Nazism in Sweden

Nazism in Sweden has been more or less fragmented and unable to form a mass movement since its beginning in the early 1920s. Several hundred parties, groups, and associations existed from the movement's founding through the present. At most, purely Nazi parties in Sweden collected around 27,000 votes in democratic elections. The high point came in the municipal elections of 1934 when the Nazi parties won over one hundred races. As early as January 22, 1932, the Swedish Nazis had their first public meeting with Birger Furugård addressing an audience of 6000 at the Haymarket in Stockholm.

Like their German counterparts, the Swedish Nazis were strongly anti-semitic and as early as May, 1945 became early adopters of Holocaust denial. The Swedish Nazi groups persisted after the war until they were officially dissolved in 1950. During this post-war period, they were more or less completely inactive politically. In 1956, a new Swedish Nazi party, the Nordic Reich Party, was formed by Göran Assar Oredsson and Vera Oredsson (previously married to Sven-Olov Lindholm). This party brought together the heritage of older generations in the 1980s when Swedish neo-Nazism grew stronger. A Swedish white supremacist movement arose during this period, especially among criminal motorcycle gangs and white power skinheads.

Particularly in the 1990s, there was a plethora of Neo-nazi organizations such as the Riksfronten and National Socialist Front. Just as during the war, there was a tendency toward fragmentation within the movement, and this accelerated after the a 1999 murder and bank robbery, called Malexandermorden. It also evolved as a variety of explicitly racist organizations drew from other sources than Nazism, including the Swedish Resistance Movement. Short-term attempts to create an umbrella organization were discontinued after one year. In the 2000s, the National Socialist Front remains the largest Swedish nazi organization, earning around 1400 votes in the parliamentary elections of 2006. It was officially shut down in November 2008, replaced by the nationalist Party of the Swedes. The largest demonstrations are the Salemmarschen every December from 2001 to the present. The first demonstrations attracted 2000 participants, but this number has dwindled. The magazine Expo, co-founded by Stieg Larsson, campaigns against "modern" Swedish Nazism and right-wing extremism.

Read more about Nazism In Sweden:  Forerunners, First Period, Wartime, Postwar, Neo-Nazism, Ideology, Mapping of Opponents, Swedish Nazis and Sympathizers, Selected List of Swedish Nazi Groups, See Also