Bevara Sverige Svenskt

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Logo of the BSS magazine Patrioten (1985)

Bevara Sverige Svenskt ( BSS , German about "Sweden should stay Swedish") was a racist movement in Sweden . It was founded in August 1979 and became part of the newly founded Sverigepartiet ("Sweden Party ") in 1986 , from which the Sverigedemokraterna ("Sweden Democrats") emerged just over a year later .

history

The movement originated in Stockholm as a loose association of Swedish men and women who had previously been partially members of fascist or National Socialist organizations or at least had been in contact with them. They tried to put the movement on a broader footing and also to reach sections of the population that were remote from the neo-Nazi scene that was establishing itself in Sweden. Their strategy consisted, among other things, of avoiding contaminated symbols such as the swastika or a decidedly Nazi choice of words. Their main concern was the fight against liberal immigration and asylum policies.

At first, the group was only loosely organized and had no board. The first (and only) formal chairman was the engineer Sven Davidsson (born 1931) in 1983, who had been a member of the Nysvenska Rörelsen ("New Swedish Movement"), a National Socialist organization, in the 1960s . The impetus for founding Bevara Sverige Svenskt was probably provided by Leif Zeilon, who was involved in the anti-communist democracy Allians during the Vietnam War and later also in the National Socialist organization Nordiska Rikspartiet ("Nordic Reich Party"). In 1977 he stayed for a long time in what was then Rhodesia , where he supported President Ian Smith , who campaigned for the supremacy of the white minority in the country. Like many other BSS officials, Zeilon operated under a number of aliases and pseudonyms (e.g. Leif Ericsson, alluding to the Icelandic Viking and explorer ) and denied having been politically active before his time at the BSS. Another leading member of BSS was the Finnish-Swedish typesetter Nils Mandell, who, among other things, kept in contact with skinheads .

One of the first BSS actions was to distribute leaflets in downtown Stockholm. In parallel letters sent to the responsible minister, Karin Andersson , the organization called on the Swedish government to end the “current, insane immigration policy”. On February 23, 1980, individual activists, including Leif Zeilon, appeared for the first time with an information stand. The pedestrian zone of Södertälje , a city with a high proportion of immigrants, was chosen as the location . The BSS supporters were driven away by angry passers-by. However, Bevara Sverige Svenskt's popularity rose so much during the year that a TV program about the movement was broadcast on Swedish television on December 8, 1980 , which resulted in Leif Zeilon losing his job at the union construction company BPA .

In 1982 the organization began to publish a magazine that was initially called BSS-nytt (about: "BSS News") and was renamed Patrioten (The Patriot) in 1984 . In order to be able to influence the formation of political opinion in Sweden in their favor, attempts have now been made to ideologically subvert existing parties such as the Nya Partiet (New Party; a short-lived organization of dissatisfied social democrats), but this failed. The BSS leadership therefore decided to become active as a party itself. The Nationaldemokratiska Partiet (National Democratic Party; NDP) was founded so that the carefully kept secret identity of the leading functionaries would not be known , which took part in the elections to the Swedish Parliament in 1982 and 1985 , albeit without success. Right-wing skinheads, among others, found a political home in the NDP, who every year in front of the Soviet embassy in Stockholm demanded the release of Hitler's former deputy Rudolf Hess .

In the mid-1980s, Bevara Sverige Svenskt had almost 1,000 members, most of whom were very young. Most of them lived in Stockholm; local groups also emerged in Södertälje, Gothenburg , Malmö , Nyköping , Gävle , Karlskoga and Mariestad . In November 1986 the BSS leadership decided to merge with the smaller protest party Framstegspartiet (Progressive Party). In this way, the new Sverigepartiet ("Sweden Party ") came into being, which in February 1988 became the Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats; SD). Sven Davidsson was on the first board of directors of SD, while Leif Zeilon, who now increasingly represented neo-pagan positions, also played an important role.

Political statements

According to the self-image of the BSS initiators, the movement should function as an “embryo” of a national front that has yet to be formed. The model was the British National Front , with which Bevara Sverige Svenskt cooperated closely. Although the organization also wanted to be attractive to the Swedish bourgeoisie, the rhetoric of its contributions was partly characterized by exaggeration and clearly racist statements. For example, a leaflet from 1980 said:

“Every year the number of Swedes decreases. In four years there will be no more Sweden of the Swedes. The immigrants and their descendants will have completely occupied Sweden. Perhaps with a Turk as dictator and a Negro as foreign minister. The people will then be a chocolate-brown mixed people who no longer speak Swedish, but merrily mixed up different languages. "

When asked whether he saw himself as a racist, BSS chairman Sven Davidsson replied:

“Yes, in the positive sense of the word. I advocate that the races develop separately, each according to their own requirements. "

Racist cartoons were also repeatedly printed in the organization's magazines . E.g. a drawing in which a man of color threatens a blonde Swede with a pistol so that she loses her purse. The drawing is signed with the words: “Negro threatens his victims.” The patriot also contained advertisements for British magazines of the fascist spectrum such as Nationalism Today or The Scorpion, as well as benevolent reviews of books by British National Front politicians. Bevara Sverige Svenskt also distributed the racist newspaper South African Patriot , in which Leif Zeilon occasionally spoke up and defended the apartheid system in South Africa.

BSS officials also had close contacts with the racist local radio initiative Öppet Forum (“Open Forum”) in Stockholm, which was launched by taxi driver Rolf Pettersson. For some of his statements, e.g. B. about the people in Mozambique ("They are so incredibly lazy down there that they don't want to work, they just dance whole nights and days"), Pettersson was convicted of sedition . Nevertheless, Bevara Sverige Svenskt distributed audio cassettes with both the “best” and “worst” radio reports from Pettersson. Statements by Lars Kärnestam, who himself was a BSS member, also had legal consequences: “As soon as a foreigner comes, just watch out; they can be life-threatening, just be careful, you can become infected with AIDS [...] Use cannons, bow and arrow and crossbow - as we did in the Dala uprising [of 1743] ... ”Kärnestam later also got involved the Sweden Democrats .

The Sweden Democrats used the slogan Bevara Sverige Svenskt (for example, “Sweden should stay Swedish”) in the headlines of the party's own publication SD-Kuriren and on advertising material such as patches and stickers until at least 2004 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anna-Lena Lodenius and Stieg Larsson, Extremhögern , Stockholm 1991, pp. 17–32.
  2. ^ Forum för levande historia : Music in gränslandet .
  3. ↑ Lodenius / Larsson, p. 18.
  4. ^ Charles Westin, Neo-Nazism in a Welfare State: The Example of Sweden . In Journal of Conflict and Violence Research , Volume 2, 2000, p. 194
  5. ↑ Lodenius / Larsson, p. 22.
  6. ↑ Lodenius / Larsson, p. 19 f.
  7. ↑ Lodenius / Larsson, p. 20.
  8. ↑ a b Expressen , August 17, 1980.
  9. ↑ Lodenius / Larsson, p. 23.
  10. ↑ Lodenius / Larsson, p. 26 f.
  11. ^ Glyn Ford, Fascist Europe. The Rise of Racism and Xenophobia , London 1992, p. 84.
  12. ↑ Quoted here from Lodenius / Larsson, p. 23.
  13. ↑ BSS-nytt , H. 4, 1983.
  14. ↑ Lodenius / Larsson, p. 29.
  15. ↑ Lodenius / Larsson, p. 30 f.