What Is A Terrorist Threat, And How Should One Respond To It?

The other day, following the recent horrid events in Paris, linked to several temporally closely aligned similar attacks by Daesh, e.g., in Lebanon and Iraq, apparent intelligence on several other planned attacks throughout Europe, and specifically that a possible Daesh operative had entered Sweden to organise a large.scale attack of some sort, my country raised its official terrorist threat level from 3 to 4 on a scale that ends at 5. One named suspect of preparation of terrorist crime has now been apprehended, but the police and security organs apparently continue to search for others, and the government has been clear that this single factor will not by itself motivate downgrading the threat level. At the same time, several voices criticise the development either for coming much too late (claiming, among other things, that the knowledge of the presence of Daesh sympathisers in the country should have been enough), or for being misdirected, as actual terror attacks in Sweden (save one) tend mostly to be domestic extreme right wing nationalist/racist (targetting refugees and street begging EU migrants, people of visibly Muslim or Roma identity or Middle East or African descent, their living quarters, and so on), or is exaggerated and bound to create more problems than what it prevents or fixes. It struck me that many of these reactions seem based on ignoring or fixing on only selected aspects of what is technically known as a risk analysis. For this is basically what the assessment of the level of terrorist threat by a state is about: assessing certain risks and cost of events classified as terrorist attacks, as well as various actions possibly to take in response to various such levels of risk, and to evaluate on that basis what to do.

A disclaimer before I start: the putative facts about the seriousness of typical types of terrorist attacks, and the likelihood of different types of such attacks, are, of course, open to revision in the face of facts – although, as will become clear, less obviously according to what standard of evidence. All of the aspects described are part of the discussion of the ethical basis of environmental and technological risk policy that I undertake in my book The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk.

First, there is the two main dimensions of the concept of risk itself: the probability and harm dimensions. A risk is always the possible (and to some extent likely) occurrence of some type of variably harmful event. In risk analysis, the magnitude of a risk is determined by a combination of these two dimensions, so that a low probability may be balanced by a serious harm-level, and the other way around. Already this simple analytical unpacking points to a factor that may seem to be at work in the reaction to the raised Swedish terror threat level. Some people focus mainly on the likelihood dimension, and then would hesitate to criticise that new evidence and circumstances changes the assessment, or would rather have seen an earlier raised level in view of the actual wave terror attacks in the form of typical "lone wolf" deeds, and thus a concentration on extreme right wing violence rather than its Islamistic sibbling. Others focus instead on the harm dimension, and then lets the demonstrated vastness of the damage of attacks such as the one in Paris dictate the risk assessment, also when the evidence of likelihood is very weak. This may then motivate the position that, knowing that Daesh and similar groups do have had attacks such as the one  in Paris on its theoretical agenda for a long time (and carried out i the Iraq and Syrian theaters). With the notable exception of Anders Behring Breivik, although much more frequent and actually realised rather than merely theoretically imagined, the right-wing extremist deeds, while clearly terrorism in the sense of attempting to spread fear for political purposes through the use of violence against civilians, tend to be more restricted in its consequences than the large scale massacres that have now occurred and known to be on the Daesh agenda.

Second, there is the way in which different such combinations and magnitudes of risk are evaluated, or seen to support various courses of action. Here, a number of additional issues linked to the assessment of the risk magnitude is actualised, namely:

Third, how the constituents of the risk (its probability level and its harm level) are evaluated in terms of how much we should care about it. This gives another way in which we may get a similar output that was just described above, even if all agree of the risk magnitude. This since risks with the same magnitude may still be evaluated differently, e.g. due to being made up of very low probability, or very serious potential harm. here, one may also want to pay attention to the context, such as if one is making the assessment from the position of already being burdened by much risk of different kind. So if the potentially worst terror threat are the least likely, and the most likely ones the least serious (relatively speaking, of course), we may again get differences of opinion of a similar sort, but now more clearly based on differences of values rather than appraisal of fact.

Fourth, how the opportunity costs of different actions in response to a risk assessment are evaluated, that is, what is lost and risked by taking these various actions rather than other ones. Here we may spot a number of ways in which assessments may differ, although not basically disagreeing on the risk assessment (such disagreements may, of course, also be added to other disagreements). For instance, several argued against extensive action in face of the wave of apparently extreme right wing nationalist attacks against Swedish actual or in preparation asylum shelters that it would not be worth the costs it would mean to have effective guarding of each one of them. At the same time, there has been no or very little hesitance to mobilise extensive police and security forces to guard potential targets and just demonstrate the presence of the state organs to effect public calm in the wake of the new threat level. But there has been some criticism, for instance, from one of the country's most prominent terrorist experts, Magnus Norell, who claimed that even if there is a raised threat, the actions in response to it and the very act of public threat level raising itself mostly creates unnecessary worry and fear, that is the very effect aimed for by terrorists. One may also wonder how effective the guarding by police of places like train stations and main squares of large cities are, provided that combatants such as those responsible for the Beirut and Paris attacks are set on targeting them. In both cases, this would also mean that these resources are, in fact, wasted. In that light, posting armed guards outside every asylum shelter to guard against a wholly different kind of terrorists targeting these may suddenly seem as a more effective and less costly measure. This aspect, of course, has many more sides, but this only goes to show how the evaluation of options in response to a described threat, and the opportunity costs attached to them may be used to inject the issue with limitless complexity.

Fifth, there is the issue of the evaluation of evidence, underlying the probability estimates at work in all of the considerations pointed to above Here, we may see a number of differences on what type of evidence is to be given the most credence: Actual similar past events is one model, following the "frequentist" ideal in decision theory. That would, in the present case, probably speak in favour of a much higher probability for more extreme nationalist right wing terrorism against refugees, migrants and their quarters in Sweden, as this is what wa have mostly had in the past (especially the very close past). Another model is to instead trust qualified estimates, by appointed experts, who may then, if they so prefer, let other reasons than frequentist ones affect the probability estimate. For instance, even if there has been no, or relatively very few, attacks of the type known to be on the Al-Qaeda and Daesh agendas, the fact there are such attacks on this agenda combined with the presence of people who sympathise with these movements in the country, and maybe witness statements that some such person in the country has been mentioned to plan or want to plan such an attack, may be used as evidence. Some of that evidence may be broken down into an indirect frequentist argument, as it points to factors believed to have been active in relevantly similar past events elsewhere. But a substantial portion would also seem to be about subscribing to certain qualitative and evaluative assessments, such as choosing to trust certain bearers for information as credible, viewing certain events as relevantly similar in spite of notable dissimilarities, and so on. The point is that the more of this latter sort of probability grounding is used, the more room to assess as probable also events of which there have been no very similar precedent.

Sixth, there is the issue of the how much evidence (given some standard of its quality of the sort just described) should be required for a credible estimate, and for taking action. This factor is basically about how long we should wait and amass evidence to have a more well-founded risk assessment, in view of the potential costs of being to late to act effectively against the threat (if there is any). Also this aspect seems to be at work in the Swedish debate, as those who complain about the threat level not having been raised and associated action taken earlier seem to be prone to care less about the evidence of the threat, and rather have action on looser grounds to be "better safe than sorry", but the of course also downgrade or ignore the opportunity costs of this. Those who require more evidence will, on the other hand, want to wait longer even in the face of potential dangers such as the present ones, and some of these might be content with the balance made by Swedish authorities, while others would find the actions premature and would prefer more evidence to assess the raised level and the linked actions justified.

The idea that, inside this vastly variable complex of factors and possible positions on how to do a risk analysis and act on its results there exists one, simple and self-evident alternative is, of course, utterly ridiculous.

***

Not In My Name!

This is inspired by my colleague in mathematics, over at the Chalmers Institute of Technology, Olle Häggström (forthcoming with this book about existential risks, soon to be out on Oxford University Press), who writeson his blog:

The flyer depicted below, containing slander against and blatant lies about the country of Sweden, is currently being distributed at a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos and at many other places on the borders of the European Union. Representatives of the extreme and anti-immigrant right-wing Sweden Democrats party confirm that their party is behind the campaign.

Notice, among the signatories, "The People of Sweden". That is forgery. The people of Sweden includes myself. I have (along with the vast majority of my compatriots) not been consulted about the letter, neither in person, nor via legitimate proxy. I do not stand by its disgraceful content.

The Sweden Democrats party has its roots in Nazism and the white supremacy movement. Since 2010 it is represented in the Swedish Parliament (and is currently holding 49 of the 349 seats).

Adding for myself: a self-professed "nationalist" and essentielly populist party, currently representing slightly more than 12% of the voters, slanders its country and claims to represent the entire "people of Sweden". Together with the blatant lies, this says all about the arrogance, hypocracy and view of democracy to be expected of these people, should they ever gain actual political power. To this may be added, their recent slippery passive support of a wave of arsonist attacks against premises for asylum seekers, following fiery rhetoric about using "all means available" to fight the current wave of refugees arriving in Sweden and supporting the online posting of maps showing the locations of asylum seeker lodgings, albeit these have been classified by the national Migration Agency due to the wave of terrorist attacks. These people are clearly desperate and on the defensive, as it is the only one with no solutions whatsoever for handling the current political crisis in Europe regarding refugees (besides the totally unrealistic and economically catastrophic idea of shutting off the country from the surrounding world and weed out those residents who are not "Swedish" enough). This I could see for myself when its leader was pressed about the untrue statements (regarding "coming bans" on niquab etc.) on national TV yesterday, and behaved quite deranged; repeating as a robot that this is what his party wishes to see happen and therefore it will happen. Apparently he is unable to distinguish between his own political wishes and actual reality, which is another reminder about the nature of these kinds of political parties. I suppose that this is also what makes him think that he represents the Swedish people, albeit his 12% in the parliament has gained him no influence, since the other parties, of course, sees though the thin laquer of apparent democratic alegiance and spot the fascism and racism underneath. Again, this is a reminder what kind of leaders we would gain should these people ever gain any political influence: arrogant liers, unable to distinguish between reality and dream, with a political program that would sink the country into an economic slump and their only remedy to shrink and shut it off further.

 Not in my name!

PS. Should you so wish, I made my own analys of the new racist/nationalist ideology currently held out by several parties like this around Europe a few years back: here, here and here.

The Philosophy of Hate Crime: Special Section Edited by Myself And David Brax Published By The Journal of Interpersonal Violence

I have been posting a few times over the last couple of years about themes, events and media linked to my engagement in research on philosophical and ethical aspects of hate crimes, hate crime law, and policy relating to this. The engagement originates from my participation in the European Commission funded project When Law and Hate Collide, and I'm now happy to be able to announce the final publication of one of the main academic outputs of this project: A special section of the Journal of Interpersonal Violence on the theme of the philosophy of hate crime, guest-edited by David Brax (my main collaborator in the project) and myself:

The section features an unusually (for a philosophy publication) diverse collection of specialists, representing philosophy, ethics, law, sociology and criminology, writing on a wide selection of philosophical and ethical aspects of hate crimes and related policy. The table of content looks as follows:

David Brax's and my introduction, where the theme of the philosophy of hate crime, as well as the content of the individual contributions, are briefly explained, has been made "open access", that is freely available for reading or download by anyone. If you lack the access (through private subscription or your university library or other institutional link) to read the other contributions, please contact the individual authours to obtain copies of their respective articles!

Next Step in Hungary's March Back to Dark and Brown Political Legacy: Official Historical Revisionism to Hide Pro-nazi Past

This was brought to my attention by my friend and colleague at the University of Gothenburg, distinguished political science professor, Bo Rothstein. As some of you may know, after a brief time of emerging out of its Soviet satelite past and joining the EU as a liberal democracy, Hungary has for some time been moving in an increasingly extreme rightwing, nationalist, anti-liberal and anti-democratic direction. Led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban of the Fidesz party, increasing assaults have been made on basic democratic principles – to the extent that the EU has been reprimanding some of the plans harshly, short of threatening of expelling the country from the union altogether. Earlier this year, Orban declared that he viewed China, Russia and Turkey as rolemodels to follow, and that he wants to abandon liberal democracy in favor of an “illiberal state”. This follows a process starting in 2002, of cooperating with openly nazi racist organisations and semi-militias over several years to deliberately dismantle and undermine Hungarian democratic institutions and freedom of opinion and speech, as well as weakening basic principles of ascertaining rule of law and legal security. Some further reports are here, here, here, here, here.

Therefore, it should perhaps come as no surprise that this march towards the darker regions of modern central European history is now being complemented by a historical revisionist agenda, aiming to hide Hungary's dirty past in this area. Bo's open letter (published as a Swedish debate article here) to the Swedish Hungarian ambassador describes it as it is – an image of the monument is seen above (view a larger version by clicking the image):

The lie that Bo here uncovers should come as no surprise, as one of the few things that have potential of tripping the populist far-right nationalist politics pursued by Fidesz is its obvious links to the nazi-past of Hungary. Hence, that past needs to be erased, and into the Hungarian collective mind should be installed a lilly-white version of the innocent maiden, where the blood stained hands of mindless butcher, selling out its country for a slice of the cake of the promised 1000-ear Reich, belongs. That's Victor Orban and Fidesz for you in so many words.

The Limits of Self-defense, the Threat of Violent Right-wing Extremism and the Job of Leviathan

One night, I'm being attacked in my home by a right wing extremist neighbour, who doesn't like the anti-racism slogan on my door. He catches me by surprise when I come home from this evening's grocery shopping and, armed with a stick and bottle, he forces himself into my hall as I unlock and open my door. Inside, he starts to push me further in, yelling violent threats and hitting me. But I manage to regain the initiative, because a friend of mine is sitting in my living room, waiting for me to return, for us to prepare some dinner together, and when she joins me, we outnumber the extremist attacker and counter the violence wielded against us, using whatever weapons we can grab. Yelling back and now making a threatening figure, we make him turn around and back out of the door, we continue out of the flat, into the outer hallway of the house, following him back down the stairs to make sure he exits the house. When we open the front door, we can see the attacker disappear surrounded by some police, who have now arrived, one of which meet us right outside my house and asks us to stop our pursuit. But I'm doubting the capacity of the police – after all, where were they when that madman attacked me in the first place? And I'm angry and scared and full of violent energy – that /%€#*! I so want a bite at him, don't I? Plus, I feel I have the right on my side, since I was attacked because of my political opinions, which I have all right to hold and to communicate publicly. I also hold a knife in my hand, which I grabbed in the moments earlier as a last resort, fearing the attacker who was armed. So, I ignore the policeman's instruction and start running after the attacker, catching him fleeing before any of the cops have managed to get at him, and I stab him in the back. Deep. Several times. He sinks to the ground, blood flooding, and I realise he might die. But I feel safe now. Ten seconds later I'm arrested by the police and eventually convicted for attempted manslaughter (as the attacker survived), wielding of an unlawful weapon and insubordination of a police officer. I get six years and seven months in jail. The prosecutor has been lenient and charged me with attempted m.s. rather than murder in spite of me having confessed awareness of the risk of my violence being deadly, taking account of the earlier threat against me. But the sentence is at the same time influenced by the fact that I have convictions from before – for attacking the homes of known right-wing extremists using weapons and rioting, among other things, so that counts against me sentencing-wise. Had I been younger – I'm 35 – and had had a clean record, the sentence might have been less harsh, but under the circumstances it is expected.

This is a made-up story, but it recounts in a more domestic setting and with some dramatic addition of a subjective nature, the events occurring at a political anti-racism demonstration in the Stockholm suburb Kärrtorp a few months back. An armed neonazi extremist gang attacked a peaceful anti-racism manifestation, organised by ordinary people living in the area. The people, however, drove the attackers back, using a bit of force, as they had every right to. But, having driven the attackers away, it didn't stop, a few present self-appointed "anti fascist activists" started a further pursuit of them, in spite of being ordered by the initially inorganised, surprised and outnumbered police to stay where they were. One of these activists caught up with one of the attackers and stabbed him several times in the back, causing severe inner damage, almost killing him. This person was today convicted for attempted manslaughter, unlawful threat (a charge from a separate event), carrying an unlawful weapon and violent rioting to 6 years and 7 months in prison. The reports of this are found here (in this segment the knifing is identified in a video), here, here. Seven of the neonazi attackers have already been convicted for violent rioting to varying sentences, several of them young enough to be handed over to social services for compulsory non-penal measures. The man convicted today is 35 years, already has a series earlier convictions, involving threat and violence, and is a member of the left-wing activist group, the "Revolutionary Front", whose members have recently been forced to leave the reformist left-wing party, Vänsterpartiet. In light of all these things, the sentence looks quite normal and expected, in particular if one counts that there's already been a deduction in the seriousness of the initial charge.

Videos of the events in Kärrtorp are here (the initial phase, in the latter part the knifing is caught on film, as analysed in the first news report linked to above)...



And here (the latter phase, when the attackers where further pursued out into the woods)



Many people, not least with left-wing leaning political sympathies, and especially those engaged in anti-racism have a problem accepting this outcome of things. They feel that it is the neonazi attackers who are to blame. Or that it is the police's fault, which should have been expecting trouble and been more prepared. But this reasoning is very hard to make into sense. Look at the the first made-up story. I think everybody agree that I and my friend had every right to do what we did up to the point when the policeman ordered us to stop the pursuit. True, i didn't feel safe in the story and I didn't trust the police (plus I was angry as hell), but that gives me no right to pursue a fleeing person to stab him in the back. Do you feel inclined to disagree? Change the story just one bit and give me my hunting rifle with a scope, shooting the attacker down from several hundred meters. That ok too? Now hand me my machine gun and the grenades....

But what about the police, shouldn't they have been better prepared? Indeed they should have in the best of worlds and from now on, they really should. The threat from right-wing extremist activists towards ordinary people expressing decent and ordinary opinions peacefully is very reall. We are all threatened by this group of criminals. But the fact that the police wasn't sufficiently prepared in Kärrtorp does not give people a license to kill anymore than the fact that the police wasn't there in sufficient force to make me feel safe in my first example. You're still doubtful? Let's generalize the reasoning you feel drawn to and ask what sort of society you would get....

This is the principle that applies to everyone of us: Whenever I feel insufficiently safe, I may use deadly force against other people who I, for good reason, feel threatened by. Now, imagine for a while, how the streets of a normal city would be like if that logic was allowed to prevail. That, my dear friend, is society breaking apart into the shards that we have a state in the first place to secure us against. This was famously realised by the British political philosopher Thomas Hobbes several hundred years back, in chapters 13-15 of his legendary treatise Leviathan. And to make sure that such protection remains, the sovereign power of the state is licensed to use whatever force necessary - to prevent a return of that state of nature where life of everyone is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". For that reason, to have common rules embraced that ensure that as little such state force is necessary makes a lot of sense. But that, in turn, makes it necessary for the sovereign – the state – to provide reasonable protection from what otherwise awaits us. For it is the well-known tactic of right-wing extremists – all since the successful use of the S.A. "militia" by the Nazi party in Weimar Germany in the 1930's to create a wide sense of disorder and panic, which useful idiot revolutionary left-wing groups at the time let themselves be drawn into – to lure us into abandoning our shared societal rules, in order for them to start to look like a pleasant alternative of firm order to have the trains run on time once more.

In effect, the reaction that the police needs to be better at protecting people against the violent threat of right-wing extremists makes a lot of sense. And perhaps, there is even reason to ponder a less generous freedom of association, assembly and expression (which in Sweden is much more allowing that, e.g. in Germany, when it comes to the first two). But, once again, that doesn't give us all a license to kill. Rather, the logic is like this: society has a good reason to tighten its response and protection against the apparently increased threat of violent attacks against ordinary people. And it has this reason not only because of its general duty to provide a peaceful and secure society, it has it also to forestall any undermining of the public general support of common rules according to which deadly force is not to be wielded except under conditions of extreme necessity for self-defense or defense of others. If we tread over that border, the response should be as harsh as ever else in similar circumstances, for what we engage in is not self-defense or a noble fight for a more peaceful society, it is the gradual dismantling of civilization at its core.

The Anti-Roma Racist Apartheid Stink of the Sheraton Stockholm Hotel Can't Be Washed Off as "Mistake"

So, this is what happened in my country today:

As the Swedish Government was to launch a long awaited and important white book, documenting and finally publicly acknowledging decade after decade of endemic discrimination and persecution or Roma people in Sweden, one of the main speakers, Diana Nyman, chairman of the Roma council in Gothenburg, and specially invited prominent guest to speak at the ceremony – where also the Queen and the Crown Princess took part, besides the minister of social affairs, Erik Ullenhag – was heading down to the restaurant of the luxury Sheraton Hotel in the very centre of Stockholm, where the government had booked her to stay, to have breakfast.

 This, however, proved to be a challenge, as she...

'...was almost knocked over by a staff member who rushed to bar the Roma expert and speaker from entering the breakfast room. 
"Even after I had showed that I'd paid for breakfast the staff insisted that I stay in the lobby," Nyman told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper (DN) on Tuesday. "They got me coffee so I could drink it there instead." '

In Dagens Nyheter, representatives of the Government comments dryly that it will now "revise its business relations" with the hotel, while Diana Nyman declares that she will (of course!) report the hotel for unlawful discrimination.

Quote above is from The Local. And some Swedish renderings are here, here, here, here, here.

Just now, the hotel CEO, Thomas Johansson, finally commented, labeling the incident as an "unfortunate mistake" and then immediately contradicting himself by referring to an ongoing internal investigation, obviously implying that the hotel actually believes that something more than an accident had occurred.

Of course, it's no accident and, of course, it's no mistake!

The hotel staff knew exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it. They were barring a proven guest of the hotel from having breakfast and entering the restaurant only because of her "Roma looks". Based, I suppose, on some hazy notion that "We can't have those people around our fine restaurant guests, now, can we! What will our guests think!?" Keep her happy with a cuppa in the lobby, just to prevent any fuss, before she's on her way and all can return to normal". 

This is without any doubt a crystal clear case of conscious apartheid and blatant racial/ethnic discrimination. Moreover, I hold more than likely that the staff actions are perfectly in line with longstanding practice at the hotel with regard to Roma people, it's just that they never had anyone of them so visibly as a guest before. The equally likely fact that the Sheraton chain somewhere, I'm sure, has some sort of human rights and equal treatment policy doesn't mean zilch in this context. One might add, moreover, that the behaviour of the hotel staff is perfectly in tune with the deeply embedded culture towards Roma people in my country, documented by the White book launched today. So, I would guess, that – in fact – Sheraton is only unlucky here, to have their first visibly Roma guest, the incident would have been extremely likely to occur at any "better" accommodation establishment in town.

So, please, Mr. Sheraton CEO, Thomas Johansson, please stop pretending what only makes you look ridiculous. Admit that your hotel – as probably most others in this country – has a cultural and institutional ethnic/racial discrimination problem, giving rise to apartheid behaviour towards guest or possible guests based on "racial profiling" from your staff. Admit it and deal with it!

In the meantime, I find the reaction of the Government most apt, and if the Royal court does any business with Sheraton, it would be very logical for them to turn their affairs elsewhere as well. Not to speak of the Nobel Foundation, which often uses Sheraton to put up laureates and their families. Just as a bit of a motivator for real change, I mean – you do believe in financial incentives, don't you?

And all of you others, if you happen to visit Stockholm in the future, here's how the Sheraton Stockholm hotel looks like again. Just in case you want to follow these fine examples when making your free choice on the market of where not to hole up, I mean:

An Extremely Loudmouthed Very Minor Minority: Anonymous Racist Net-haters Exposed in Sweden

The last week or so, the big news in my country has been the reporting in daily tabloid Expressen of the result of the independent Research Group's unmasking of the most active and organized online "net-haters" on various racist or semi-racist or "nationalist" internet fora – a phenomenon I discussed from a moral psychological point of view in a former post. The messages of the haters convey a rich collection of completely unrestrained, inconsiderate or even mildly civil language, open blatant racism, many statements about the need for using fire arms as a reaction to current Swedish immigration policy. And, of course, countless attacks of a similar sort on people who openly question their views  or those of our own little new-racist party, the Sweden Democrats (for my take on the European new-racist political movement se the series of posts linked to here), inciting to violence and, in the case of a 16-year old girl who dared express opposition, organized rape. All under the prescious protection of a perceived online anonymity.

English coverage of this news is here and here. The Swedish reports of Expressen are here, here and here (with many further links to comments, particular analyses, debate and so on) and further comments can be found here, here and here, just to mention an extreme few of a lot of domestic news reporting. The analyses from the Research Group itself can be accessed via their webpage "Avkodat", i.e. Decoded. The unmasking itself was apparently done without any sort of illegal hacking, it is reported. Rather, the Research Group used modern, smart approaches to effectively assemble and analyze publicly available information, albeit apparently some of this information was public due to a security flaw of the Disqus online community service. I'm unsure, however, of how significant that particular aspect was in facilitating the unmasking.

The exposure of the identity of the net-haters first demonstrated a number of elected or otherwise public representatives of the Sweden Democrats, most of which immediately resigned or were forced out in accordance with the zero tolerance for racism policy that was proclaimed by the party's central leadership some years back and has resulted in the resignation or disappearance from public view of a great many people at all levels of the party. Further analysis has revealed that these and a rather small number of other people have been extremely active in various online debate fora in a way that can only be described as a consciously coordinated campaign, going on since many years, to the effect of creating the false impression of a change of public attitudes to immigration, etc. and to consistently and repeatedly terrorize and scare people who hold other views to keep them from voicing them publicly. Thus creating the false impression of the new-racist agenda as being in fashion, more widely accepted, and so on. In effect, the alleged "silent majority" that these sort of people love to hold themselves out as speaking for has turned out to be a cowardly and not even minimally civil or morally decent extremely small minority of loudmouthed extremists, lacking any sort of support among ordinary people and when exposed conveying loving character traits such as blaming their own children to have hijacked their computers. This, to me, is the most important result of the unmasking done by the Research Group and Expressen – this whole sense of a "nationalist", "racist" ideological wind having gotten hold of large portions of the population does not hold up to scrutiny. It's a marketing lie created by a very, very minor group of very unusual and extreme people under cover of supposed anonymity, but as all trolls exposed to the sun, when brought up in the daylight from their murky, foul dwellings, they burst just as well as that empty balloon of the image of public opinion they have been trying to create.

Now, Expressen choose to expose not only people holding public or political office, but also some of the other most active of the haters without any such formal ties to any party or organization. This created a small burst of criticism on press-ethical grounds. It's one thing, the argument went (expressed for instance by Ulf Bjereld, a professor of political science at my university) to expose public figures in this way, that's like catching officials taking bribes, or criticising political representatives for furthering a double agenda. But to expose "ordinary persons" who are not formally representing a political party or holding a public office is more problematic. The editor in chief of Expressen, Thomas Mattsson, has replied in a way making it obvious that he is aware of the press-ethical problem as such, but has made another judgement than Bjereld.

In this debate, in spite of being generally rather critical of what I see as an often much too eager willingness of the press to identify individuals, I side with Mattsson. Bjereld's argument rests solely on the assumption that being a public figure has to be defined in rigid, formalistic terms such as being an elected politician. I rather hold that the relevant questions are, first, if the person is a public figure and, second, to what extent the dissemination of the information is in the public interest. These two criteria together, due to the circumstances described earlier mean: (a) that the most active of the net-haters have, by their own conscious actions and fully aware of acting in the public domain, made themselves into public figures (these are not your average Joe shooting of an ill-considered comment in a forum or discussion thread now and then), (b) the result of the totality of their coordinated (I'm not saying planned, I don't assume a conspiracy here) actions are of the utmost importance from a public perspective by creating widespread false impressions influencing democratic and public discourse. Observe, also, that Expressen's exposure in no way curtails these people's freedom of speech or opinion or expression or somehow punishes or condemns them or in any other way undermines what may be seen as democratically important values. It simply reports about an issue of large national and principal democratic importance, in which said people have by their own free actions chosen to implicate themselves. Now, what this means is, of course, that I also agree with Bjereld that there is a limit to what level of identification of those active under anonymity in these fora would be press-ethically justified. But just as in the case of other publication decisions, the determination of that boundary is not done by assuming an arbitrarily chosen rigid formalist criterion of the sort suggested by Bjereld.

South Sweden Police's Registry of Roma is Illegal on Multiple Counts – and More Criticism May Well Be Coming!

So a while back I posted an admittedly rather annoyed and highly sarcastic piece regarding the revelations of a registry of more than 4 500 people, mostly of roma origin or related to roma people, some of them since long dead and over 1 000 of them small children, and the feeble and completely confused attempts of responsible police officials to deny any wrongdoing, responsibility or simply sweep the whole thing under the carpet. After that it has been revealed that the registry has contained a large number of people with no suspiscion of or  connection whatsoever to criminal activities and completely respectable lives, jobs social situation etc. – they just "happen" to be roma or having roma relations.

 As I reported about then, a criminal investigation of possible illegal actions in the setup, management and use of the registry was immediately opened by a criminal prosecuter and two police officers have since then been notified of suspiscions of crimes in this respect so far. Parallel investigations were opened by the the Commission on Security and Integrity Protection (SIN) and the Swedish Discrimination Ombudsman (DO). The former authority "supervises the use by crime-fighting agencies of secret surveillance and qualified assumed identities and associated activities" and today delivered its report on what has become known as the "roma registry". Reports in the press can be found (1st one in English) here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

The verdict is that the registry is severly misconceived from the outset, handled sloppily and with lack of discipline and illegal on multiple counts. This, it should be noted, is an administrative legal verdict and does not – however severe its administrative legal implications – by itself imply criminal wrongdoing of any person, but it's hardly good news for the already notified officers mentioned or others formally responsible or users of the registry in South or other parts of Sweden that may be under the criminal prosecuter's scrutiny. What the outcome of this criminal legal process will be remains to be seen.

Likewise, the SIN verdict does not settle the issue of whether or not the setup and running and use of the "roma registry" amounts to illegal discrimination (on ethnic grounds). This is the topic of the DO investigation, which is still ongoing. SIN does note in its report that, apparently, ethnicity has not been the only ground of inclusion of people into the registry – however, this does not settle the illegal discrimination issue, since it seems that people have been included (almost) only if they have either roma origins or relations to people of such origins. That is, while more or less well-founded suspiscion of crime or feared future criminal activity has indeed been a reason for inclusion, a great many people falling into that category have not been included and, seemingly, this is due primarily to their lack of roma origins or connections. It remains to be seen how the DO will assess this delicate situation.
 

Why Southern Sweden's Police Should Immediately Create a Registry of Police Officers and their Families

So here's the not so very tasty news from my country today, broken by our largest daily, Dagens Nyheter: The police force of southern Sweden has been running a registry, based on biological/genetic/familial/genealogical principles worthy of any classic nazi or racial biologist, of roma or "traveller" people, comprising of over 4000 persons, among which are 1000 plus children – and also some long deceased ancestors. Read English reports here, here and here (some other Swedish reports are here, here, here, here). One of the family-tree structures look like this (click it for more examples):

The police of south Sweden has made a number of increasingly pathetic attempts to dodge this obviously undodgeable shitstorm, ranging from first denying the existence of any registry, then admitting that but claiming that it is not organised by any "ethnic" principles (the title of the registry is "traveler abouts" – duh!), then possibly sensing this is not going to go away, starting to shift the blame to the classic sort of patsy: the lone, slightly crazed police officer acting "on his own" and excessing a little bit in his/her otherwise admirarable sense of duty. This nice composition of headlines from today sums up how totally feeble and cowardly this whole thing is being handled by those responsible locally:

 Right. And at the same time the registry, for legally it is one, is reported to have been in wide use, not only in the south, but also in my own quarters of Western Sweden, for instance. Ok, so maybe not a lone gunman after all....

By now the national chief of police, Bengt Svensson, reacted strongly and critically, to say the least, and ordered all regional chiefs to probe if anything similar is going on anywhere else (you hear those shredders working all through the nights, and all those hard-drives being dismounted and crushed, folks?) and, in consequence, the police has reported itself to.... the police and the relevant prosecutor has already said that an investigation will be opened regarding possible crimes against the law on registration of personal information (PUL, which is pretty strict), and possibly other laws as well. A bit late, but still, our minister of Justice, Beatrice Ask – otherwise famous for condoning police racial profiling, or at least pooh-poohing reports about it – also has made a statement. Should that fail, the Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, Nils Muznieks, has already stated his view that the whole thing is in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights (since Sweden is an EU member state, also a part of my country's constitution), so that would take the case to a probable loss in the European Court of said human rights, which would then force a legal change, if necessary. In parallel, also today, UN's committee against racial discrimination is once again mounting criticism against Sweden, among other things for its lack of action against discrimination and stigmatisation of people of roma origin.

This leads into the funny bit, which motivates this post:

It is namely the last line of defense (offered by deputy chief, Petra Stenkula, and picked up by this shady excuse for a legal commentator, to mention one of a bunch – nice company you keep, deaputy chief!), apparently, of the south Sweden police, that the registry (which is not a registry, but a "list") of roma or travelers (which is not that but a list of "traveler abouts") is (at least initially), in fact a completely legitimate part of a police investigation of some crime connected to a family feud some years back – let alone, it might have gone a bit astray over the years. Right, that's why they need those long deceased people born in the 1800's and the two year olds in there - stupid me, I should have known!

But wait a bit, let's not be too harsh!! Let's in fact accept this explanation - it is actually quite apt by the police to set up registries of this sort, if only it pertains to an ongoing criminal investigation. Let's now chew really well on exactly that:

As we saw, there's a new criminal investigation that has just been opened! Apparently it's about police officers in south Sweden creating and using possibly illegal and unlawfully racist registries of people. So, let's accept the just given explanation and the principle that it implies and act really thoroughly on that: Let's have that registry of all those police officers in south Sweden who are potentially implicated for setting up or using (the Swedish law relevant here may actually ban mere use) the registry – quite possibly that'll be all of them. And be very sure to have deputy chief Stenkula's name as the very first entry, as the feeble attempt at whitewashing that she has offered obviously makes her a prime suspect. And while you're at it, let's put all their family members in there too - including small children of about two and up and a few long dead ones as well, just for good measure. 

You just act on your own fine principles and do just that! Savor how good it feels! Do it tomorrow, do it now, do it yesterday and enjoy!

BBC newspeak on mob hate crimes against Roma in France

So, here's a short note on a piece of news reporting that upset me quite a bit yesterday night. Partly this is due to the nature of the events described, bearing evidence of the French authorities' increased acceptance of lawless harassment against Roma people, thus setting aside basic obligations to tend to human rights, rule of law and legal security. But even more so, the way in which these events are described upset me. Especially considering the source being not the press office of the Front Nationale or the British National Party, but actually the BBC.

Basically, what is reported is that of a local French mob running amok – inspired by the usual anecdotal rumours and lose slander figuring in cases like these since the witch-hunts of the 17th century – taking the law into their own hands and forcing (one supposes by threats of violence and/or actual physical force, how else does one force?) a group of homeless Romas (sometimes referred to as Gypsies or Travellers) to flee a camp set up on a wasteland close to a Marseille housing estate. In the process, parts of said camp were set on fire and anonymous members of the mob in so many words say that they were passively or indirectly inspired to the attack by local police authorities. Said authorities in turn seem to actively turning a blind eye to the incident claiming that they were "not able to report any crime".

This, the usually impeccably to the point and correct BBC chooses to describe as "vigilantes" with "no reports of violence" "evicting". Yep, vigilantes – just like Batman or any other righteous crime fighter who steps in when the high and mighty lost their ability to uphold the law. Yep, non-violent – just like that example of peaceful popular protest known as Kristallnacht that also had suspected arson and unlawful coercion and threat on the menu, besides general mayhem And the best of all: evicting, just like any landlord would do had the tenants not behaved themselves – all proper and according to due procedure. Yep, nothing to add to the local police's obviously completely ridiculous stated inability to report any crime. If this is not the worst case of racist newspeak I have encountered in mainstream media for a long time I don't know what is.

Shame on you, BBC!

The Seductive Power of Nationism: from Revocable Citizenship to Abolishment of the Citizenship Idea

This week, a development that I predicted in a series of posts on the ideology of the new European racism (here, here, here) has occurred for real in Swedish politics. Often controversial local labour leader in Malmö, Ilmar Reepalu, suggested that criminals who have attained their Swedish citizenship recently, should be expelled from the country after having served their sentence (here, here, here, here, here, here, here). It is rather unclear if the idea of Reepalu is that (a) citizenship should be revocable for some time (how long?), or that (b) citizens should be possible to expel from the country for some time (how long?) after having attained the citizenship. In any case, his suggestion has been applauded by Sweden's own new-racist party, the Sweden Democrats, who quite rightly point out that the idea is a central one in their political program. With a few exceptions, the suggestion has met with massive criticism from within the Swedish labour party, as well as from other parties across the political scale.

Nevertheless, I am not surprised that this sort of suggestion is being picked up by politicians outside of the new racist movement. As described in my first post on this subject, this movement has devised a clever ideological trap that is very easy to be seduced by, and it appears that it is this very trap that Reepalu has fallen right into. However, the sort of suggestion he makes is, as I pointed out in my second post, vulnerable to, what I called, the nationism - ethno-racism paradox. When it comes to the idea about revocable citizenship, this paradox leads to the logic that, as a matter of fact, all citizenships should be revocable all of the time (or, alternatively, that it should be possible to expel all citizens). Here's the line of reasoning:


The idea about revocable citizenship (or a citizenship consistent with being expelled from the country) is motivated by the idea that if you commit (sufficient or sufficiently serious) crime, you demonstrate that you do not have a required allegiance to your country, its culture and its shared values (never mind the haziness of these notions at this point). But if that is the case, obviously, this applies to everyone, also those that have their citizenship due to having been born by (or having a lineage to) a citizen. In effect, logic seems to dictate that it should be possible to expel anyone who commits crime (to a sufficiently serious extent) – citizen or not.


Effectively, this means that the whole idea about citizenship is abolished. 


Now, there is – as I noted in my third post – one way to avoid this conclusion, and that is to go down the pure nationist route. Reepalu would then have to argue that there is a fundamental difference between those criminals who have Swedish citizenship due to birthright (these are the vast majority of criminals) and those who have attained it later in their lives. Reepalu would then need to make probable that labour party ideology supports the notion that the value of a person is (partly) determined by who happened to be his or her parents.


Good luck with that one!

Finland Wanders Down Racist Memory Lane: the ID as Concentration Camp Badge (+ addendum)

It is reported today all over Swedish media (here, here, here, here) that residents of Finland that are not (yet) Finnish citizens are to be forced to carry IDs that are coloured brown, rather than the ordinary blue. While policies distinguishing people based on citizenship were to be expected as a result of the success of the Finnish new racist (or, as I would have it, nationist) party Sannfinländarna ( ≈ "True Finns"), I was quite shocked by this the first expression of this political shift. Considering the practice of 20th century racist regimes to force people of targetted undesirable groups (such as jews or gays) to wear special markings on their clothes in the concentration camps, but also in general public, one would have thought that an idea like this would be avoided, if nothing else, for tactical reasons.

As I explained in my series of posts last year on the ideological core of the new European racism (pt. 1, 2, 3), the new direction of nationism – where citizenship rather than biological type or ethnicity is in focus for the standard racist idea of sorting people into categories of more or less worthy – that has helped the new European racist parties to achieve some success in recent years, ultimately leads down the same road as those more familiar types of racist ideology that Europe encountered in the 1900's. However, it is also an elaborate tactic of these parties to try to hide this logic behind (untenable) pragmatic arguments re. immigration and citizenship. Therefore, it is a bit of a surprise to see this rather radical and large step in the direction of the ethnic cleansing that I argued will, in the end, have to become the primary objective of the new racists. In the end it will be about separating "real" Finns from the "unreal", regardless of geographical or genetic descent, denying the latter the rights and priviliges of citizenship.

Apparently, according to the news reports, a pragmatic argument has been offered also in this particular case, namely that the new policy will make the job easier for the police. Exactly how, one wonders. IDs certainly makes the police's job easier, but what does it matter for police-work whether or not people contacted in the course of investigations are immediately visible as non-citizens? If the matter of citizenship happens to be relevant (which it is, like, never), this will reveal itself as soon as inquiries are made into the records of the person. No, this argument is so lame, and such an obvious pretext, that one wonders why anyone even bothered to wield it. This is about marking out and separating people on the basis of the basic nationist idea of what makes people more or less worthy of protection (namely citizenship). This is about installing this notion into the minds of Finns who will be exposed to these markings (in the bank, the post office and every time an ID is needed when shopping).

And, of course, this is how it all began in the 1930's.........

Addendum (a few hours later)
According to a Finnish academics friend, the official explanation given in Finland is that it is important "for security reasons" that the ID given to non-citizen residents is not a valid travel document within the Schengen region. This, of course, is as lame as alluding to the needs of the police. First, it assumes that there would be a connection between being a security risk and being a resident non-citizen of Finland (which, of course, there is not). Second, it totally misses the point, since the Schengen region works in a way that means, that everyone have to prove citizenship, residentship and/or valid reason (such as a tourist visa or equivalent) when entering the region, but not within the region (thus, when flying from Helsinki to Gothenburg, no one checks passport or anything else at arrival). If you are a resident of a Schengen country, you have the right to travel to any Schengen country. In effect, it would appear that – if not strictly violating (after all, the non-citizens can use their passport if they have one) the Schengen agreement – the Finnish move most certainly is violently acting against its spirit.

On the webpage of the Finnish police, the reform is explained in terms of "enhancing security", presumably hinting at the just related (invalid) reason.

The New European Political Racism, Pt. 3: From Nationism to Conditionalised Citizenship to Ethnic Cleansing

In the first part of this series, I distinguished the rhetoric of the new racism from its actual ideological core, as it appears from analysing original, concrete and comprehensible policy suggestions. These being mainly about conditions for citizenship, what transpired was that the ideology of the new racism is about, what I called, Nationism; the idea that states have a basic moral reason to make a fundamental moral distinction between people who are born of citizens of this state (or who meet some similar immediate citizenship condition) and other people (who need to perform according to some conditions to attain citizenship). At the same time, the new racism is indeed wielding a lot of classic ethno-racist rhetoric. However, as it turns out, this is only a smokescreen for what is the real deal. This is shown, besides the fact that the rhetoric makes no comprehensible mark on what is actually suggested with regard to policy, by the way in which the new racists immediately back down from the ethno-racist claims as soon as they are being challenged. On this basis, I made the point that one of the reasons for the recent success of the new racism in elections is that the nationist ideology has not been adequately seen, exposed, explained and distinguished from ideas about making a difference between different people with regard to citizenship for purely pragmatic reasons (the latter supporting far less drastic conditions for citizenship for people who do not become immediate citizens). The new racists have been able to triumph simply because of the uncertainty of voters and political opponents on this basic point.

In the second part of the series, I continued to demonstrate that this, what looks as the new racists' best political weapon, is actually also their weakest point. This since the strategy of ducking away from objections to the ethno-racist rhetoric is only smart as long as the nationist ideological core is not clearly visible and thereby provides a sort of political hideout camouflaged as something far less sinister than what it in fact is. When we see it for what it is – nationism – we can also see that the joint political message of the new racism is genuinely paradoxical. Nationism is, as a matter of fact, contradicting ethno-racism, and vice versa.

So, suppose that the nationist ideology is effectively exposed (as it surely will be, eventually). Where will this lead (besides having the new racists loosing votes faster than you can say "citizenship test")? Well, the new racism will then have to face the nationist - ethno-racism paradox head on. Facing a contradiction they will, of course, as Robert Nozick once observed, have the option of remaining inconsistent. That, however, will surely lead to the effective end of this sort of political movement for a long time. Simply put, being openly inconsistent is not a trait being favored by very many people - not even with regard to immigration policy. And I'm sure that the leaders and strategists of the new racism are perfectly aware of this. So, then, what will they do?

Well, besides remaining inconsistent, the only available way of reacting to a contradiction is to reject one of its sides. That is, the new racism will have to purify its message into one that is about nationism, and nothing more than that, or drop the nationist ideological core and wander down the more well-known ethno-racist route.

My suggestion is that an openly nationist political movement with no access to further rhetorical sources will not win the hearts of many voters. This for three reasons. First, nationism, when seen clearly is a basic moral position as reprehensible as the idea thatpeople have a right to treat other people much worse just because they happen to have another hair colour, another birthday date, living on another street, et cetera, compared to oneself. It doesn't help very much here that the new racists perform the universalisation trick and thereby avoid the most obvious objection of being simply arbitrary in singling out themselves, their own group, yard, neighbourhood (or what have you) as enjoying a moral privilege that nobody else does. This was one of the factors that made the racism of the first half of the 20th century unsustainable under any other condition than war (which tends to make us all into infantile 1st person egoists). When universalised, nationism avoids this by acknowledging the same moral privilege to all states visavis their own citizens. But since we are not here talking about favors to citizens based on the need for pragmatic adaption to the condition of a multinational world, but of nationism (see part 1 for more about this) clearly spelled out, I suggest that not many people would be attracted to this evolved version of the new racism. In particular, and this is the second reason, they would understand immediately that nationism actually professes measures that are clearly against the national interest as well as the interests of most citizens! How this is so is developed in part 1 as well. Third, part of the success of the new racism surely has to do with the pull that the ethno-racist rhetoric exerts on some people. Without it, the new racists have lost a significant lever of popular seduction.

So, that seems to leave the ethno-racist route, but with some crucial differences to what used to be possible for the new racist movement to do politically. First, the new racism will not hold up for very long if they try to support ethno-racist policy claims with various alleged pragmatic arguments (as they have been trying to do in their recent rhetoric). Not when they no longer have have a nationist ideological core that nobody else sees clearly to hide behind. This means that, rather than a shallow rhetoric, the ethno-racist claims have to become the new ideological core. What will that imply?

As I explained in part 1, and elaborated further in part 2, ethno-racism as an ideology is about making a fundamental moral difference between people sorted in different groups in terms of some selected socio-cultural signifiers, "muslim" being the latest term of division in a long line. Also this idea can be universalised with regard to ideas regarding conditions for citizenship, effectively stating that every state has a basic moral privilege (not implied by pragmatic necessities in a multinational world, but of value in itself) to award citizenship only to people who belong to the group defined by the socio-cultural signifier selected. This is the origin of the idea of a citizenship test that needs to be passed in order for citizenship to be awarded, as well as the notion of revocable citizenship. Now, as demonstrated in part 1, recent new racist policies of such tests are in fact not ethno-racist but nationist, since people who are born by citizens are not required to take any test or conform to any standard of behavior to attain or keep citizenship. However, it is perfectly possible to modify these sort of policies so that they fit perfectly with an ethno-racist ideological core. The only thing needed is that the ethno-racist conditions of citizenship are applied to all people - also those who are born by citizens.

In other words, the ethno-racist ideological turn will force the new racism (at pains of being caught in another paradox) to advocate the idea of conditionalised citizenship all across the board. No one, born in the country or immigrant, can become a citizen unless they are demonstrated to conform to some sort of socio-cultural standard. Moreover, even if they do so and are awarded citizenship, they can be stripped of it if demonstrated to depart significantly from this same standard. This, of course, is the same cluster of ideas where we find the notion of more or less enforced repatriation programmes and, of course, ultimately, ethnic cleansing. Luckily, not many people will be attracted by such suggestions, unless we have a socio-economic meltdown of the sort occurring in continental Europe during the 1930's and a subsequent period of serious violent conflict. Hitler, in his way, understood this perfectly - thus, the gradually sharpened provocations to boost the emerging chaos of Germany.

This is where I end my attempt to understand the ideology of the new European political racism and its role in current, as well as forthcoming, politics. Hopefully, by reading this blog or by just thinking for themselves, political parties and people in general will soon pick up on the trick I tried to expose in part 1 and see what measures are needed to have the new racism caught with its pants down rather soon. This means that the sort of critical reflections on the prejudices residing within the shallow ethno-racist rhetoric so popular among anti-racist, liberal or left-leaning intellectuals are, perhaps not bad or unnecessary, but of secondary priority. Some new topics, such as the crucial difference between nationism and pragmatic accommodations to a multinational world, need to be addressed and some new tactics need to be developed on the basis of that. Godspeed!

The New European Political Racism, Pt. 2: The Nationism - Ethno-racism Paradox

In the first post of this series, I argued that – rhetoric suggesting the contrary notwithstanding – the ideological core of the new European political racism is actually about neither race biology, nor ethno-racism (or -centrism). Instead, it is about what I called Nationism; roghly, the idea that there is of some value in itself for a nation state to apply lower standards of treatment to people who are not born by citizens of this state (or who do not meet some similar condition for immediate citizenship, ICC). I contrasted this idea with the notion of applying such lower standards for pragmatic reasons connected to the fact that the world happens to be organised into a multitude of nation states, and held out the lack of understanding of the difference between this latter idea and the nationist one as a crucial factor for explaining the recent success of the new racism.

Now, even if I am right about this analysis, it would be foolish to think that such an explanation is to be found only in the ideology of the new racism and the inability of people and other political parties to spot it in time. For sure, the rhetoric employed by the new racists also plays a part. In the first post, I described how this rhetoric wields familiar ethno-racist elements, where socio-cultural signifiers (such as language, clothing, traditions, mores) are allegedly associated with features that many people would indeed find to be reasons for less favorable treatment (criminality, cruelty to others, general antiociality, blameworthy costliness for society, and so on). Moreover, I pointed to how the introduction of the nationist ideology actually has helped this rhetoric to function more effectively: whenever an alleged link between a socio-cultural signifier (e.g. "muslim" or "gypsy") and some feature held to be morally important is questioned – factually or morally – the new racist campaigner can simply drop it and retreat into the nationist position. This since the latter is, as a matter of fact, not dependent on any ethno-racist arguments or assumptions, neither factually, nor morally. So, summing up, while nationism is the ideological core of the new racism, its success is best explained by the combination of (1) an initial rhetoric making use of classic ethno-racism, and (2) an ideological core of pure nationism and political suggestions built on that.

What I want to point to now is that this combination, while indeed helping to explain the recent success of the new racism, is in fact also its Achilles' heel. For hidden inside this seemingly clever politico-tactical set-up lurks a bona fide paradox. This paradox, I suggest, is what must be exposed in a serious and convincing way by politicians, journalists and others, for the electoral support of the new racism to start to falter.

This is the paradox:

The ethno-racist rhetoric is about the idea that national states should apply lower standards of treatment to people who don't sufficiently conform to a "national culture". This is not to be confused with the idea that a nation is permitted to enforce its own laws - culture is not the same as actual single behaviors or actions, culture is composed by things like languages, worldviews, traditions and mores). Applied to the issue of what conditions for citizenship to apply (a favorite issue of the new racists), this idea implies that it should be more difficult to be awarded citizenship of a country, the more a person deviates from this country's (supposed) national culture or "identity". In contrast, the nationist ideology pays no attention to cultural belonging or identity. Its sole center of value is the distinction between those who are born by (or connected by lineage to) people who are already citizens of a country and those who are not. Applied to the issue of conditions for awarding citizenship this means that people who are born by citizens receive immediate citizenship (what I called the ICC), while people who are not need to perform according to additional requirements (what I called ACC) in order to be awarded citizenship. Now, as briefly pointed out in that context, the nationist idea implies no ideas whatsoever about the citizens of a country conforming to any particular culture or having a certain "national identity". Quite the contrary! By the awarding of citizenship via ICC, the nationist model leaves the country wide open to limitless cultural variation among citizens. In addition, people who do not meet ICC, but who indeed have the sort of national culture or identity that is valued by the ethno-racist are met by extra difficulties should they desire to receive citizenship. In short, nationism is open to awarding citizenship to exactly such people that ethno-racists want to deny citizenship to, and is open for impeding citizenship for exactly such people that ethno-racism want to award citizenship. Thus, ethno-racism and nationism are not only different, they are incompatible and, in combination, inconsistent.

This incompatibility or inconsistency appears just as clearly if we instead proceeds from a basis where the ethno-racist position is the starting point. From this point of view, then, only people who can demonstrate (sufficient) conformity to a national culture or possession of a national identity are to be awarded citizenship. That is, the fact that you are born by (or can demonstrate lineage to) a citizen is of no concern whatsoever. On the contrary, regardless of your heritage or where you come from, if you meet the ethno-racist culture/identity condition, citizenship is within reach. In other words, the ethno-racist citizenship idea will both block citizenship for people who, according to nationism, should receive automatic citizenship, and award citizenship to people, who nationism would want to impede from receiving citizenship.

Thus, combining the ethno-racist idea with nationism leads to a paradox. The message is that some people both should and should not be awarded or impeded from receiving citizenship. This paradox is built into the totality of the ideas conveyed by the new racist political movement. If the rhetoric and the ideological core is taken together, the result is a state of deepest confusion. Exposing this confusion, I suggest, is a powerful political and rhetorical weapon.

This leaves the question what wielding that weapon will result in. Hopefully and presumably, weakened electoral support of the new racism, of course – after all, voters are as a rule not prone to subscribing to obviously idiotic ideas. But where will that move the racists – those who have been engaged in these sort of parties or movements for decades? That will be the subject of the third, and last, posting in this series.

The New European Political Racism, Pt. 1: How Nationism Whitewashes Racism

In Europe during the last decade or so, new (or, in some cases, semi-new) political parties have been not only popping up, but actually having some success among voters with a racist or semi-racist message. To the already established Front Nationale of France and the Fremskrittsparti of Norway, we now have, among others, the Danish Danskt Folkeparti, the Italian Lega Nord, the Dutch PVV, the Austrian FPÖ, and earlier this fall, my own country joined the ranks when the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna, in Swedish) won themselves 20 seats in national parliament (securing  between 5 and 6% of the votes in the general election). This development has come as something of a shock to many people, it seems, but – apparently – also to established political parties. The latter have been quite at a loss when it comes to handling the rhetoric of this new movement – which is designed to deflect associations with national socialism or the ethnic cleansing ideologies of the 90's Balkans and thereby avoid accusations of obvious racism of the sort repugnant to almost all Europeans. In some cases, most notably Denmark, parties labeling themselves liberal have become so confused by this trick that, apparently, they have concluded that this new wave is not about racism, but actually an acceptable form of liberalism where responsibility rather than freedom is emphasised (it has helped, perhaps, that this conceptual move have been fitting for other political purposes, such as down-scaling the public sector). Personally, I have been quite stunned by this inability of political leaders – "why don't they simply say what should be obvious to any politically trained eye, and quickly dismantle this new attempt of the far-right to gain foothold so that all voters can see it?", I have been asking myself.

Because they have not been saying it (and, I'll come to what "it" is). What they have done is either of three things: (a) pretending that the new racism doesn't exist (not seldom medicalising the phenomenon using terms such as "xenophobia"), (b) trying to snatch enough of the ideological/political ideas of the new racism, so that voters will be satisfied without voting for the new party, or (c) formulating arguments or rhetorical figures where an implicit premise is that the new party has to be fundamentally wrong or flawed – thus preaching only to the already converted. Of these tactics, two have failed, and one has actually functioned as an ideological arrowhead, helping tremendously to establish the ideological basic premises of the new racism as acceptable ones in public debate. This last one is, of course, (b). In Sweden, the pioneers of employing (b) have been the traditionally social-liberal Folkpartiet; clearly inspired by the success of Danskt Folkeparti, suggestions have repeatedly been made over the years (most notably in connection to upcoming parliamentary elections) about the launching of a test required for immigrants in order for them to be awarded Swedish citizenship. More lately, this party and the Christian Democrats have complemented the basic notion of conditionalised citizenship with the idea of at best awarding immigrants a revocable citizenship (e.g., should they commit serious crime). And during the last campaign-stretch of our most recent election, the conservative/right-wing liberal party Moderaterna choose to go public with similar ideas about citizenship for immigrants in tandem with increased opportunities for expelling foreign criminals from the country. The Christian Democrats produced the topping of this splendid cake of political opportunism when its leader, Göran Hägglund published an article declaring that, in fact, the Swedish population can be divided into two groups: "the people of reality" (yes, I am not joking, that's what he said) and the other (I guess, less real) ones – namely intellectuals and academics questioning the premises of the above described suggestions. The final package has then been made to fit into the present Government's (a – nowadays minority – coalition of the above mentioned parties plus Centerpartiet, led by Moderaterna) ideological basis that stresses the responsibility of citizens as a supplement or condition for liberty and security. Now, as evidenced by Moderaterna's clever little move of actually not suggesting that the citizenship of immigrants should be revocable in case of serious crime, "only" that citizenship should be revocable if attained deceitfully and that opportunities for expelling serious criminals from the country should be expanded, the application of strategy (b) has been gradually modified. Similarly, Folkpartiet has gradually changed the original idea of a test required for immigrants to get citizenship into the idea of an obligatory course on the Swedish language, public life, political system, etcetera. – quite close to the what the citizenship test implemented in Denmark since a few years is about, just without the test.

So, what did this do to the Sweden Democrats (our new racists), then? Well, as a matter of fact, the process described above – especially the early dashes at the citizenship test idea of Folkpartiet – made it quite easy for the Sweden Democrats to find and establish their own position. Although, there are some nuances, this position is the same as the one occupied by several of the other European new racist parties mentioned above. Moreover, thanks to the application of strategies (a)-(c) by the established parties, the Sweden Democrats could quite easily seize the most potent of rhetorical tools available to a small, new party: the repeated claim of addressing issues of importance to "ordinary people" that are ignored by other parties. The critical word here is "issues", because what is really meant, of course, is that the other parties are not supporting their policy suggestions. However, since some of these suggestions had actually already been put forward by some of the other parties (strategy (b)), or since the other parties either ignored (strategy (a)) or dismissed in an off hand way (strategy (c)) whatever the Sweden Democrats were saying – the latter were left quite free to make this proven pitch, sometimes added to by the observation that the other parties (through strategy (b)) actually agreed with the basics of what they were suggesting re. immigration, they just pretended to disagree due to childish or tactical reasons. As far as I have been able to understand, this pattern is basically the same as earlier developments in several other European countries – albeit, of course, there are various sorts of national variations in detail. However, this pattern alone does not explain the success of the new European political racism – in particular, it does not explain how established parties can get away with strategy (b), or why they seem to be unable to get a hold on the ideological core of the new racism and simply demolish it, intellectually as well as politically. The rest of this blog is about what this core is, what makes it work politically and, in effect, how to disarm it.

In my view, this is a matter of far more than theoretical importance. One consequence of the above-mentioned inabilities of established political parties and movements has been the occurrence of rather desperate and ill-considered actions of anti-racist groups, such as stopping or trying to stop regular meetings in the course of general election campaigns – not seldom combined or followed by predictable riot-like violence that, equally predictable, has been blown up i media reporting. While the feelings of frustration underlying such events may be understandable, the events themselves have had the actual effect of further strengthening the foothold of the new racism in the Swedish public political landscape. The new racists have been helped to hold out themselves as a voice of reason and civility that is impeded by a senseless minority mob from exercising their constitutional rights to free speech and democratic political action. Again, they have been able to do so thanks to the rather cleverly designed ideological core of the new racism, where all traditional militant insignia and openly racist pejoratives have been carefully weeded out. So, let's return to the nature of this core.

Being a racist in the original sense – advocating different standards of treatment for people belonging to different biological races – is a politically dead concept since the end of the second world war. It became ultimately, irrevocably dead only the other year, when biological scientists declared that the impotency of the human race-taxonomy even as an evolutionary biological explanatory variable had been conclusively proven - biologically speaking, there simply are no human races. However, not even the Nazis where racists in this pure sense – the Nuremberg laws' criteria and even more the practices in Nazi Germany of applying these laws for distinguishing jews from non-jews contained a rather chaotic multitude of socio-cultural signifiers, as did various other taxonomies applied during the heydays of race biology in the first few decades of the 20th century. Possibly, the only pure biological racists in real policy making were the engineers and decision makers during the times of US slavery and the European colonisation of Africa. Rather, the classic real racism is one where one or more socio-cultural signifier (language, customs, worldview, mores...) in combination with physical characteristics, are claimed to be intimately connected to features that provide reason for applying less favorable standards of treatment of people falling into the delimited category than to other people. The first step away from this classic racism of real modern politics is to drop the part about physical characteristics (skin colour, eye or facial shape, height...). The result is the idea that people defined by certain socio-cultural signifiers are therefore possessors of features providing reasons for less favorable treatment, no matter their physical appearance. This has been a much repeated phenomenon over a period of several decades, with the signifier of "muslim" being the latest and possibly most successful.

However, at the same time, this sort of ethno-racism is a very vulnerable position, since it needs to assume the mentioned link between the socio-cultural signifier and the features that are supposed to give reason for less favorable treatment. A nice illustration of this is provided by a smaller part of the debate precluding the Swedish parliamentary election recently: The Sweden Democrats went for the classic link between immigration and crime in order to support their various ideas of impeding extra-european immigration and repatriating the ones already here, based on statistics showing that  immigrants are overrepresented as criminal offenders. However, it was immediately pointed out that, first, the immigrant population that this statistics is based on is made up by predominantly Scandinavian and European people (actually, according to statistics - alas only available in Swedish, but with easy to understand graphs - from the Swedish Migration Board, most immigrants are Swedes!), second, that the immigrant factor is a much more weak predictor of crime than, e.g., a number of socio-economic variables and third, that the part of Swedish crime that the overrepresentation of immigrants stands for is such a tiny portion of the total amount of crime that it could hardly provide much of a reason for less favorable treatment – especially not considering all the negative side-effects that such policies bring. This last argument is, of course, strengthened by the other two.

This is merely one of numerous examples of how the factual and moral foundation of ethno-racist claims has been undermined over and over, not least regarding wild generalisations with regard to muslims or people from alleged "muslim countries" (people that many times are no more muslim than most Swedes, Finns or Danes are christian). But, as a matter of fact, this has not weakened the hold of the new racism to any greater extent. Here is the reason why: The ethno-part is actually not a part of the ideological core of the new racism, it is a shallow cosmetic employed for purely rhetorical purposes. When its weak points are exposed, the new racists merely abandons it without being moved in their basic convictions. So, what are these basic convictions? To get to those, it is instructive to study more closely the way in which the ethno-racist rhetoric is constructed and then transfer this study to actual policy suggestions being made by parties of the new racism. For, as with all politics, it is there – not in the surface of phrases in speeches or slogans – that ideology is to be found.

The attempt by the new racists to use an association with criminality or, for that matter, with religion or particular ways of dressing as an argument is merely a way of trying to convince people that there is a profound difference between "real" Swedes (or Finns, or Brits, or Germans, or Danes, or...) and foreign people. That this, and nothing else, is the heart of the matter for the new racists came out clearer than ever in a TV advertisement by the Sweden Democrats, showing an ever so sweet and very lonesome Swedish old lady being literary overrun by a horde of women dressed in a burqa when trying to pick up her pension – the film making clear that, instead, this money would be spent on immigration. Everybody knows, of course, that the state budget does not determine the size of pensions, the growth of the national economy does. It is also well known that immigration, in fact, is actually one of the more important factors for securing future pensions, since it promotes economic growth. However, let's leave this aside for the moment, for what I want to point to is this: Even if it were true that there is a relation of competition between money for pensions and money for immigration in the state budget, the latter is neither the only nor (by far) the largest expense. However, it is the only expense that is exclusively spent on foreign people. This is why this particular item is picked out in the film: it holds out nationality or national background as the decisive factor for how we are to treat people. The burqas are just for show (albeit rhetorically important), obviously, they are there just to emphasise the felt difference between real Swedes and those from other countries. The message being that the Swedish state should treat people from other countries less favorable than Swedes. I'll get back to that shortly.

First, though, let's have a look at the actual policy suggestions of the Sweden Democrats. Hardly surprising, to the extent that they can be understood or have any originality or significance to speak of, they are about immigration policy. Now, when reading the programme (which, needless to say, is available only in Swedish), one finds that most of the suggestions are actually already a reality (e.g. regarding refugee policy, obligatory visa for people from countries who are terrorist hotspots or sources of organised illegal immigration). Besides the general tone, the talk about "mass-immigration" (a rhetorical misnomer, since, during the last few years, immigration didn't even count for 1% of the total population increase and, since the Sweden Democrats really mean only immigration from outside of Scandinavia - this is clarified in the programme, but since the same principles explaining this applies to EU, I guess immigrants from there are not "real" immigrants either (?) - at least half of this immigration needs to be ignored), unsubstantiated slander of refugees as not being "real" refugees and loose talk about "assimilation" being the main goal of integration policy, the only proposal that stands the test of an initial test-bite is the one about citizenship. The suggestion on this front is a sort of toughed up version of the above-mentioned suggestions from Folkpartiet a few years back: 1. all residence permits are to be temporary (1 year at a time) and revocable also in case of minor criminality, 2. a trial period of ten years where a "blameless character" needs to be demonstrated (exactly how is unclear, but I suppose criminality of any sort is out of the question) is necessary before citizenship is a possibility, 3. a special test (Swedish language, history and societal life) needs to be passed in order for citizenship to be awarded, 4. awarding of citizenship is connected to the signing of a contract where the new citizen swears allegiance "to Sweden" and promises to respect Swedish law, 5. If it is found out that citizenship has been awarded to a person "on false grounds" (whatever that may mean) or - perhaps more significant - after a period of staying in the country on the basis of a residence permit obtained on false grounds (false identities and bribing of immigration officers are given as examples), can have their citizenship revoked and be expelled from the country. There are also a few other suggestions, such as a ban on double citizenship for Swedish citizens, a repatriation programme where the party is apparently prepared to spend a sizable portion of the state budget (ergo, immigration policy can very well be allowed to cost a lot of tax money!) to have immigrants move away from Sweden and drastically weakened legal security for asylum seekers or people who are found in the country lacking a required visa or residence permit, but the above ideas are enough for me to make my point. The point is this: for the Sweden Democrats, there is a tremendous difference between people with a Swedish national background (i.e. people born by Swedish citizens) and other people. The Swedish state is not only permitted but required to apply drastically different standards of treatment with regard to these two groups.

Now, to be fair, there is a lot of talk in the programme about Sweden as a cultural entity, and that the main idea is that citizenship is to be tied to nationality and that Swedish nationality is about being a part of a Swedish "identity". Some of that turns out to be trivialities that are already applied (e.g. that immigrants need to abide by Swedish law), but what about the rest, e.g. loose talk about restricting culturally distant immigration, etcetera? Well, actually, it is obvious that this is just a collection of hot air, very much a part of the shallow rhetoric mentioned earlier. For, assuming the Sweden Democrat policy to have been implemented, if I am born by Swedish citizens nothing compels me to assimilate to an alleged Swedish identity or culture. For sure, we have obligatory school for all children and securing a job will be hard if I don't get (good) grades, but as born by a Swedish citizen I can pass through this system without learning the language or assimilating in any other way without any effect on my citizenship (although I will have to endure other consequences). What is more, I am automatically awarded said citizenship at birth, no questions asked (ever!) about my cultural identity, allegiance declarations, possible past or future criminality or somesuch. And so on. In conclusion: what matters is if you are born by a Swedish citizen or not, nothing else.

This core, then is not about race or ethnicity. Neither is it about patriotism (the my country right or wrong-idea) or nationalism (the idea that citizens of a country have obligations or virtues of love and/or fidelity for/to their country). In lack of a better word, I will call this idea Nationism. This is, roughly, the idea that a state is permitted (or even required) to apply significantly less strict/demanding standards of treatment to people born by citizens of this state, than people who are not. Clarifying further what nationism means will also show what has made the move to this ideological position into the success story of the new racism.

Every country applies less strict/demanding standards of treatment to people born by citizens of this state or, sometimes, also to people who are or have been born within the national territory (or can demonstrate a lineage back to such people), and sometimes to a mix of these – let us call this the Immediate Citizenship Condition (ICC). Minimally, the system applied by countries involves that people not meeting the ICC has to perform according to some pre-set standard (call it the acquired citizenship condition: ACC) in order to be awarded citizenship of this country. This is a pragmatic necessity for any single country in a world organised according to the system of a multitude of nation states. Should a single country award citizenship to a person just by virtue of him being present in the country and wanting citizenship (or simply just that he wants citizenship), many functions supposed to be handled by a country would be severely jeopardized due to the fact that other countries do not reciprocate this courtesy (were they to reciprocate, we would effectively have a world with only one nation state). However, in order for a country to use the division between awarding citizenship by ICC and ACC to dodge this threat, it needs only make the demands made on people by ACC significant enough to make the influx of new citizens manageable. Since, as mentioned, most countries have a significant interest of acquiring new citizens through immigration, there are further reasons in terms of the national interest not to make the demands of the ACC stricter than necessary. The idea of nationism, however, is that it is of some value in itself to make it harder for other people than those meeting the ICC to attain citizenship. Facing this explanation, the question may be asked if the new racists really are nationists – is their idea not simply based on the presumption that it is very demanding to have a country function well and that, therefore, ACC needs to be very strict? Well, as we have seen, this does in fact not seem to be the case, in spite of some rhetoric suggesting such a line of thought. If it were the case that a country needs to be very careful about the characteristics of those who are awarded citizenship for the country to function well, using ICC for awarding citizenship would be sheer recklessness (and the new racists do not want to touch that, quite the opposite). This since that practice makes no demands whatsoever on people who meet the ICC with regard to their personal characteristics for them to attain the status as citizens. So, the new racists are nationists - that is indeed their ideological core.

However, the difference between the nationist position and the purely pragmatically motivated system of awarding citizenship by applying both ICC and ACC is not very obvious to most people. If we don't think carefully about it, most of us would, I suggest, have the feeling that nationism is already an established doctrine – that our countries (and all its political parties) do in fact already accept the idea that it is of value in itself to make a difference between people who meet ICC and those who do not when awarding citizenship. This is understandable, since we are so used to a system making such a difference, and most of us have never had any reason for pondering why such a system is applied – it's just there. This lack of clarity as to the fundamental ideological difference between having such a system for purely pragmatic reasons and having it for nationist reasons can and has indeed been exploited politically by the new racism. For what happens when we do not see the difference clearly is that we are unable to wield the simple and devastating counter-argument to the new racist suggestions that, obviously, the fact whether a person meets ICC or not is not a valid reason as such for less favorable treatment. In particular, established political parties can't say that, since that would imply that they propose that any rules for awarding citizenship that make a difference between people meeting ICC and those that do not are unjustified. And, needless to say, that is not their position and, I take it, not the position taken by most voters. Thus, the fact that the water demarcating the notion of having a system making such a difference for pragmatic reasons and the nationist position has been muddled is of tremendous importance for explaining from the point of view of ideology the recent success of the new European political racism. By exploiting this seemingly grey area, they have been able to whitewash an idea that, when seen clearly, is obviously as implausible as more traditional forms of racism.

Now, nationism is such an obviously implausible idea – as implausible as the idea that your physical or cultural characteristics can by themselves motivate that other people are allowed to treat you less good than others. Morally, nationism is clearly on the same team as the more traditional forms of racism. For this reason, quite a few of the people who have been voting for the new racists in recent elections do probably actually not endorse nationism. One may hope, therefore, that the role of nationism is spotted more clearly and widely (one purpose of this blog post is, of course, to make a contribution to such a development). What is then left for the new racists is to take half a step back to the ethno-racist ideas, but this time without any connection to nationism. What this implies will be the subject of part 2 of this series.