On Monday 4th of July four neo-nazis will stand trial for attacking and causing injuries to six anti-fascists in Malmo, Sweden, after the anarcha-feminist march organized in the context of the International Women’s Day on the 8th of March, 2014. Every year on the 8th of March in Malmo, anarchafeminist collectives organize night marches that are exclusively participated and guarded by women and transgender individuals. After the march there is usually a party that is organized and participated by comrades from the wider anarchist and anti-authority scene. On the night of the 8th of March 2014, following the completion of the autonomous/working-class feminist march ”Reclaim the Night” at Möllevågnstorget square (equivalent to Exarcheia district in Athens), groups of protesters along with comrades in the area began to march to People’s Park which is where the party was taking place, located approximately 300 meters away from the square. Along the way and only a few blocks away from the square, the group of comrades came across neonazi members of the national socialist Party of the Swedes (Svenskarnas Parti), who were applying stickers outside the anti-fascist centre Glassfabriken. (look at the map)
During the clashes that followed six comrades got injured: 4 had superficial knife wounds all over their bodies, one sustained serious injuries as the knife had penetrated his lungs and another sustained severe brain trauma and knife injuries all over his body. Four of the injured comrades were discharged from hospital after having been given first aid, while the other two with serious injuries had to remain hospitalized. It quickly became known that an anti-fascist named Showan Shattak was in a coma in the ICU and the prognosis about his life was uncertain. Even if Showan made it he would never be the same person again. How did the nazis come to carry through an organized attack in one of the most notable anti-fascist districts in Scandinavia where immigrants and anti-fascists have lived and organized collectively since the 1980s?
The Swedish society faced the neo-nazi threat at the beginning of the 90s following a domestic financial crisis and historical developments characterized by the collapse of the soviet bloc and the rise of neo-nazism in Germany. Swedish fascists provided leading members of the German NPD with shelter, while the latter contributed towards organizing a militant neo-nazi movement in Scandinavia. Swedish fascists used pogroms against immigrants and attacks against anarcho-syndicalists to impose their hegemony on the streets. Very quickly, they encountered the bold resistance of a militant anti-fascist front composed by smaller local anti-fascist groups in the towns and cities of Sweden as well as the Swedish platform of Antifascist Movement (AFA) which became active in 1993 and was quickly integrated with the European anti-fascist movements, particularly those in Germany and Scandinavia. Militant anti-fascism in Sweden during the second half of the ’90s was protective against the spread of the epidemic of fascism in the country via crucial and very impressive actions. For many years the presence of fascists was restricted in closed meetings and the internet.
But there was a shift from 2010 onward.