UPDATE
So the march is over and done with. Everything went without incident. Turned out only half the expected number of Nazis showed up.
I woke up feeling like shit this morning, so I unfortunately had to bail on the counter-demonstration. It was fairly well attended from what I heard, though. Easily more people than the Nazis managed to gather.
Oh, and we had some clowns greet the actual clowns in the Nazi march (can't image link directly unfortunately, you'll have to see the photos on Dagens Nyheter)
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/nazister-tagade-i-faluns-centrum/
Choice facts and events of the day:
- Turned out the police had gathered no less than 200-250 officers, 50 of whom had "special training" and had been flown in using a military transport plane the day before. They were clearly expecting the worst. Other efforts included helicopters, mounted officers, K9-units, drones and cameras mounted all over the place both to "prevent and prosecute", according to the police.
- Someone made a complaint to the police about hate speech from the Nazis. Probably deserved. Apparently, they chanted "give no quarter, Nordic revolution" when they marched.
- Someone may have been arrested for carrying mace, which is illegal in Sweden.
- The Nazis were met with boos and yeers by counter-demonstrators when they arrived at the main square to hold their speech. The counter-demonstration had been given space a stones throw from the square for their manifestation, but no one appears to have thrown anything nastier than some choice words at them. Riot police formed a line between the two groups just in case.
So to recap: everything went well, but the Nazis were about twice as many as last year. Which isn't nice. But the counter-demo did gather a wide cross-section of the townsfolk and everyone behaved themselves above reproach, which is nice. Oh, and I'm bummed I missed it. Guess we'll always have next year *shudder*
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Falun, Sweden. We're a town of 37 000 people, so not exactly a metropolis or anything. Monday is May 1st. This is the traditional day for demonstrations in Sweden, having been heavily promoted as such by socialist movements for well over a century. But these days, it's also a time for extremist movements to promote themselves.
Let me introduce you to Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen AKA the "Nordic Resistance Movement", or NMR. Lovely fellows.
![XCpk8aI.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/XCpk8aI.jpg])
NMR was founded in 1997 in a podunk village near here called Grängesberg (population 3500). They've grown ever since, with branches in both Norway and Finland by now. Make no mistake - these guys are genuine Nazis. They want to violently overthrow democracy and replace it with a totalitarian dictatorship. They talk a lot about the "global jew". They're holocaust deniers. Oh, and they like Hitler. Like, really like the guy. To be perfectly frank, I'm not sure why they even bother to use that arrow instead of a swastika.
They actually managed to get a member elected to the city council of neighboring Ludvika last election. They did it through subterfuge. The far-right Sweden Democrats (who, as much as I hate them, are almost benign in comparison) had open election lists and NMR simply snatched one of their seats. So that's great. Nazis in power never ended badly, right?
These people aren't just talk. In 2013, 40 of their members attacked 600 people part of a peaceful anti-racism demonstration. Most of the people in the demonstration were harmless - including children and the elderly - and it was watched over by 6 police officers who were quickly overwhelmed. However, it also had a contingent from Anti-Fascist Action and the communist Revolutionary Front, who counter-attacked. NMR ended up losing that brawl with people injured on both sides, and one NMR member stabbed.
In 2016, another group of 40 or so members held an illegal demonstration in Stockholm. When the police tried to break it up, the NMR leader yelled "SHIELDBEARERS! TO ME!" - and charged. Uh, yeah. Look at the pictures above. These guys bring their own riot shields.
And late last year, Gothenburg got hit by a wave of bombings. The targets stuck out: they were aimed at an office belonging to The Syndicalists (communist unionists) and two refugee shelters. One of the bombs targeting the refugees severely wounded a cleaner who unknowingly set it off. The police also announced that the bomb targeting the Syndicalists was powerful enough to kill and that we were lucky no-one was around when it went off. An NMR member who had also bombed a book shop became a suspect, but the press and police were strangely quiet on the matter. Back in february those suspicions were largely explainable when two more NMR members were arrested as well.
So with this in mind, it's no surprise that feelings over here are pretty tense right now. I'm not sure how many members NMR actually have - they managed to get 350 people to take part in their demonstration last year and, while they've grown, 1000 sounds like a lot. But they've attracted a lot of hangers-on lately as they're increasingly becoming one of the dominant far-right organisations in the country. So 1000 Nazis and their boot lickers might not be that much of a stretch, after all.
I'm a doctor at the local hospital. We got an e-mail today informing us that the hospital will be put in a heightened state of readiness on Monday. The Nazis are bad enough, but there's also a well-founded concern that they're going to attract anti-fascist counter demonstrations. The risk of outright riots isn't considered that great at the moment but, at the same time, I don't think our local police force could even handle 1000 Nazis duking it out with at least as many counter demonstrators, so things could get ugly. Monday is my day off but, if SHTF, I'll get called in.
Not sure what to think about this. Maybe I'll join the "Dalarna Against Racism" counter-demonstration. It's got 550 attendings on Facebook right now (including 2 friends of mine) and that doesn't feel like nearly enough. Let's hope Monday will be reasonably uneventful.
So the march is over and done with. Everything went without incident. Turned out only half the expected number of Nazis showed up.
I woke up feeling like shit this morning, so I unfortunately had to bail on the counter-demonstration. It was fairly well attended from what I heard, though. Easily more people than the Nazis managed to gather.
Oh, and we had some clowns greet the actual clowns in the Nazi march (can't image link directly unfortunately, you'll have to see the photos on Dagens Nyheter)
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/nazister-tagade-i-faluns-centrum/
Choice facts and events of the day:
- Turned out the police had gathered no less than 200-250 officers, 50 of whom had "special training" and had been flown in using a military transport plane the day before. They were clearly expecting the worst. Other efforts included helicopters, mounted officers, K9-units, drones and cameras mounted all over the place both to "prevent and prosecute", according to the police.
- Someone made a complaint to the police about hate speech from the Nazis. Probably deserved. Apparently, they chanted "give no quarter, Nordic revolution" when they marched.
- Someone may have been arrested for carrying mace, which is illegal in Sweden.
- The Nazis were met with boos and yeers by counter-demonstrators when they arrived at the main square to hold their speech. The counter-demonstration had been given space a stones throw from the square for their manifestation, but no one appears to have thrown anything nastier than some choice words at them. Riot police formed a line between the two groups just in case.
So to recap: everything went well, but the Nazis were about twice as many as last year. Which isn't nice. But the counter-demo did gather a wide cross-section of the townsfolk and everyone behaved themselves above reproach, which is nice. Oh, and I'm bummed I missed it. Guess we'll always have next year *shudder*
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Falun, Sweden. We're a town of 37 000 people, so not exactly a metropolis or anything. Monday is May 1st. This is the traditional day for demonstrations in Sweden, having been heavily promoted as such by socialist movements for well over a century. But these days, it's also a time for extremist movements to promote themselves.
Let me introduce you to Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen AKA the "Nordic Resistance Movement", or NMR. Lovely fellows.
NMR was founded in 1997 in a podunk village near here called Grängesberg (population 3500). They've grown ever since, with branches in both Norway and Finland by now. Make no mistake - these guys are genuine Nazis. They want to violently overthrow democracy and replace it with a totalitarian dictatorship. They talk a lot about the "global jew". They're holocaust deniers. Oh, and they like Hitler. Like, really like the guy. To be perfectly frank, I'm not sure why they even bother to use that arrow instead of a swastika.
They actually managed to get a member elected to the city council of neighboring Ludvika last election. They did it through subterfuge. The far-right Sweden Democrats (who, as much as I hate them, are almost benign in comparison) had open election lists and NMR simply snatched one of their seats. So that's great. Nazis in power never ended badly, right?
These people aren't just talk. In 2013, 40 of their members attacked 600 people part of a peaceful anti-racism demonstration. Most of the people in the demonstration were harmless - including children and the elderly - and it was watched over by 6 police officers who were quickly overwhelmed. However, it also had a contingent from Anti-Fascist Action and the communist Revolutionary Front, who counter-attacked. NMR ended up losing that brawl with people injured on both sides, and one NMR member stabbed.
In 2016, another group of 40 or so members held an illegal demonstration in Stockholm. When the police tried to break it up, the NMR leader yelled "SHIELDBEARERS! TO ME!" - and charged. Uh, yeah. Look at the pictures above. These guys bring their own riot shields.
And late last year, Gothenburg got hit by a wave of bombings. The targets stuck out: they were aimed at an office belonging to The Syndicalists (communist unionists) and two refugee shelters. One of the bombs targeting the refugees severely wounded a cleaner who unknowingly set it off. The police also announced that the bomb targeting the Syndicalists was powerful enough to kill and that we were lucky no-one was around when it went off. An NMR member who had also bombed a book shop became a suspect, but the press and police were strangely quiet on the matter. Back in february those suspicions were largely explainable when two more NMR members were arrested as well.
So with this in mind, it's no surprise that feelings over here are pretty tense right now. I'm not sure how many members NMR actually have - they managed to get 350 people to take part in their demonstration last year and, while they've grown, 1000 sounds like a lot. But they've attracted a lot of hangers-on lately as they're increasingly becoming one of the dominant far-right organisations in the country. So 1000 Nazis and their boot lickers might not be that much of a stretch, after all.
I'm a doctor at the local hospital. We got an e-mail today informing us that the hospital will be put in a heightened state of readiness on Monday. The Nazis are bad enough, but there's also a well-founded concern that they're going to attract anti-fascist counter demonstrations. The risk of outright riots isn't considered that great at the moment but, at the same time, I don't think our local police force could even handle 1000 Nazis duking it out with at least as many counter demonstrators, so things could get ugly. Monday is my day off but, if SHTF, I'll get called in.
Not sure what to think about this. Maybe I'll join the "Dalarna Against Racism" counter-demonstration. It's got 550 attendings on Facebook right now (including 2 friends of mine) and that doesn't feel like nearly enough. Let's hope Monday will be reasonably uneventful.
