in Bosnia; an endorse­ment by Aus­tri­a’s largest dai­ly of a Holo­caust-deny­ing pres­i­den­tial can­di­date; employ­ment by Holo­caust-denier David Irv­ing of the half-broth­er of the new head of MI6–Britain’s for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice. (The insignia of the Bosn­ian Pride move­ment is pic­tured above and at right. At the top of the page are pic­tures of SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler review­ing troops of the 14th Waf­fen SS divi­sion [heav­i­ly recruit­ed from Stephen Ban­der­a’s OUN/B] and young, nos­tal­gic devo­tees of that divi­sion are pic­tured to the right.

1. A dri­ving force in Swedish fas­cism for decades was the late Per Eng­dahl, whose New Swedish Move­ment coa­lesced in the 1930’s along­side the oth­er fas­cist move­ments of Europe.

When, as often hap­pened, he was labelled an old Nazi, Per Eng­dahl, leader from the ear­ly Thir­ties of the ‘New Swedish Move­ment’, angri­ly used to protest that the label was incor­rect.

No Nazi he — but he cer­tain­ly was a Fas­cist, a believ­er in cor­po­ratism, and a long-time admir­er of Il Duce, Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, whose posthu­mous tri­umph in the lat­est Ital­ian elec­tions Eng­dahl must have savoured, before he died on 4 May (his death was only made pub­lic in Swe­den two weeks lat­er, after the funer­al). . . .

. . . The Allied vic­to­ry in 1945 left Eng­dahl and his minus­cule Fas­cist move­ment high and dry in a coun­try where there had been a con­sid­er­able num­ber of Nazi and Fas­cist sym­pa­this­ers until the turn­ing-point of the war with El Alamein and Stal­in­grad. He went on pub­lish­ing the move­men­t’s mag­a­zine, Vagen Fra­mat (‘The Road Ahead’) and often man­aged to make friend­ly con­tact with younger politi­cians, who ini­tial­ly did not know who he was or what he rep­re­sent­ed. He liked to point out what he saw as cor­po­ra­tivist traits in the preva­lent Social Demo­c­rat ide­ol­o­gy, and tried, with lim­it­ed suc­cess, in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Fribytare i folkhem­met (‘Free­boot­er in the Peo­ple’s Home’ — ie the Swedish wel­fare state), to por­tray him­self as a nice elder­ly states­man with ideas that might be some­where off base but not nec­es­sar­i­ly out of date.

In lat­er years, Eng­dahl became a pas­sion­ate pro-Euro­pean, in con­trast to younger extreme right- wingers in Swe­den, who tend to oppose Swe­den’s entry into the Euro­pean Union.

Almost total­ly blind, Eng­dahl nev­er­the­less par­tic­i­pat­ed — in so far as he was giv­en space in the news­pa­pers, more often on the radio — in Swedish polit­i­cal debates. His new Swedish move­ment was, like him­self, reach­ing a ripe old age, but pos­si­bly get­ting some new recruits among clean-shaven youths with boots, who usu­al­ly express their polit­i­cal lean­ings through immi­grant-bash­ing and deny­ing the fact of the Holo­caust. . . .

“Obit­u­ary: Per Eng­dahl” by Bjorn Kumm; The Inde­pen­dent [UK]; 5/24/1994.

2. Eng­dahl was instru­men­tal in the preser­va­tion of overt, above-ground Euro­pean fas­cism in the imme­di­ate post-World War II peri­od. Shep­herd­ing an impor­tant meet­ing of fas­cist lead­ers at Mal­mo, Swe­den in 1951, Eng­dahl has also been a con­trib­u­tor to an impor­tant fas­cist jour­nal called Nation Europa.

, , , , Two Ital­ian jour­nal­ists, Del Boca and Gio­vana, sur­vey­ing fas­cism through­out the world wrote in their book Fas­cism Today: “Nation Europa has for many years been con­sid­ered to be the most author­i­ta­tive organ of Euro­pean neo-Fas­cism” (p.457).

Nation Europa was estab­lished short­ly after the Sec­ond World War by a for­mer Waf­fen-SS offi­cer, Arthur Ehrhard. Asso­ci­at­ed with Nation Europa were many old Nazis attempt­ing to reor­gan­ise Nazi activ­i­ties through­out Europe. In 1951 a Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence was held in Mal­mo Swe­den, attend­ed by more than 30 fas­cist lead­ers. The pur­pose of the con­fer­ence was to lay the basis for future fas­cist activ­i­ties. The con­fer­ence was organ­ised by the Swedish fas­cist Per Eng­dahl. An observ­er of the fas­cist scene wrote at the time: “Dr Eng­dahl, the organ­is­er of this move­ment, is con­spic­u­ous­ly asso­ci­at­ed with a Ger­man jour­nal which may be described as the brains trust of the Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al. Nation Europa, a well-pro­duced month­ly (pub­lished at Coburg) claims to be labour­ing in the ser­vice of Euro­pean nation­al­ism” (Wiener Library Bul­letin, 1952 May/August, p.21).

Ear­ly con­trib­u­tors includ­ed many of the remains of the old Nazi ‘elite’: i.e. Hans Grimm, Karl Heinz Priester, Oswald Mosley, Julius Evola (the Ital­ian racist, whose works are high­ly rec­om­mend­ed in Nou­velle Ecole: see p.76, Autumn 1973) and Mau­rice Bardèche, the French fas­cist who start­ed a book with the state­ment je suis un écrivain fasciste.(73) Adolf von Thad­den, the ex-leader of the NPD, is a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor and Richard Ver­rall of the Nation­al Fron­t’s directorate,(74) and edi­tor of the Nation­al Fron­t’s paper Spear­head, is also a con­trib­u­tor (see his arti­cle Was will Eng­lands ‘Nation­al Front’? in Sep­tem­ber 1977). . . .

“Psy­chol­o­gy, Racism & Fas­cism: An On-line Edi­tion” by Michael Bil­lig [Intro­duc­tion by Andrew S. Win­ston]; Uni­ver­si­ty of Guelph.

3. Although Swe­den is gen­er­al­ly viewed as a qua­si-social­ist nation, con­tem­po­rary fas­cist ele­ments thrive in the cor­ri­dors of pow­er in that coun­try. Many of that coun­try’s most pow­er­ful indus­tri­al­ists and financiers enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly backed Hitler. “Neo”-fascist and Nazi ele­ments have links to the Swedish intel­li­gence ser­vice, and Ikea founder and Sweden’s rich­est man Ing­var Kam­prad has an overt Nazi her­itage.

. . . . This week sees the film adap­ta­tion of the first book in Larsson’s tril­o­gy, The Girl with the Drag­on Tat­too, released in Britain. So far, more than 2.5 mil­lion Euro­peans have seen the movie, and No Coun­try For Old Men pro­duc­er Scott Rudin has just inked a deal to make the Hol­ly­wood ver­sion. By the time Rudin has fin­ished, many mil­lions more will have fol­lowed the sto­ry of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Mikael Blomkvist and chaot­ic, free­wheel­ing com­put­er hack­er Lis­beth Salan­der. What they find at the end of that sto­ry, how­ev­er, may shock them.
Tat­too begins as a slow-mov­ing, gen­tly unfold­ing detec­tive sto­ry but ends with scenes of hor­ror beyond any­thing Han­ni­bal Lecter could imag­ine. Through­out the book ver­sion, Lars­son keeps drop­ping gen­uine fig­ures relat­ing to vio­lent crimes against women in Swe­den. The Swedish title for the book is Men Who Hate Women, and foot­notes quote real-life inci­dents to explain how the fic­tion­al Salan­der – whose civ­il rights are removed at the whim of a judge – is based on real inci­dents.
Lars­son, as with Bet­ner and Mankell, spends much of the time pulling apart the stereo­type of hap­py-ever-after, per­fect­ly edu­cat­ed, social­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic and joy­ful­ly tol­er­ant Swedes enjoy­ing wild sex lives and per­fect­ly cooked meat­balls. The Mil­len­ni­um Tril­o­gy tracks Blomkvist and Salander’s attempts to uncov­er mys­te­ri­ous mur­ders in neo-fas­cist bil­lion­aire fam­i­lies as well as state-sanc­tioned vio­lent sex­u­al abuse, pae­dophil­ia and rape. Lars­son him­self was a cam­paign­ing anti-Nazi jour­nal­ist who set up his own ver­sion of the British anti-fas­cist mag­a­zine Search­light, so you can see why he’d take this path. Mankell, how­ev­er, was a well-estab­lished main­stream author before he cre­at­ed Wal­lan­der. He did so in order to inves­ti­gate pedophile rings at the heart of Sweden”s secu­ri­ty ser­vices and expose pub­lic and insti­tu­tion­alised racism.
“Wal­len­der was born in May 1989 out of a need to talk about xeno­pho­bia. So the sto­ry came first, then him,” says Mankell. “I was writ­ing the first nov­el out of anger at what was hap­pen­ing in Swe­den at the time – the rise of xeno­pho­bia. That was my ambi­tion. And, since acts of xeno­pho­bia are a crime, I need­ed a police offi­cer.
“Even after the sec­ond and third books, I real­ly wasn’t think­ing of a series. Then I realised I was cre­at­ing a tool that could be used to tell sto­ries about the sit­u­a­tion in Swe­den in the Nineties.”
Wal­lan­der and Blomkvist also wade through some of the extreme­ly unpleas­ant under­cur­rents beneath Sweden’s tran­quil social order. In Lars­son and Mankel’s sto­ries, both men encounter Neo-Nazis who col­lude with Sapo, the Swedish ver­sion of MI5 and MI6 com­bined. In their ver­sion of Swe­den, racism is rife, vio­lence against women is com­mon­place, while the traf­fick­ing of chil­dren for sex is facil­i­tat­ed by high­ly placed lawyers and doc­tors. . . .

. . . Lit­tle of this would come as a sur­prise to Lars­son, Blomkvist or Salan­der, who encounter all of this and more while inves­ti­gat­ing the bru­tal mur­der of a child, appar­ent­ly at the hands of her rich, Nazi-sym­pa­this­ing fam­i­ly. “Swe­den has yet to come to terms with its Nazi past,” says Anna Blondell, who runs a Swedish restau­rant in Lon­don. “We were neu­tral dur­ing the war, and our Nazi par­ty still lives on. In fact, I think it will do well at the next elec­tion, under a dif­fer­ent name. Many peo­ple in the old­er gen­er­a­tion were very sym­pa­thet­ic to Nazi ideas like eugen­ics but, unlike Ger­many, we have not so open about this.”
Cer­tain­ly the coun­try prac­tised forced ster­il­i­sa­tion of women deemed unfit to be moth­ers until as recent­ly as 1975. Brand­ed low class, or men­tal­ly slow, they were kept in Insti­tutes for Mis­led and Moral­ly Neglect­ed Chil­dren, where they were even­tu­al­ly “treat­ed”. In 1997, the gov­ern­ment admit­ted that 60,000 women had been ster­ilised.
Mean­while, Ikea founder and Sweden’s rich­est man Ing­var Kam­prad revealed his youth­ful Nazi sym­pa­thies in 1994, con­fess­ing to a nine-year friend­ship with Per Eng­dahl, the open­ly pro-Nazi leader of the Neo-Swedish move­ment. Kam­prad claimed he could­n’t remem­ber if he’d joined the Nordic Youth, Sweden’s equiv­a­lent of the Hitler Youth. . . .

“The Dark Side of Swedish Soci­ety” by Stephen Arm­strong; Telegraph.co.uk; 3/13/2010.

4. The death of Stieg Lars­son, author of the above-men­tioned Girl with the Dra­goon Tat­too, rais­es dis­turb­ing ques­tions. Dying on Novem­ber 9th, a sig­nif­i­cant date for the Nazis, his death has been attrib­uted to “nat­ur­al caus­es.”

Dis­play­ing the doubt that is req­ui­site for a main­stream jour­nal­ist, author Christo­pher Hitchens express­es his belief that Lars­son died of nat­ur­al caus­es, despite doc­u­ment­ed plots against his life from Swedish fas­cist ele­ments. (In addi­tion to his works of fic­tion, Lars­son edit­ed an anti-fas­cist jour­nal sim­i­lar to the British Search­light.)

Hitchens opines that if Larsson’s heart attack was, in fact, an assas­si­na­tion that would mean “med­ical mur­der.” Giv­en the links between Sapo (the Swedish intel­li­gence ser­vice) and Swedish Nazi ele­ments, that is not a pos­si­bil­i­ty that can be dis­missed.

Note, also, that one of Hitchens’ sources told him that every­thing Lars­son wrote about actu­al­ly hap­pened.

I sup­pose it’s jus­ti­fi­able to describe “best-sell­ing” in qua­si-tsuna­mi terms because when it hap­pens it’s part­ly a wall and part­ly a tide: first you see a tow­er­ing, glis­ten­ing ram­part of books in Cost­co and the nation’s air­ports and then you are hit by a series of suc­ceed­ing waves that deposit indi­vid­ual copies in the hands of peo­ple sit­ting right next to you. I was slight­ly won­der­ing what might come crash­ing in after Hur­ri­cane Khaled. I didn’t guess that the next great inun­da­tion would orig­i­nate not in the exot­ic kite-run­ning spaces at the roof of the world but from an epi­cen­ter made almost banal for us by Vol­vo, Abso­lut, Saab, and ikea.

Yet it is from this soci­ety, of reas­sur­ing brand names and womb-to-tomb nation­al health care, that Stieg Lars­son con­jured a detec­tive dou­ble act so incon­gru­ous that it makes Holmes and Wat­son seem like sib­lings. I say “con­jured” because Mr. Lars­son also drew upon the bloody, haunt­ed old Swe­den of trolls and elves and ogres, and I put it in the past tense because, just as the first book in his “Mil­len­ni­um” tril­o­gy, The Girl with the Drag­on Tat­too, was about to make his for­tune, he very sud­den­ly became a dead per­son. In the Lars­son uni­verse the nasty trolls and hulk­ing ogres are bent Swedish cap­i­tal­ists, cold-faced Baltic sex traf­fick­ers, blue-eyed Viking Aryan Nazis, and oth­er Nordic riffraff who might have had their rea­sons to whack him. But if he now dwells in that Val­hal­la of the hack writer who posthu­mous­ly beat all the odds, it’s sure­ly because of his elf. Pic­ture a fer­al waif. All right, pic­ture a four-foot-eleven-inch “doll” with Asperger’s syn­drome and gen­er­ous breast implants. This is not Pip­pi Long­stock­ing (to whom a few ges­tures are made in the nar­ra­tive). This is Miss Goth, inter­mit­tent­ly dis­guised as la gamine.

For­get Miss Smilla’s sense of the snow and check out Lis­beth Salander’s taste in pussy rings, tat­toos, girls, boys, motor­cy­cles, and, above all, com­put­er key­boards. (Once you accept that George Mac­Don­ald Fraser’s Flash­man can pick up any known lan­guage in a few days, you have sus­pend­ed enough dis­be­lief to set­tle down and enjoy his adven­tures.) Miss Salan­der is so well accou­tred with spe­cial fea­tures that she’s almost over-equipped. She is award­ed a pho­to­graph­ic mem­o­ry, a chess mind to rival Bob­by Fischer’s, a math­e­mat­i­cal capac­i­ty that toys with Fermat’s last the­o­rem as a cat bats a mouse, and the abil­i­ty to “hack”—I apol­o­gize for the rep­e­ti­tion of that word—into the deep intesti­nal com­put­ers of all banks and police depart­ments. At the end of The Girl Who Played with Fire, she is for good mea­sure grant­ed the abil­i­ty to return from the grave.

With all these super­heroine advan­tages, one won­ders why she and her on-and-off side­kick, the lum­ber­ing but unstop­pable reporter Mikael Blomkvist, don’t defeat the forces of Swedish Fas­cism and impe­ri­al­ism more effort­less­ly. But the oth­er rea­son that Lis­beth Salan­der is such a source of fas­ci­na­tion is this: the pint-size minx­oid with the drag­on tat­too is also a trau­ma­tized vic­tim and doesn’t work or play well with oth­ers. She has been raped and tor­tured and oth­er­wise abused ever since she could think, and her pri­vate phrase for her com­ing-of-age is “All the Evil”: words that go unelu­ci­dat­ed until near the end of The Girl Who Played with Fire. The actress Noo­mi Rapace has already played Salan­der in a Swedish film of the first nov­el, which enjoyed a world­wide release. (When Hol­ly­wood gets to the cast­ing stage, I sup­pose Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man will be offered the ursine Blomkvist role, and though the col­or­ing is wrong I keep think­ing of Winona Ryder for Lis­beth.) Accord­ing to Larsson’s father, the sym­pa­thy with which “the girl” is evoked is derived part­ly from the author’s own beloved niece, Therese, who is tat­tooed and has suf­fered from anorex­ia and dyslex­ia but can fix your com­put­er prob­lems.

In life, Stieg Lars­son described him­self as, among oth­er things, “a fem­i­nist,” and his char­ac­ter sur­ro­gate, Mikael Blomkvist, takes an osten­ta­tious­ly severe line against the male dom­i­na­tion of soci­ety and indeed of his own pro­fes­sion. (The orig­i­nal grim and Swedish title of The Girl with the Drag­on Tat­too is Men Who Hate Women, while the trilogy’s third book bore the more fairy-tale-like name The Cas­tle in the Air That Blew Up: the clever rebrand­ing of the series with the word “girl” on every cov­er was obvi­ous­ly crit­i­cal.) Blomkvist’s moral right­eous­ness comes in very use­ful for the action of the nov­els, because it allows the depic­tion of a great deal of cru­el­ty to women, smug­gled through cus­toms under the dis­guise of a strong dis­ap­proval. Swe­den used to be noto­ri­ous, in the late 1960s, as the home­land of the film I Am Curi­ous (Yel­low), which went all the way to the Supreme Court when dis­trib­uted in the Unit­ed States and gave Swe­den a world rep­u­ta­tion as a place of smil­ing nudi­ty and guilt-free sex. What a world of nurs­ery inno­cence that was, com­pared with the child slav­ery and exploita­tion that are evoked with per­haps slight­ly too much rel­ish by the cru­sad­ing Blomkvist.

His best excuse for his own pruri­ence is that these ser­i­al killers and tor­ture fanciers are prac­tic­ing a form of cap­i­tal­ism and that their rack­et is pro­tect­ed by a porno­graph­ic alliance with a form of Fas­cism, its low­er ranks made up of hideous bik­ers and meth run­ners. This is not just sex or crime—it’s pol­i­tics! Most of the time, Lars­son hauls him­self along with writ­ing such as this:

The mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion was like a bro­ken mosa­ic in which he could make out some pieces while oth­ers were sim­ply miss­ing. Some­where there was a pat­tern. He could sense it, but he could not fig­ure it out. Too many pieces were miss­ing.

No doubt they were, or there would be no book. (The plot of the first sto­ry is so heav­i­ly con­vo­lut­ed that it requires a page repro­duc­ing the Vanger dynasty’s fam­i­ly tree—the first time I can remem­ber encoun­ter­ing such a drama­tis per­son­ae since I read War and Peace.) But when he comes to the vil­lain of The Girl with the Drag­on Tat­too, a many-ten­ta­cled tycoon named Wen­ner­ström, Larsson’s prose is sud­den­ly much more spir­it­ed. Wen­ner­ström had con­se­crat­ed him­self to “fraud that was so exten­sive it was no longer mere­ly criminal—it was busi­ness.” That’s actu­al­ly one of the best-turned lines in the whole thou­sand pages. If it sounds a bit like Bertolt Brecht on an aver­age day, it’s because Larsson’s own views were old-shoe Com­mu­nist.

His back­ground involved the unique bond­ing that comes from tough Red fam­i­lies and sol­id class loy­al­ties. The hard-labor and fac­to­ry and min­ing sec­tor of Swe­den is in the far and ardu­ous North—this is also the home ter­ri­to­ry of most of the country’s storytellers—and Grand­pa was a pro­le­tar­i­an Com­mu­nist up toward the Arc­tic. This dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, when quite a few Swedes were vol­un­teer­ing to serve Hitler’s New Order and join the SS. In a note the 23-year-old Lars­son wrote before set­ting out for Africa, he bequeathed every­thing to the Com­mu­nist par­ty of his home­town, Umeå. The own­er­ship of the immense lat­er for­tune that he nev­er saw went by law to his father and broth­er, leav­ing his part­ner of 30 years, Eva Gabriels­son, with no legal claim, only a moral one that asserts she alone is fit to man­age Larsson’s very lucra­tive lega­cy. And this is not the only murk that hangs around his death, at the age of 50, in 2004.

To be exact, Stieg Lars­son died on Novem­ber 9, 2004, which I can’t help notic­ing was the anniver­sary of Kristall­nacht. Is it plau­si­ble that Sweden’s most pub­lic anti-Nazi just chanced to expire from nat­ur­al caus­es on such a date? Larsson’s mag­a­zine, Expo, which has a fair­ly clear fic­tion­al cous­in­hood with “Mil­len­ni­um,” was an unceas­ing annoy­ance to the extreme right. He him­self was the pub­lic fig­ure most iden­ti­fied with the unmask­ing of white-suprema­cist and neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tions, many of them with a hard-earned rep­u­ta­tion for homi­ci­dal vio­lence. The Swedes are not the pacif­ic her­bi­vores that many peo­ple imag­ine: in the foot­notes to his sec­ond nov­el Lars­son reminds us that Prime Min­is­ter Olof Palme was gunned down in the street in 1986 and that the for­eign min­is­ter Anna Lindh was stabbed to death (in a Stock­holm depart­ment store) in 2003. The first crime is still unsolved, and the ver­dict in the sec­ond case has by no means sat­is­fied every­body.

A report in the main­stream news­pa­per Afton­bladet describes the find­ings of anoth­er anti-Nazi researcher, named Bosse Schön, who unrav­eled a plot to mur­der Stieg Lars­son that includ­ed a Swedish SS vet­er­an. Anoth­er scheme mis­fired because on the night in ques­tion, 20 years ago, he saw skin­heads with bats wait­ing out­side his office and left by the rear exit. Web sites are devot­ed to fur­ther spec­u­la­tion: one blog is pre­oc­cu­pied with the the­o­ry that Prime Min­is­ter Palme’s uncaught assas­sin was behind the death of Lars­son too. Larsson’s name and oth­er details were found when the Swedish police searched the apart­ment of a Fas­cist arrest­ed for a polit­i­cal mur­der. Larsson’s address, tele­phone num­ber, and pho­to­graph, along with threats to peo­ple iden­ti­fied as “ene­mies of the white race,” were pub­lished in a neo-Nazi mag­a­zine: the author­i­ties took it seri­ous­ly enough to pros­e­cute the edi­tor.

But Lars­son died of an appar­ent coro­nary throm­bo­sis, not from any may­hem. So he would have had to be poi­soned, say, or some­how med­ical­ly mur­dered. Such a hypoth­e­sis would point to some involve­ment “high up,” and any­one who has read the nov­els will know that in Larsson’s world the forces of law and order in Swe­den are fetid­ly com­plic­it with orga­nized crime. So did he wind up, in effect, a char­ac­ter in one of his own tales? The peo­ple who might have the most inter­est in keep­ing the spec­u­la­tion alive—his pub­lish­ers and publicists—choose not to believe it. “Six­ty cig­a­rettes a day, plus tremen­dous amounts of junk food and cof­fee and an enor­mous work­load,” said Christo­pher MacLe­hose, Larsson’s lit­er­ary dis­cov­er­er in Eng­lish and by a nice coin­ci­dence a pub­lish­er of Flash­man, “would be the cul­prit. I gath­er he’d even had a warn­ing heart mur­mur. Still, I have attend­ed demon­stra­tions by these Swedish right-wing thugs, and they are tru­ly fright­en­ing. I also know some­one with excel­lent con­tacts in the Swedish police and secu­ri­ty world who assures me that every­thing described in the ‘Mil­len­ni­um’ nov­els actu­al­ly took place. And, appar­ent­ly, Lars­son planned to write as many as 10 in all. So you can see how peo­ple could think that he might not have died but been ‘stopped.’”

He left behind him enough man­u­script pages for three books, the last of which—due out in the U.S. next summer—is enti­tled The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, and the out­lines and ini­tial scrib­blings of a fourth. The mar­ket and appetite for them seems to be unap­peasable, as does the demand for Hen­ning Mankell’s “Detec­tive Wal­lan­der” thrillers, the work of Peter (Smilla’s Sense of Snow) Høeg, and the sto­ries of Arnal­dur Indri­da­son. These writ­ers come from coun­tries as diverse as Den­mark and Ice­land, but in Ger­many the genre already has a name: Schwe­denkri­mi, or “Swedish crime writ­ing.” Christo­pher MacLe­hose told me that he knows of book­stores that now have spe­cial sec­tions for the Scan­di­na­vian phe­nom­e­non. “When Roger Straus and I first pub­lished Peter Høeg,” he said, “we thought we were doing some­thing of a favor for Dan­ish lit­er­a­ture, and then ‘Miss Smil­la’ abrupt­ly sold a mil­lion copies in both Eng­land and Amer­i­ca. Look, in almost every­one there is a mem­o­ry of the sagas and the Norse myths. A lot of our sto­ry­telling got start­ed in those long, cold, dark nights.”

Per­haps. But Lars­son is very much of our own time, set­ting him­self to con­front ques­tions such as immi­gra­tion, “gen­der,” white-col­lar crime, and, above all, the Inter­net. The plot of his first vol­ume does involve a sort of excur­sion into antiquity—into the book of Leviti­cus, to be exact—but this is only for the pur­pose of encrypt­ing a “Bible code.” And he is quite delib­er­ate­ly unro­man­tic, giv­ing us shop­ping lists, street direc­tions, menus, and oth­er details—often with their Swedish names—in full. The vil­lains are evil, all right, but very stu­pid and self-thwart­ing­ly prone to spend more time (this always irri­tates me) telling their vic­tims what they will do to them than actu­al­ly doing it. There is much sex but absolute­ly no love, a great deal of vio­lence but zero hero­ism. Rec­i­p­ro­cal ges­tures are gen­er­al­ly indi­cat­ed by cliché: if a Lars­son char­ac­ter wants to show assent he or she will “nod”; if he or she wants to man­i­fest dis­tress, then it will usu­al­ly be by bit­ing the low­er lip. The pas­sion­ate world of the sagas and the myths is a very long way away. Bleak­ness is all. That could even be the secret—the emo­tion­less effi­cien­cy of Swedish tech­nol­o­gy, para­dox­i­cal­ly com­bined with the wicked allure of the piti­less elfin avenger, plus a dash of para­noia sur­round­ing the author’s demise. If Lars­son had died as a brave mar­tyr to a cause, it would have been strange­ly out of keep­ing; it’s actu­al­ly more sat­is­fy­ing that he suc­cumbed to the nat­ur­al caus­es that are symp­toms of mod­ern life. . . .

“The Author Who Played with Fire” by Christo­pher Hitchens; Van­i­ty Fair; 12/2009.

5. The Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vice (BND) chose–initially–to keep its files on Eich­mann secret. Why would this be nec­es­sary? Among the pos­si­bil­i­ties is the polit­i­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ty deriv­ing from past employ­ment of Eich­mann and many of his subordinates–and supe­ri­ors–by ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence, includ­ing U.S. and Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vices.

The open­ing of these files would also shed light on the Under­ground Reich and its deriv­a­tive, pro­found eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal rela­tion­ships with gov­ern­men­tal, reli­gious and com­mer­cial cen­ters of pow­er around the world.

NB: In response to jour­nal­ists’ law­suits, the BND reversed course and decid­ed to release the files. One can but won­der what will be san­i­tized from those files.

Fifty years after Nazi war crim­i­nal Adolf Eich­man­n’s arrest by the Israeli Mossad in Argenti­na, basic details about his 15 years as a fugi­tive remain a gov­ern­ment secret. The files kept by Ger­many’s for­eign intel­li­gence agency, the BND, remain clas­si­fied today — alleged­ly for rea­sons of nation­al secu­ri­ty. A Ger­man jour­nal­ist is now suing in a fed­er­al court for the release of the files.

Fifty years have passed since Adolf Eich­man­n’s arrest, but the Ger­man for­eign intel­li­gence agency, the BND, is still hop­ing to pre­vent the release of files detail­ing his post-war move­ments. A Fed­er­al Admin­is­tra­tive Court in Leipzig is cur­rent­ly exam­in­ing almost 4,500 pages of secret doc­u­ments on Eich­mann, a lead­ing archi­tect of Hitler’s plans to mur­der Europe’s Jews. The court is soon expect­ed to rule whether the BND’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for con­ceal­ing the files are still applic­a­ble and in line with the coun­try’s free­dom of infor­ma­tion laws. . . .

. . . Uki Goñi, a promi­nent Argen­tine jour­nal­ist and expert on the post-war Nazi fugi­tives, has tak­en a spe­cial inter­est in the BND files and thinks that ref­er­ences to a for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice are a smoke­screen. “They could eas­i­ly redact the name of the intel­li­gence ser­vice and the name of the infor­mants,” he told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “The files would not be embar­rass­ing to any oth­er secret ser­vice but to Ger­many itself.” Goñi believes the files would reveal hith­er­to unknown lev­els of col­lu­sion between the Ger­man gov­ern­ment and Nazis who fled over­seas to escape pros­e­cu­tion.

In his book, “The Real Odessa,” which describes how the Per­on regime sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly aid­ed Nazi war crim­i­nals, Goñi doc­u­ments how Nazi war crim­i­nals lived free and easy in Buenos Aires. Ger­man For­eign Ser­vice mem­bers and Nazis vis­it­ed the same estab­lish­ments and drank in the same beer hall. The Nazis did­n’t hide their alle­giances either: “The Nazis would come in, click their heels and throw up their tra­di­tion­al salute,” Goñi told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Eich­mann did­n’t feel the need to keep a low pro­file in that com­mu­ni­ty. The Ger­man embassy in Buenos Aires gave his wife and chil­dren pass­ports in their own name, just as they had giv­en infa­mous Nazi doc­tor Josef Men­gele a pass­port.

Attor­ney Rein­er Geulen thinks that the most explo­sive infor­ma­tion enclosed in the files per­tains to Eich­man­n’s flight from Ger­many. “He was very chat­ty in Jerusalem — he knew he was going to die any­way,” Geulen said. Accord­ing to Geulen, Eich­mann explained in great detail who helped him flee Ger­many and then Europe — infor­ma­tion the Israelis were very inter­est­ed in. “There is good rea­son to believe that he received help from Ger­man, Ital­ian and Vat­i­can offi­cials,” he said. . . .

“The Eich­mann Files: Clas­si­fied Doc­u­ments Could Be Released after 50 Years” by Leon Dis­che Beck­er; Spiegel Online; 3/11/2010.

6. The nam­ing of Nazi and SS Col­lab­o­ra­tor Stephan Ban­dera as a “Hero” of the Ukraine should out­rage every­one, not just Jews, although it should­n’t sur­prise any­one. Deeply involved with war crimes com­mit­ted by Nazi and SS units dur­ing World War II, Ban­der­a’s OUN/B orga­ni­za­tion then jumped to West­ern intel­li­gence after the war. (The 14th Waf­fens SS “Gali­cian” Division–pictured at right– was drawn large­ly from the OUN/B.)

Ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with Ban­der­a’s group dis­sem­i­nat­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion attempt­ing to link Ban­der­a’s death with the KGB and Lee Har­vey Oswald. This helped cov­er up Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion by con­vinc­ing some that a Third World War would result from a prop­er inves­ti­ga­tion.

Evolv­ing into a key ele­ment of the Nazi wing of the GOP, the OUN/B real­ized its goal of an “inde­pen­dent” Ukraine dur­ing the Reagan/George H.W. Bush regimes. Yka­te­ri­na Chumachenko–the top oper­a­tional leader of the OUN/B– became the head of Pres­i­den­tial Liai­son under Ronald Rea­gan.

Even­tu­al­ly, she mar­ried Mr. Yuschenko, and Yka­te­ri­na became the first lady of the Ukraine! Her hus­band has now named Ban­dera a hero!

The largest Jew­ish human rights orga­ni­za­tion in the US, the Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­ter, joined the cho­rus of those who con­demn the dec­la­ra­tion of con­tro­ver­sial nation­al­ist leader Stepan Ban­dera as a Hero of Ukraine.

Mark Weitz­man, head of gov­ern­ment affairs at Wiesen­thal Cen­ter wrote to Ukraine’s Ambas­sador in the US, not­ing that “it is sure­ly a trav­es­ty when such an hon­or is grant­ed right at the peri­od when the world paus­es to remem­ber the vic­tims of the Holo­caust on Jan­u­ary 27.”

Express­ing his “deep­est revul­sion”, Weitz­man also remind­ed that the late Simon Wiesen­thal, who found­ed their orga­ni­za­tion, was born in Ukraine him­self.

Ear­li­er, Russ­ian Jews sim­i­lar­ly called Yushchenko’s move “a provo­ca­tion pro­mot­ing the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Nazi crimes” and “a chal­lenge to the civ­i­lized world.”

Out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Yushchenko, who lost the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions on Jan­u­ary 17, signed a decree con­fer­ring Ban­dera, the head of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) in 1941–1959, the sta­tus of a nation­al hero.

Bandera’s sup­port­ers – main­ly in West­ern Ukraine – claim he fought for Ukraine’s inde­pen­dence against both Sovi­et and Ger­man sol­diers. How­ev­er, many oth­ers in his coun­try and Rus­sia believe he was a war crim­i­nal who col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazis dur­ing WWII and killed inno­cent peo­ple.

The Fed­er­a­tion of Russia’s Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ties, or FEOR, in a state­ment issued Mon­day, said Yushchenko’s move “insults the mem­o­ry of the vic­tims” of Nazi crimes.

“The decree says Ban­dera was award­ed ‘for his spir­i­tu­al invin­ci­bil­i­ty, fight for nation­al ide­ol­o­gy, hero­ism and self-sac­ri­fice in a strug­gle for the inde­pen­dence of Ukrain­ian state’,” the doc­u­ment pub­lished on the organization’s web­site (www.feor.ru) reads. “Appar­ent­ly, this way Yushchenko equates hero­ism and self-sac­ri­fice to the mass mur­der­ing of the Jews and Poles that Ban­dera and his asso­ciates were wide­ly prac­tic­ing.”

The doc­u­ment authors believe “such a polit­i­cal ges­ture is a chal­lenge to the civ­i­lized world, to every­one who fought against Nazism” dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. . . .

Jews World­wide Out­raged byYuschenko’s Prais­ing of Nation­al­ists; Rus­sia Times; 1/30/2010.

7. In past broad­casts, we have looked at the re-emer­gence of Nazi influ­ence in the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion of “inde­pen­dent” Bosnia. Salient among those devel­op­ments was the re-cre­ation of the Hand­jar Division–named and mod­eled after the Third Reich’s 13th Waf­fen SS Divi­sion.

Nazi recrude­s­cence in Bosnia appears to be gain­ing momen­tum.

 

Bosn­ian neo-nazi orga­ni­za­tion was birthed today that insists that Bosnia belongs to the Bosni­aks, an invent­ed nation­al­i­ty with which Bosn­ian Mus­lims iden­ti­fy in order to avoid their reli­gious back­ground when talk­ing to the West­ern press.

The new Nazi Bosn­ian Pride Move­ment (Bosan­s­ki pokret nacionalnog ponosa) believes that Serbs and Croats have no right to the state and that the state belongs exclu­sive­ly to Bosn­ian Mus­lims, aka Bosni­aks. . . .

The Nazi Bosn­ian Pride Move­ment has expand­ed its ene­my list from their WWII pre­de­ces­sors, the Handzar Divi­sion and the Young Mus­lims.

As their ene­mies, Nazi Bosn­ian Pride Move­ment includes the usu­al ones they were exter­mi­nat­ing in WWII – Jews, Gyp­sies and Serbs – but have expand­ed the list to include Chet­niks, Tito, com­mu­nists, homo­sex­u­als, blacks and Croa­t­ian sep­a­ratists.

The group plans to spread nazi leaflets very soon in the cities of Sara­je­vo, Zeni­ca, Bihac, Tuzla and Mostar, all cities with sub­stan­tial Mus­lim and Croat pop­u­la­tion that will find the mes­sage appeal­ing.

The group’s noto­ri­ous­ly slow to load their web site, bosnacenter.com. It serves up a blank page but with lit­tle googling, their mod­er­at­ed chat room appears with post­ings on Zion­ism, Serb Repub­lic, Truth and 5 ques­tions for prospec­tive mem­bers. . . .

“Nazi Bosn­ian Pride Move­ment Formed”; serbianna.com; 2/19/2009.

8. Holo­caust revi­sion­ism con­tin­ues to advance on the Euro­pean and world stages. In Aus­tri­a’s recent elec­tions, a Holo­caust revi­sion­ist received the endorse­ment of Aus­tri­a’s largest paper. Hap­pi­ly, she was trounced in the elec­tion.

A woman who has crit­i­cized anti-Nazi law and is mar­ried to an extreme right­ist is run­ning for pres­i­dent in Aus­tria, and crit­ics con­tend her can­di­dacy could tar­nish the rep­u­ta­tion of a coun­try still marred by its con­nec­tion to the Holo­caust.

Bar­bara Rosenkranz, 51, is not expect­ed to win the April 25 elec­tion, despite her endorse­ment from the own­er of Austria’s most wide­ly read news­pa­per, the Kro­nen Zeitung. [Ital­ics mine–D.E.]

But she is like­ly to lead a cam­paign against pop­u­lar Pres­i­dent Heinz Fis­cher laced with the anti-for­eign­er and anti-Euro­pean Union rhetoric her far-right Free­dom Par­ty gen­er­ates.

She is most wide­ly known for her belief that Austria’s law ban­ning the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the Nazis is a hin­drance to free­dom of expres­sion and vio­lates the country’s con­sti­tu­tion. In the same vein, she also has defend­ed doubts over Nazi gas cham­bers.

Her hus­band, Horst Jakob Rosenkranz, was part of a far-right polit­i­cal par­ty that was banned for being too rad­i­cal. . . .

“Aus­trian Far-Right Icon Eyes Pres­i­dency” by Veroni­ka Oleksyn [AP]; google.com; 3/3/2010.

9. Bod­ing VERY poor­ly for the future, the half broth­er of the new MI6 chief is a researcher for Holo­caust denier David Irv­ing. (MI6 is the British for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice.) Irv­ing recent­ly com­plet­ed a prison term in Aus­tria for Holo­caust denial.

“. . . Among those fea­tured in fam­ily pho­tographs on the web­site is Lady Saw­ers’ half-broth­er Hugo Haig-Thomas, a for­mer diplo­mat.

Lady Saw­ers met her hus­band after vis­it­ing her broth­er when he was post­ed to Yemen in the late Sev­en­ties. She liked the coun­try and decid­ed to stay, land­ing a sec­re­tar­ial job at the Embassy, where Sir John lat­er suc­ceeded Mr Haig-Thomas.

Mr Haig-Thomas is an asso­ciate and researcher for revi­sion­ist his­to­rian David Irv­ing, who was jailed for three years in Aus­tria in 2006 for ‘glo­ri­fy­ing the Nazi Par­ty’ because he ques­tioned whether the Holo­caust took place.

The his­to­rian describes Haig-Thomas as ‘a researcher who has done fine work for me’. His work includes exam­in­ing the papers relat­ing to the cap­ture of Hein­rich Himm­ler, the man behind Hitler’s plan to exter­mi­nate the Euro­pean Jews.

A recent post by Mr Haig-Thomas on Irving’s web­site includes a trans­la­tion of the tes­ti­mony of a Ger­man offi­cer who claimed to have built fake gas cham­bers at Sach­sen­hausen con­cen­tra­tion camp on Sovi­et orders. [Empha­sis added.]

But Mr Haig-Thomas said he had nev­er con­sid­ered his views con­tro­ver­sial, nor did he regret his con­nec­tion with Irv­ing. . . .”

“MI6 Chief Blows His Cov­er as Wife’s Face­book Account Reveals Fam­ily Hol­i­days, Show­biz Friends and Links to David Irv­ing” by Jason Lewis; Dai­ly Mail [UK]; 7/5/2009.

Discussion

5 comments for “FTR #707 Update on Euro Fascism”

  1. This time, I would like to pro­pose a video. It’s called “Good­bye Swe­den”. It’s from Pat Con­dell, the stand up come­di­an and social crit­ic. While every­thing he says should prob­a­bly be stud­ied more close­ly, it remains a good indi­ca­tion that fas­cism and Islamiza­tion go hand in hand. Jihadists, Islam­ic extrem­ists and fon­da­men­tal­ists, are proxy war­riors for the Third Reich.
    In a nut­shell: where Islam­ic immi­gra­tion thrives, the fab­ric of soci­ety tends to col­lapse.

    With pow­er­ful indus­tri­al­ists, cap­i­tal­ists, with ties to the intel­li­gence ser­vice and to the Third Reich that go back to WWII, in the under­ground, and with the help of their proxy war­riors, the Islamists, above­ground, we can now say that, yes, in fact, the engi­neer has wrecked the train of Swe­den. Watch the video and look around you. They’re in your back­yard.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZtc2ma2GEQ

    Posted by Claude | December 2, 2010, 10:55 am
  2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14465851

    10 August 2011
    Swedish queen’s report denies father had Nazi links

    Swe­den’s Queen Sil­via has been forced to refute alle­ga­tions over her father’s past

    Swe­den’s roy­al fam­i­ly has reject­ed alle­ga­tions of links between the Ger­man-born queen’s late father and the Nazi regime in Ger­many.

    Queen Sil­via has pub­lished a report she com­mis­sioned in response to claims her father took over a fac­to­ry from a Jew­ish busi­ness­man.

    The report con­clud­ed that Wal­ter Som­mer­lath had in fact helped the Jew­ish man escape from Ger­many.

    But a Holo­caust sur­vivors’ group said the find­ings were a “white­wash”.

    Last year, Swedish com­mer­cial broad­cast­er TV4 report­ed that Mr Som­mer­lath had tak­en advan­tage of the Naz­i’s “Aryani­sa­tion” pro­gramme to take over a fac­to­ry belong­ing to Jew­ish busi­ness­man Efim Wech­sler in 1939.

    But the new, 34-page report, com­piled by Swedish World War II expert Erik Nor­berg, indi­cat­ed that Mr Som­mer­lath had allowed Mr Wech­sler to escape from Ger­many by trad­ing the fac­to­ry for a cof­fee plan­ta­tion in Brazil.

    The report con­firmed that Mr Som­mer­lath — who died in 1990 — had gone to Brazil in 1920, aged 20, where he met and mar­ried the queen’s Brazil­ian moth­er Alice, whose fam­i­ly owned the large plan­ta­tion.

    The Amer­i­can Gath­er­ing of Holo­caust Sur­vivors and their Descen­dants react­ed to the report by dis­miss­ing it as “self-serv­ing” and lack­ing in cred­i­bil­i­ty.

    “The report was not an inde­pen­dent inquiry — it was com­mis­sioned by the queen with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of her cousin, a Brazil­ian lawyer,” the organ­i­sa­tion said in a state­ment quot­ed by the Asso­ci­at­ed Press news agency.

    “Such a probe can only raise sus­pi­cions of a white­wash.”

    Queen Sil­via has faced crit­i­cism in Swedish media for a num­ber of years for not doing more to address the rumours of her father’s role in Ger­many dur­ing World War II.

    Posted by R. Wilson | August 12, 2011, 10:46 pm
  3. Me too I read that news in the local news­pa­per. The thing I am won­der­ing about how­ev­er, is whether or not the Swedish roy­al fam­i­ly has any rela­tion with the Pirate Bay vortex,comprised of Wik­ileaks, Carl Lund­strom, etc. That would be inter­est­ing to know. Any­how, it would­n’t be the only roy­al fam­i­ly in Europe to have links with nazis, neo-nazis or fas­cists, such as King Edward V of Eng­land, Prince Bern­hard of the Nether­lands, etc. Decid­ed­ly, it’s a whole web of net­work­ing that we are dis­cov­er­ing day after day.

    Posted by Claude | August 13, 2011, 4:29 pm
  4. Har­ry S Tru­man’s famous quote about mur­dered ANTI-FASCIST SWEDE Dag Ham­marskjold:

    “Dag Ham­marskjöld was on the point of get­ting some­thing done when they killed him; notice that I said, ‘When they killed him’ ”.

    At bot­tom, new infor­ma­tion about the mys­tery of Ham­marskjold’s death.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dag_Hammarskjold

    Dag Ham­marskjöld (29 July 1905 – 18 Sep­tem­ber 1961) was a Swedish diplo­mat, econ­o­mist, and author. An ear­ly Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Nations, he served from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in Sep­tem­ber 1961. He is the only per­son to have been award­ed a posthu­mous Nobel Peace Prize.[1] Ham­marskjöld remains the only U.N. Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al to die in office, and his death occurred en route to cease-fire nego­ti­a­tions. Praised by many, Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States John F. Kennedy called Ham­marskjöld “the great­est states­man of our century”.[2]

    Sept. 18, 1961. A DC-6B air­lin­er car­ry­ing 56-year-old Dag Ham­marskjold, the Swedish sec­re­tary-gen­er­al of the U.N., crashed in a jun­gle near Ndola in present-day Zam­bia. On board were a six-man crew plus Ham­marskjold’s staff of eight men and one woman. All were killed instant­ly except for Ham­marskjold and an aide, who were both thrown clear. Although the plane was sev­er­al hours over­due and a police inspec­tor tele­phoned the air­port to describe a mys­te­ri­ous flash, no search par­ty was orga­nized until 10:00 A.M. The wreck­age was sight­ed at 3:10 P.M. Ham­marskjold had died dur­ing the night, but his aide, Sgt. Harold Julien, a secu­ri­ty offi­cer, sur­vived for five days, dur­ing which time he raved about explo­sions and sparks in the sky.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/17/dag-hammarskjold-un-secretary-general-crash

    Quote:
    “New evi­dence has emerged in one of the most endur­ing mys­ter­ies of Unit­ed Nations and African his­to­ry, sug­gest­ing that the UN sec­re­tary gen­er­al, Dag Ham­marskjöld’s plane was shot down over North­ern Rhode­sia (now Zam­bia) 50 years ago, and the mur­der cov­ered up by the British colo­nial author­i­ties.

    “A British-run com­mis­sion of inquiry blamed the 1961 crash on pilot error, and a lat­er UN inves­ti­ga­tion large­ly rub­ber-stamped its find­ings. They ignored or down­played wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny of vil­lagers near the crash site which sug­gest­ed foul play. The Guardian has talked to sur­viv­ing wit­ness­es who were nev­er ques­tioned by the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tions and were too scared to come for­ward.

    “The res­i­dents on the west­ern out­skirts of the town of Ndola described Ham­marskjöld’s DC6 being shot down by a sec­ond, small­er air­craft. They say the crash site was sealed off by North­ern Rhode­sian secu­ri­ty forces the next morn­ing, many hours before the wreck­age was offi­cial­ly declared found, and they were ordered to leave the area.

    “The inves­ti­ga­tion led Björk­dahl to pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished telegrams – seen by the Guardian – from the days lead­ing up to Ham­marskjöld’s death on 17 Sep­tem­ber 1961, which illus­trate US and British anger at an abortive UN mil­i­tary oper­a­tion that the sec­re­tary-gen­er­al ordered on behalf of the Con­golese gov­ern­ment against a rebel­lion backed by west­ern min­ing com­pa­nies and mer­ce­nar­ies in the min­er­al-rich Katan­ga region.

    “Ham­marskjöld was fly­ing to Ndola for peace talks with the Katan­ga lead­er­ship at a meet­ing that the British helped arrange. The fierce­ly inde­pen­dent Swedish diplo­mat had by then enraged almost all the major pow­ers on the secu­ri­ty coun­cil with his sup­port for decoloni­sa­tion but sup­port from third world states meant his re-elec­tion as sec­re­tary-gen­er­al would have been vir­tu­al­ly guar­an­teed if he had lived until the gen­er­al assem­bly vote due weeks lat­er.”

    Posted by R. Wilson | August 29, 2011, 8:48 pm
  5. Oh look, an elect­ed mem­ber of the Swe­den Demo­c­rat par­ty has been impli­cat­ed in a plot to obtain large amounts of high explo­sives along with a man found to be in pos­ses­sion of Nazi para­pher­na­lia. We should­n’t for­get that a pri­ma­ry finan­cial backer of the Swe­den Democ­rats is Carl Lund­strom, who owned a con­trol­ling inter­est in the Pirate Bay site, which host­ed Wik­iLeaks:

    The Scots­man
    Swedish far-right politi­cian ‘impli­cat­ed in bomb raid’

    by DOMINIC HINDE in Stock­holm

    pub­lished 14:26 Wednes­day 22 July 2015

    AN elect­ed mem­ber of Sweden’s far-right Swe­den Demo­c­rat par­ty has been impli­cat­ed in a plot to obtain large amounts of high explo­sives with the poten­tial for use in ter­ror attacks.

    The local politi­cian, who can­not be named for legal rea­sons, was detained along with three oth­er men over the week­end in the Swedish province of Hal­land.

    The four sus­pects were all arrest­ed as part of an inves­ti­ga­tion into the dis­cov­ery of large quan­ti­ties of dyna­mite in a house belong­ing to one of the men.

    The politi­cian was arrest­ed by police as he attempt­ed to leave the house in his car, in which detec­tives then dis­cov­ered dyna­mite blast­ing caps in a plas­tic bag.

    The caps are nor­mal­ly used to trig­ger larg­er quan­ti­ties of dyna­mite and plas­tic explo­sive from a dis­tance.

    The man was sub­se­quent­ly released from cus­tody, but is still sub­ject to ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion by detec­tives. He claims that he was unaware of the pres­ence of the caps in his car accord­ing to reports in the Swedish news­pa­per Dagens Nyheter.

    At the same time as police dis­cov­ered the mate­r­i­al they also arrest­ed a 30-year-old man, who neigh­bours claim had been car­ry­ing out test explo­sions on ground behind the prop­er­ty.

    It is under­stood that the sec­ond man con­fessed to use of the explo­sive in a police state­ment. Two oth­er men were also detained by author­i­ties as part of their inves­ti­ga­tions.

    The 30-year-old man had pre­vi­ous­ly been con­vict­ed for attack­ing a for­eign-born neigh­bour with an axe and was found to be in pos­ses­sion of pic­tures of Hitler, Ger­man war mem­o­ra­bil­ia and Nazi SS flags by police who searched his home.

    It is unclear whether or not the explo­sives and asso­ci­at­ed equip­ment was intend­ed to be used in an attack, but police have not ruled it out.

    “That we can only spec­u­late on. We have noth­ing that points to such an attack at present, but are open to the pos­si­bil­i­ty” said Tom­my Nyman, a spokesper­son for the Swedish Police force in the region.

    SÄPO, the Swedish secu­ri­ty ser­vice, have also begun an inves­ti­ga­tion into events.

    “We have found signs that he had Nazi sym­pa­thies” added Nyman with regards to the 30-year-old sus­pect. “There are objects and sym­bols which you would link to ide­o­log­i­cal extrem­ism.”

    The politi­cian is not him­self sus­pect­ed of pos­sess­ing such extrem­ist mate­r­i­al, but it is under­stood the two men knew one anoth­er.

    The Swe­den Democ­rats imme­di­ate­ly issued a state­ment to the press say­ing that the par­ty mem­ber arrest­ed by police has been relieved of office. Found­ed as part of the Nordic white pow­er move­ment in 1988, they have been forced to expel sev­er­al mem­bers over alle­ga­tions of racism and extrem­ism.

    The par­ty, who share a Euro­pean Par­lia­ment group with UKIP and strong­ly oppose immi­gra­tion, fem­i­nism and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, are cur­rent­ly the third biggest in Swe­den. Until the mid 1990s mem­bers would reg­u­lar­ly wear mil­i­tary-style uni­forms at meet­ings and two of their senior par­lia­men­tary deputies were involved in a drunk­en attack on the Swedish-Kur­dish come­di­an Soren Ismael with a piece of scaf­fold­ing in 2010.

    ...

    Recent elec­tions have seen sig­nif­i­cant gains for right-wing pop­ulist par­ties in Nor­way, Swe­den, Fin­land and Den­mark on a strong­ly anti-immi­gra­tion and cul­tur­al­ly nation­al­ist plat­form.

    Swe­den has also seen an increase in attacks on Islam­ic and Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres, with some now sub­ject to police pro­tec­tion.

    “Recent elec­tions have seen sig­nif­i­cant gains for right-wing pop­ulist par­ties in Nor­way, Swe­den, Fin­land and Den­mark on a strong­ly anti-immi­gra­tion and cul­tur­al­ly nation­al­ist plat­form.” Yep, but note that it isn’t just the anti-immi­grant ad cul­tur­al plat­forms that are pro­pelling these par­ties to elec­toral suc­cess. Their defense of the wel­fare state and dri­ves for increas­es in gov­ern­ment spend­ing and pub­lic infra­struc­ture projects are prov­ing to be a big part of their pop­u­lar appeal too.

    Bet­ter pub­lic infra­struc­ture, improved social-wel­fare, more tox­ic xeno­pho­bia, and high-explo­sives. That appears to be the far-right’s win­ning com­bi­na­tion. Go fig­ure.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 27, 2015, 1:24 pm

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