- “As I stated on the Bombshell forum Andy, you are a liar, a hypocrite and no better than the trash that you fight against.” ~ Dion, December, 2007
“Anarchy is a fag. Thanx to the people who have supported us… and to the random people letting us know about this anarchist knobjockey Mr Moran.” ~ Chunga (The Worst), September 2007
Last Saturday, November 30, nazis firebombed the Cyclops, an autonomous social centre in southern Stockholm. Two days later, on December 1, the build up of nazi activity in Stockholm took another violent turn as nazis poured gasoline through a mail slot and into the apartment housinga young couple and their child, before setting the oil and the apartament on fire. The couple are active in the ‘Central Organization of the Workers of Sweden’ (Sveriges Arbetares Centralorganisation or SAC), a syndicalist union. Thankfully, all three survived.
The SAC has release the following statement:
Nazis try to kill union activists and their child
In 1999, nazis murdered the Syndicalist Björn Söderberg. Now they’ve tried again. Two Syndicalists from Stockholm – one of them the former chair of the Stockholm chapter of the Syndicalist Union – and their two year old daughter were forced to climb down from the balcony of their third floor apartment when Nazis sat fire to their flat.
Half a year ago, our union members were exposed on the nazi webpage info-14. The nazis behind info-14 are the same people who arrange the annual nazi march in Salem.
Just before nine p.m. on Monday night, 1st December 2008, our members heard a splashing sound coming from the hallway. “I saw someone pour a clear fluid through the mail slot and understood from the scent that it was gasoline”, one of them says. “I shouted so loud that they can’t have missed it: ‘We have children in here!’ Only seconds later they lit the fire.”
In the hall hung the family’s winter clothes and in a couple of seconds the fire had spread to the kitchen and the living room. To exit through the front door was impossible.
“We had to lower our daughter down to the neighbours’ balcony one floor below”, our member explains. “We live on the top floor. Had she slipped out of our hands, she would have died.” The couple then climbed down the same way. Behind them the fire ravaged all their belongings, memories and future plans.
Our members and their daughter miraculously remained unharmed, but it doesn’t change the fact that one, or several, people deliberately and in cold blood tried to take their lives. Six months ago the openly nazi Info14 website published the names and pictures of our members. The police are working from the theory that the cowardly act was politically motivated, performed by the same offenders who two days earlier burnt down the libertarian socialist cultural centre The Cyclops in Högdalen. The case is classified as arson.
Our targeted members’ union work focused on anti-racism and diminishing class divides. Because of such ‘crimes’ they were to be punished with death according to the nazis.
The nazis behind info-14 are the same people who run the organisation Salemfonden, that every year on the first Saturday in December arrange the biggest Nazi march in northern Europe. “The people arranging the Salem march are not harmless individuals with a slightly dissenting opinion. They are ideologically convinced nazis, evidently capable of murder in the pursuit of their cause”, Ola Brunnström from SAC’s working committee states.
This Saturday the people who tried to kill our members have arranged a march in Salem, a suburb of Stockholm. SAC, the syndicalists, urges everyone to join in the counter demonstration organised by the Network Against Racism at 12 o’ clock in Salem Centre.
If we let the Nazis stand unchallenged we never now who they’ll attack next.
On the murder of Björn Söderberg, October 12, 1999:
The murder of the union activist Björn Söderberg has direct connections to the criminal and violent organised Swedish fascist movement. This past summer, Björn Söderberg worked at the warehouse of Svanströms in southern Stockholm. The nazi activist Rober Vesterlund also worked there. Despite this, Vesturlund was elected as the local unions’ shop steward. Björn Söderberg then did what any citizen with civil courage would have done — he reacted. When Björn made Vesterlund’s nazi sympathies known to the press, the central committee of the local union, Handels, decided to expel Vesterlund from the union: Vesterlund voluntarily left the union before he could be expelled.
The same day that Vesterlund’s nazi sympathies were made public, Björn Söderberg’s passport photo was sent to the nazi magazine info-14’s post box. The publisher of info-14 is Robert Vesterlund. Four weeks later, Björn Söderberg was assassinated. Three fascists were arrested and charged with the crime: all three had direct connections with Vesterlund.
The assassination of Björn Söderberg must be placed in perspective, one which encompasses an increase in nazi violence in that period, both in Sweden and internationally. In Sweden, this encompasses the assassination of two policemen in Malexander in May, and the car bombing of two anti-fascist journalists in Nacka in June. All of the available evidence points towards a group of criminal fascists who are well organised and who do not hesitate in executing violent deeds against those who oppose them. This is why the assassination of Björn Söderberg is not only an act of violence aimed at SAC or the workers’ movement, but one aimed at democracy’s core ideal, that of civic courage.
For the record, in December last year, Doug Smith of local band Bulldog Spirit published what he alleged was my workplace address on the online ‘punk’ forum Bombshell. At the same time, I received a number of death threats. Doug also plays in local band Marching Orders; Marching Orders are scheduled to play the Rebellion ‘punk’ Festival in August 2009, along with a number of ‘anti-fascist’ and ‘anti-racist’ bands.
There’s no business like punk business!
Hey,
do you know any English language websites that may have updates on Salemfondem and the counterprotest? Might be something we print in next Mutiny zine.
cheers,
sd