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Sweden: On how to challenge rightwing racist class politics

lotek | 28.09.2010 15:06 | Analysis | Anti-racism | Migration | World

The elections of September 19th in many ways mark a sad turning point in Swedish history. Since of that date, Sweden joins the growing number of EU member states run by rightwing governments with the participation of the extreme right.

Masses of people demonstrating in Stockholm against the Swedish Democrats
Masses of people demonstrating in Stockholm against the Swedish Democrats


For the first time, a rightwing government was re-elected in Sweden. For the first time, a populist racist party, Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats) – with roots in the extreme right scene – entered the Parliament. And for the first time a Nazi party gained entrance into a municipality. The leader of Svenskarnas Parti (Party of the Swedes) – formerly Nationalsocialistisk Front – got a chair in the small town of Grästorp.

The reaction to the election was swift: demonstrations in Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm the following day gathered thousands of people, in Stockholm up to ten thousand. Numerous demonstrations have since taken place in different places and many more actions are planned for the coming weeks and especially for the grande opening of the Parliament.

Many people are appalled and outraged at the results of the elections. Bit by bit, the rightwing government has been dismantling the welfare state, labour laws and social security systems, replacing them with the freedom of the individual consumer – thereby paving the way for the extreme right. But so have the Social Democrats, the Left and the Greens: By not challenging the politics of the government and putting forward a concrete red and green vision, the stage was set for the racists, posing as the sole alternative to the status quo.

The Sweden Democrats have rather successfully spread the myth of immigration as the one political issue noone but them dares to address. This being far from true (quite the opposite, by being tough on immigration any politician comes across as determined and energetic), it nevertheless gained them a lot of attention. And eventhough being false, it still was a simple answer to a number of important questions: Why is society not as solidaric as it used to be? Why are so many – especially young – people unemployed? Why is all this downsizing occuring?

Everything was played out to be the fault of “mass immigration”.

These questions are relevant to a lot of people in everyday life today, and so is addressing them. The anxiety is real, it is the result of precarious labour, money that is never enough, climate change that is being neglected, insecurity, frustration, violence and welfare cuts – in other words the results of political decisions. The question radical social movements have to ask themselves is how to address these issues and challenge these politics?

How do we turn protests against the Sweden Democrats into resistance against the racist class politics of the rightwing government? And how do we transform our resistance into a constructive force – selforganizing local communities and building strong popular movements?

Where do we go from here? Share your experiences with us!

 http://anarkisterna.com

lotek
- Homepage: http://anarkisterna.com/blog/2010/09/25/where-do-we-go-from-here-on-how-to-challenge-rightwing-racist-class-politics/

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

Try and try again, till victory of the majority and the matrriarchy is restored.

28.09.2010 15:42

Its a global war on the workers. If truth be known the world's empires are not reconciled to their overthrow, hence Imperialism is reaction all along the line. The final struggle is upon the workers of the world and socialism is the society that can end aggressive war, poverty, unemployment, climate change (re-tool the industrial revolution to the renewables, such as wind, tidal, and solar power) gender discrimination (double democracy, by electing woman equally at all levels 50-50, as nature requires). Re-storing the matriarchy so woman can access half the law making and half the wealth per calendar year, that begins scientific socialism, and restores the material harmony and joy that is the natural man, woman question. The empires have ruined nature for money and thus male domination of democracy has substituted for the real ecological organic balance of the specie. Simply put the need is to RE-TOOL THE ENTIRE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

Coal, gas, oil, and atomic energy is destroying the planets livability and therefore the last forty-five years of ecological organic green revolution has brought into being the hi and low tech tools to put in place wind, tidal, and solar power that transforms to elctricity and is more power than all the society can use. No more blackouts. This non-pollution solution is given freely in natures kinder laws and provides work for all and forever more.
Viva socialist liberation. End pollution wars, not endless wars for more and more pollution.

Hans B.


Puzzled.

28.09.2010 20:05

Everybody knows the Sweden Democrats are a xenophobic party who adher to genetic and racial superiority, as we have been roulating that common knowledge on blogs for years.

However, I read a confusing story on the Assyrian International News Agency about a Sweden Democrat who clearly is not a native Swede, called Issa Issa.
As the story goes, he has been attacked by a gang of 40 people outside his house.

I will post the story AND the link here, but would like to ask if anybody knows anything more? I just cán't wrap my head around a non white for a racist party, plus why would muslims attack an Assyrian person?
Is there something fishy about this or what?
Is it hatemongering by the biased media in Sweden to make up such a story?

Here it is:

''Gothenburg, Sweden (AINA) -- An Assyrian politican, Issa Issa, who is a member of the Sweden Democrats party, was attacked on Thursday by a gang of 40 men. According to the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, stones were hurled into Mr. Issa's apartment after 10 PM on Thursday, through the windows in the kitchen, bedroom and living room, shattering them all. Mr. Issa saw two boys outside, who shouted "fucking Christian, fucking Sweden Democrat, come down," when they saw him. Mr. Issa chased them around the corner, where a gang of 40 men was waiting for him.

"It was a trap," said Mr. Issa, "I tried to go back and called the police while I ran."

Someone in the gang fired a gun but it missed Mr. Issa.

"I received a blow to the eye. One took out a knife and held it against my neck. Then he stabbed me in the shoulder. Now I'm paralyzed in the right hand. They said they would kill me."

He was also stabbed in back, hand and leg. A bottle was smashed against his head and he was kicked and beaten.

According to Aftonbladet the attackers were young, 15-20 years old. Witnesses report the attackers appeared to be Muslims.

Mikael Jansson, Sweden Democrats president in Gothenburg, said "We fear that this attack is politically motivated. Issa had previously, on election day, been the victim of a threat when he was at a polling station and handing out ballots. We are experiencing hate for Sweden Democrats, and that other politicians do not take a stand against this."

The Sweden Democrats party has been characterized as being against immigrants and against immigration, though there are many immigrants in its ranks.

Mr. Issa announced that he would leave the Sweden Democrats party and end his political career.''

Angry Anarcho


Class Society and the State.

28.09.2010 20:25

Four things here are quite relevant, I) The state as a product of the Irreconcilability of Class Contradictions, 2) Special bodies of armed men, with prisons and courts etc., 3) The state as an Instrument for the exploitation of the 'oppressed class', 4) The withering away of the state and Violent Revolution. The advanced Imperialist countries are being converted into military convict prisons for the workers. That is irreconcilability of class contradictions. In that sense the head of world Imperialism---U.S. Imperialism has become a military-industrial-prisons complex whereby the state functions as the chief exploiter of the oppressed class.

This in happening now as present crisis of the terminal decay of world imperialism takes place before our eyeballs. Presently the United States of America has more prisons and prisoners than any other country in the world. Two milllion five hundred thousand are behind bars and six or seven million are on parole of the prisons systems. While the F.B.I is now busy as always invading the anti-war peoples home and criminalizing their dissent.

The Prisons ( originally called slave-holder pens by the Roman military and were a war machine used to destroy the freelife style of the British Tribes around 42AD) are being maximized for oppression, which the monopoly ruling classes call security. They falsely believe that jailing the victims of their failing system is security. Only productive socially organic labour is societies security. However, the U.S. ruling circle actually believes that maximizing private profits to pollute nature beyond natures stability to sustain life is the way to proceed to defend its system.

That is the final conflict is on the agenda, or the planet will succumb to their insanity of production for private profits. Let us look closer, the first industrial revolution has already burned out 36% of the atmosphere's oxygen leaving in its wake C02---Carbon Dioxide, and we cannot live on carbon-dioxide. That means should the present system motivated by coal, gas, oil, and atomic energy continue, and as is now the case be even increased, the state of the world will be exphixiation because of no oxygen in the atmosphere. Already migrating birds are dropping out of the skies over cities in America such as Chicago.

This is a state or antagonistic and irreconcilable contradiction between the mass of the living world, and the rulers that are destroying the living world for private money profits. Such is the terminal phase of present world imperialism. In Germany the masses rose against the crisis of Imperialism but the monopoly finance capitalists such as Thysson headed up the Adolf Hitler Project from the 1933 coup-d'-etat of the nazis and their right-wing Imperial military, to form a state to suppress of workers and their organizations for liberation such as the trade unions, socialist parties, communist parties and woman's liberation.

The present crisis is more prolonged and deeper than the thirties and portends the end of the corporations and military- prison rule even while they brag about their engrandizement. Why is this a sign of weakness and not strength? It is because they are using their control of the state to do evil things which no people can fully identify with. Hitler could not win because he alienated all things around him, such as air, land, and water--all polluted, and plants, animals and peoples to which he exploited maximally and ended killing maximally.

The nazis state fought nation against nation, gender against gender, class against class, species against species, religios against religion, workers against workers, etc. and their discredited military methods of 1) might makes right, 2) Unilateralism, 3) Pre-emptive strikes became the most hated method of state rule to which those who sided with it were destroyed, and a word they fought to die.

Unfortunately the United States of America has picked up the mantle of the facist state with 57% of their federal budget designated for Pentagon sponsored wars of aggression, and with 5% of their citizens ruling over the oppressed 85%, and the military, senate, and congress are pressing ahead with more and more unjust, illegal wars of aggression against the entire livability of the entire planet.

They are in quagumire now and deepening it with their drone attacks agains a beleagered Pakistan, their increasing war crimes in Palestine, Afghanistan, Ossetia, Iran, Yeman, Philipines, Threats and military exercises around China, North Korea, Russia, Napal, India, Columbia, Venezuala, Cuba, Honduras (U.S. sponsored Military coup) Ecuador Argentina, Chile, Paraquay, Bolivia (Fourth Fleet revival) etc. and the list is growing in Africa with the entire continent and all its people under the assault of the U.S. Military caste (AFRICOM).

With the leaks from British scientists and Indian scientists saying that the Hiv/Aids virus was created in camp Dietrich the super-bug plant in Maryland, that the captured Japanese Gernerals from the second world war provided the information to the U.S Imperial Military to engrandize the biological warfare WMD to the tune of 16 super-bug plants in full use since the end of world war II.

Such a state if proven up (American Racist Empire) is guilty of spreading the Aids disease throughout Africa resulting in the deaths of 60,000,000 people on that continent alone. To this is added the manufacturing and selling of more weapons of mass destruction than all the rest of the countries in the whole world. That is they sell to the highest bidder and not to the poor working classes, and of whom they make sure to keep at the lowest rung of economics, so they cannot access the super weapons for themselves and the workers liberation. Thus they think their state empire is 'secure'. It is not, and the captialists monopolies never can achieve their goal of world conquest for resources, while using its amed forces to ensure that world pollution increases as they guarantee the polluters,and war aggressively to control the oil, coal, gas, and atomic energy, the burning of which, is destroying the livability of the planet.

The oppressed peoples headed by the workers for non-polluted production, must maintain the goal of a workers state which is the last state before the classless communism that comes after the workers state abolishes and dismantles all the exploitation against the workers that their enemies have and are using against them.

Against Hitlers state the United World Front Against Fascism used armed struggle and revolutionary violence. With the scapping of the war machine and its manufactury the last state withers because the four conditions of its existence no longer exists, and the gens liberation by which we mean the organic agricultural commune comes into being and causes liberation of our species as a self-acting working community. All this points to the fact which the socialist society organizes to scrap the war machine and its manfuactury and elect the matriarchy to return to the garden of organic plants, animals and peoples dwith natural balance. End pollution wars, not endless wars for more pollution. Workers of all countries, unite!!

Jack


Those on demos speak for themselves

28.09.2010 21:04

So, why don't all those on the demos, stand in elections?
Could it be they know they would fail?

The right in Sweden seems popular.
Just maybe, the people of Sweden wish to keep their own identity, just like other ethnic groups around the World.

Ricky


96% of Sweden rejected the racist Swedish Democrats

30.09.2010 07:11

their politics arent popular - 96% said no

hitlers bunker


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