Posted on 09/21/2017 12:01:48 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Swedish student Patrik Hermansson, 25, talks to The Local about what he learned when he went undercover for a year with the international alt-right movement. Hermansson spent a whole year with far-right extremist groups in the UK and US on behalf of anti-racism organization Hope Not Hate. Pretending to be a Swedish student writing about the suppression of right-wing speech in Sweden, he met and spoke with alt-right members, while wearing a hidden camera. He recorded one founding member claiming he had links all the way to the Donald Trump White House Administration.
His work forms part of a new report 'The International Alternative Right', which takes a closer look at some of the alt-right key figures, many of whom are Swedes at the frontline of the international extremist movement. The most in-depth report of its kind, it and Hermansson's undercover work quickly grabbed global headlines.
Hermansson spoke to The Local on Skype from New York on Wednesday, after revealing his true identity in interviews with the New York Times, Dagens Nyheter and Swedish anti-racism organization Expo.
1. You went undercover for a year. Explain how that happened?
I've been working for Expo in Sweden for a couple of years and done various things, so I've considered myself an anti-fascist for a long time. Then I moved to London to start studying, and I asked some colleagues from Expo to put me in touch with Hope Not Hate, so I could continue helping out in whatever way I could.
I wouldn't have expected them to ask me to go undercover, but they did and I said yes, for the same motivation as other anti-fascim work I've done before. I think fascism is probably the biggest threat to the society I want to live in, so I want to do something to stop it.
Then of course, it was exciting and I felt like I could do it.
2. What was the most surprising thing you learned?
There were many surprising things. For me how social these organizations are is important, and surprising.
They're not just doing political campaigning or serious conferences or demonstrations, but they organize barbecues and picnics, go to gallery openings, concerts, and just have a beer in a pub. Most of the time I spent with them was some type of social activity.
Of course they plan other stuff and they talk about politics, but I think many of the people there are there for social reasons. It provides a context for them as friends. Many of the people have most of their friends in these organizations. And of course there's a danger in that, because it makes it more difficult to get out.
3. Sweden seems to be a very important concept to the alt-right and I understand you even used your Swedishness to manage to get inside. Why are they so obsessed with Sweden?
There are many reasons for their obsession with Sweden. One is just like the German Nazis did in the 1930s. Sweden, or Scandinavia, has always been important. It has been considered as Aryanism, as the origin of the white race, the Aryan people and therefore it's significant, it's about racial purity. And they think that way, they still do. There's this imaginary idea of a pure Sweden.
Then after Sweden taking quite many immigrants in 2015 the far right or the alt-right have tried to paint a picture of Sweden as a 'failed state' where rape is going up, et cetera, and that this is because of immigration. This has to do with Sweden as a symbol of left-wing society, so to draw the picture of Sweden as failing is important in order to discredit the left more broadly as 'cultural Marxism', as a self-destructive ideology.
So then to come to the UK or the US as a Swede it is very easy to have a conversation about this and people will very quickly agree with you when you say that "the Sweden I remember has been destroyed" and they will trust you.
4. What was it like being undercover in that way? Were you ever scared?
Of course. There are moments when you are really scared. I was in Seattle, in Washington State in the US, with a white supremacist group. I was at a barbecue and when I got there there were maybe 25-30 mostly young men.
I know that they are all part of a broader group, so I ask them what they are about and they say "we are all about the 14 words", which is a white supremacist slogan*. These are armed and they are openly national socialist and they were talking about what they would do with anti-fascists and Jews and black people if they would show up there or do something to their brotherhood. Of course, then I was scared. I mean, there was this combination of a group of young men with guns and a violent ideology. That's not a great combination.
*The "14 words" is a reference to a slogan used by white supremacists, usually taken to mean: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children"
5. You mentioned some of the different Sweden images, and sometimes these seem quite counter-intuitive. On the one hand, there's the idea that feminists are oppressing Sweden, and on the other hand there's the idea that women in Sweden are being oppressed by Muslim immigrants. How do these two ideas fit together and do they genuinely believe all of that at the same time?
We shouldn't always try to rationalize these opinions, because it's going to put us in some sort of corner where we can't find our way out, because it doesn't always make any sense. But yes, they do, both those ideas, and they are said very frequently by the same people and in the same evening.
So (they believe that) feminism is one of the biggest threats – it's part of the left. That and the Jews are important and they connect feminism with Jewish world conspiracy as well, sometimes. So that's a problem, because it's egalitarian and these people are anti-egalitarian: people are different and should therefore not be made out to be equals, that's a threat that will lead to the degeneration of society.
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At the same time, building on that, these people see the women of a country as the property of that nation, so then if a foreign, so to say, 'invader', is a threat to women, which they also make it out to be, then that's also a threat. So it is quite compatible to have both, I guess, if you think the way they do. 6. Your work is just one part of Hope Not Hate's investigation into the international alt-right movement. What is the main thing you want people to understand about how this movement works?
There's so many parts to that question. One of the things that we put in the report is that it is not just about race. It's often put that these people are racist, and yes they are, they are very, very racist. But more than that, the way they radicalize people and the way new people join, and other things they consider threats to society are not really related to race. It's feminism, for example, it's young men feeling attacked by feminists and coming to the alt-right for that reason, because it's anti-feminist and these people disliking the left.
You need to see it as a broader thing. It is an anti-egalitarian movement, so they are against everything that is egalitarian.
7. After this whole experience and learning so much about them, did you learn anything new about yourself doing this?
To a degree you learn limits, what you can do… it's a completely new type of pressure for me to go to a barbecue in Seattle with white supremacists, or to speak at their conference. It's a completely new type of stress. You learn how to manage that stress and how to manage that anger with these people while you're with them, not giving away what you really feel about things and how capable you are of that when you really try.
Their Fish are even better.
I read somewhere once that half the members at any KKK meeting or gathering in the 1960's were undercover FBI agents.
I think he is so full of himself and his self righteousness
he can hardly stand it. He’s also self-centered. (of course I know all this ‘cause ???)
Now do the same sleuthing in Auntie Fuh. Or BLM. Or your local ISIS chapter.
Pissant.
He is a LIEberal!
LIEberals LIE!
No specifics, guy alleging ties to Trump etc. Fake effing news from a faker agent
OKeef is much more specific and to the point, yet no word in media about it
Let them chase phantoms, keeps them occupied and out of the way
Same here. Is he saying people expressing their views to each other at a bar is now secret conspiracy? The dude is as freaking hysterical as the Chinese ideological police
At a Gay Pride Parade in Seattle, a few scraggly characters held up rainbow-tinted professionally printed signs saying “HOMOSEXUALITY IS A SIN! YOU WILL ALL GO TO HELL!”
One would think these were ‘Fundamentalist Christians’.
Not so fast.
The persons holding such signs were LGBTQ supporters trying to make Christian Fundamentalists look like haters and extreme right-wingers.
They were caught on camera at a nearby Fedex Office picking up these printed ‘hater’ signs along with LGBTQ supporting signs with the same rainbow-tinted background and then handing them out to members who were instructed to pose as Christian ‘haters’. It was fairly obvious as these haters were bedecked in purple and red hair coloring, black Goth lipstick, waist chains that were the same as those for LGBTQ supporters.
But of course, the local rag pictured it in their weekly as evidence of Hate Groups among the religious right attempting to condemn the now prevailing normalized pervert lifestyle.
Us Christians are such haters, tsk ...
Pfft - the ‘under cover agent’ should talk to me. Trump is small time - I have direct links to the Martian High Command!
Yep, and all of 'em were DemoRats.
Interesting how they managed to work Trump in there.
They’re rambling about the type of loons that Timothy McVeigh was associated with, and the church shooter, and the mass murdering environmentalist-fantasy-crusader who killed the spawn of the left on that island in Norway.
They’re not conservatives, obviously, since they are group thinkers just like the leftists are- and inalienable rights of individuals is the last thing on their mind. But our leftwing loons continually try to mash them together with the Tea Party types, who are liberty-minded and truly believe in inalienable rights and are actually as far from both neonazi and leftwing loon as one can get.
Some small number of persecuted white males are reacting to the persecution by joining up with these extremists, but certainly not many.
Most persecuted white males aren’t interested in those groups’ ideology, however much leftists would like their minority associates to believe they are. Most just want to be free of this pussification the left is imposing through government. But the left perpetuates the myth that all white males are a threat so they can scare minorities and get them to cling to leftists who pretend to like them but really just want the votes.
I think this Swede got played.
The founder of the Proud Boys, Gavin McGinness, often says that Nazi types often try to infiltrate the Proud Boys but are rooted out and shunned. It would not surprise me if this Swedish meatball ran across a legit white power guy on the periphery of such a group.
But of course, that becomes a movement that is taking over the world and gonna kill all the Jews, who the left hate anyway. They don't mention specifics because that way they can't be refuted and can say any old damn thing they want. It is the way of the left. Pure theatrics intended for their Pavlovian sycophants. So says..........
The King in the North
Specifically, meatballs are a symbol of White Sphericity Supremacy.
Round is the new square. And we all know what square means. Wait.... What does square mean again?
Mein comrades? Little help?
These people are crazy.
Has the dude infiltrated any of the Moslems who are invading his home country of Sweden to learn what they really think and believe?
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