Organizers say they were “stonewalled” by all cinemas in Malmö, which are unwilling to host Jewish-themed films.

By World Israel News Staff

A Jewish film festival set to be held in Malmö, Sweden, was canceled after multiple venues withdrew from hosting, citing security concerns. Organizers were ultimately unable to find any location willing to hold the screenings.

The Jewish International Film Festival, scheduled for November 29 to December 2, was intended to celebrate 250 years of Jewish life in Sweden.

However, local cinema Folkets Hus announced at the last minute that it would no longer host the festival, organizer Sofia Nerbrand confirmed.

Other potential venues, including the major cinema chain Filmstaden, also declined to host, reportedly due to fears of antisemitic violence.

“In this particular case, after thorough assessment, we concluded that we could not host the festival due to safety concerns,” Filmstaden said in a statement. “Our priority is always to ensure a safe and positive experience for both our guests and employees.”

In a post on social media platform X, Nerbrand said the organizers had been “stonewalled” by every commercial and arthouse cinema in Malmö — a city with a significant Muslim migrant population.

“It is outrageous if Sweden cannot protect cinema-goers who are interested in Jewish film,” she wrote.

“More people need to realize that violent antisemites are a serious societal problem, as they spread fear, silence and appeasement. It’s not just about Jews, but about Sweden,” she added.

Festival co-organizer Ola Tedin told Swedish outlet SVT that she doesn’t “understand what security threat there could be with showing Jewish films.”

Sweden’s Minister for Culture, Parisa Liljestrand, condemned the cancellation as “an absolute catastrophe for Swedish society.”

“It is alarming that we have reached this point — that one of our national minorities feels so vulnerable and that organizers believe it is not possible to hold cultural events with Jewish content,” she said in a statement.

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In May 2024, a 15-year-old boy, armed with a gun, was arrested en route to the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm.

By World Israel News Staff

Iran lured Swedish minors into committing acts of terror and violence targeting Israeli and Jewish sites in the Scandinavian country, according to a CNN report.

Swedish Security Service (SÄPO) sources told CNN that the Islamic Republic is leveraging social media to recruit Swedish teenagers, intentionally selecting those so young that they won’t be prosecuted – or will face only minor consequences – under Swedish law.

Gang violence, oftentimes involving participants in their early teens, has exploded in recent years in Sweden.

“It becomes a problem for us when it’s another state like Iran that uses these kids as a proxy,” Fredrik Hallström, head of operations at SÄPO, told CNN.

“Organized crime in Sweden right now is a huge vulnerability that is being used by state actors.”

Iranian agents often communicate with teens via encrypted messaging apps, promising them money for carrying out tasks.

Typically, the minors have no idea of the true nature of their activity.

In May 2024, a 15-year-old boy, armed with a gun, was arrested en route to the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm.

The boy told authorities that he had believed he was going to deliver cannabis, but that his handler had ordered him to retrieve a gun stashed in a wooded area near his home.

The handler then ordered him a taxi, with the boy saying he was unaware of the vehicle’s final destination.

The next day, a 14-year-old boy was arrested after shooting at the Israeli Embassy. He, too, was acting on behalf of an Iranian agent.

The 14-year-old was not prosecuted due to his age, which is standard in Sweden. The 15-year-old was sentenced to 11 months in a juvenile care facility.

An ex-gang investigator told CNN that the teens are motivated by financial rewards, rather than political ideology or antisemitism.

“They are blinded by the hunt for money and status and materialistic things,” Luay Mohageb told CNN.

“They are obsessed with the thought of having cash to go and buy clothes.”

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“Sweden and Israel have a lot in common and could be strong allies if they realize their common ground,” says Swedish Zionist Federation president.

By Pesach Benson, TPS

In a landmark visit, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen embarked on a diplomatic mission to Sweden, marking the first time an Israeli foreign minister has visited the country in over two decades. His arrival on Sunday night comes as part of a concerted effort to bolster bilateral ties. But a key figure in Sweden’s Jewish community hopes Cohen will raise Swedish antisemitism as well.

Cohen’s itinerary includes a meeting with his Swedish counterpart, Foreign Minister Tobias Billström, where they delved into a range of topics, primarily focusing on the continued improvement of bilateral relations and collaborative efforts to address regional security concerns. Sweden currently holds the presidency of the European Union, making it a vital player in shaping Europe’s stance on various security matters.

“We are opening a new page in relations between Sweden and Israel after years in which Sweden had a critical posture toward Israel,” Cohen said. “The visit in Stockholm, the first for an Israeli foreign minister since 2001, signals a change in the direction of ties between the countries.”

But Saskia Pantell, who founded the Sweden-Israel Alliance and also serves as president of the Zionist Federation of Sweden, told the Tazpit Press Service that it is crucial that Cohen raise Swedish antisemitism in his discussions.

She told TPS that antisemitism in Sweden is “being mixed up between Israel and the Jews.”

Pantell, who is in Israel, cited as an example an incident in 2020 after the US relocated its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“Jewish students were celebrating Chanukah at a synagogue in Gothenburg when 20 masked men attacked the synagogue with Molotov cocktails,” she recalled. “This was a criticism of [Donald] Trump moving the embassy. They targeted Jews, but the police considered it arson. If it was a criticism of a state, you don’t criticize the local Jewish community.”

Pantell added, “Swedish police dismiss the majority of antisemitic hate crimes as just criticism of Israel.”

“Last year, Sweden was celebrating the anniversary of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. They were talking the talk, but not walking the walk on antisemitism,” Pantell told TPS. She was referring to non-binding definition of antisemitism developed in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental organization based in Berlin that seeks to strengthen Holocaust education.

Pantell was also critical of what she called Sweden’s “undefined” aid to the Palestinians.

“Aid goes to organizations but you hope for the best that it lands where it’s supposed to land. This needs to be addressed,” she told TPS.

“Sweden doesn’t realize that when you give aid money, it doesn’t necessarily go where it’s supposed to go. I believe Sweden wants good, but it can be naive,” she said. “Giving a lot of aid money without tracking it or asking for a receipt may very well end up in the pockets of terrorists, and ultimately be used even for rockets targeting Israel.”

Cohen acknowledged the issue of Swedish aid in comments ahead of his meeting with Billstrom, saying, “We will discuss ways to prevent aid funds from reaching terrorists and their families.”

Cohen also praised Sweden’s early adoption of the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism and expressed his determination to collaborate closely with Sweden in the ongoing fight against all forms of hatred.

In addition to the meeting with Billström, Cohen is expected to engage with other government officials, business figures, and members of the local Jewish community. Between 16,000 and 18,000 Jews live in Sweden.

Noting what she called “strong startup scenes and a strong sense of democracy” in both countries, Pantell told TPS, “Sweden and Israel have a lot in common and could be strong allies if they realize their common ground.”

World Israel News contributed to this report.

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The neurosurgeon had alleged that the dismissal had been the culmination of years of harassment at Karolinska Hospital.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A Swedish court ruled Wednesday that a Jewish doctor had been wrongfully fired from his position at a hospital near the capital due to antisemitism, Dagens Nyheter (DN) reported.

The neurosurgeon, who was given the pseudonym “Dr. Svensson” to protect his privacy, was dismissed from his post at Karolinska University Hospital last fall. According to a February report in rival Swedish paper Svenska Dagbladet, a press officer in the hospital said the reason for his firing was “to secure the working environment for managers and employees in his vicinity.”

The doctor promptly took the medical institution to District Court for what he deemed was an unlawful dismissal. The real reason, he maintained, was that it was retaliation for having sued Karolinska in 2018 for the constant antisemitic harassment he and other Jewish colleagues were undergoing at work.

His original lawsuit stated that his department head had long intimidated and verbally attacked the Jewish doctors and promoted less-qualified colleagues over them, while the hospital administration did nothing. According to Swedish station SVT, the doctor said that besides the bullying, they were also prevented from doing research and that he, personally, had not been allowed to work in his specialty for almost two years.

Two of his fellow victims left their positions during this time.

Svensson has been receiving legal assistance since then from the U.S.-based Lawfare Project, which provides pro bono services to protect the civil and human rights of the Jewish people all over the world. According to some of the letters his lawyers wrote to the court since his removal, the doctor had suffered a “years-long campaign of reprisals to intimidate and silence him” since the lawsuit, culminating in the dismissal.

The organization said that Karolinska had fabricated a complaint against their client to the medical authorities, claiming that he was a risk to patients.

Moreover, the lawyers wrote, “In a shocking display of the Karolinska’s institutionalized Jew-hatred, the complaint identified Dr. X’s Jewish identity as ‘relevant information’ with regard to the risk he allegedly posed for patient safety.

“Reporting Jewish identity as ‘relevant information’ for patient safety is not only morally despicable but also appears to be illegal under Swedish law,” the organization pointed out.

The authorities closed the complaint without criticizing the physician.

The Swedish Medical Association filed a separate case in support of the doctor against the hospital in Labor Court, demanding compensation for “wrongful termination.” It is this court that decided that the physician’s dismissal was illegal and antisemitic in nature.

The hospital’s human resources director, Patricia Enocson, told DN, “We accede to the lawsuit is because we know that if we were to dispute it, it would be a lengthy legal process.”

The senior physician who was at the center of the allegations took a leave of absence when Svensson’s complaints went public in 2018. He returned to an administrative position some six months later and by 2020 was allowed to start working again in his field.

The doctor’s lawsuit over the allegedly institutionalized Jew hatred at Karolinska made the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of its Top Ten antisemitic incidents in 2018.

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The doctor and other Jewish employees experienced antisemitic abuse, including being told that he “whined like a Jew.”

By World Israel News Staff

The Swedish Medical Association is suing Karolinska University Hospital after the firing of a Jewish doctor who says he suffered antisemitic abuse during his tenure, Israel National News reported. He also claims that his Jewish identity was the reason for his dismissal.

According to the report, the doctor filed a lawsuit in 2018, claiming harassment due to antisemitism, and the hospital subsequently fired him, although he is known to be an excellent physician.

Among the complaints documented was that Svensson was told that he has a “Jewish nose,” is stingy and “whines like a Jew.”

Furthermore, according to the lawsuit, less-qualified colleagues were given higher positions and better salaries. He was eventually let go after pointing out the discrimination.

The Lawfare Project, which is involved in the case, said that when the doctor complained about the antisemitism, Karolinska retaliated against him with a “years-long campaign of reprisals to intimidate and silence him.”

According to the hospital, the doctor was dismissed after refusing to follow instructions for an extended period, the report said. The Swedish Medical Association, however, disagrees and says it has filed a motion on his behalf, demanding compensation.

A source in the World Zionist Organization told Ynet that the case is “a new Dreyfus affair,” referring to the notorious antisemitic incident in the late 19th century in which a Jewish officer in the French military was falsely accused and wrongfully convicted of spying for Germany.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center included Karolinska University Hospital in its list of the top 10 worst incidents of antisemitism in 2018 over the harassment of three Jewish physicians.

The World Zionist Organization is also supporting the doctor, saying the doctor was a victim of antisemitism. A WZO source told Ynet that the case is “a new Dreyfus affair.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center had placed Karolinska University Hospital on its 2018 Top Ten list of anti-Semitic incidents worldwide.

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Among the complaints documented was that the doctor was told that he has a “Jewish nose,” is stingy and “whines like a Jew.”

By JNS.org

The Lawfare Project has filed a lawsuit against Sweden’s Karolinska University Hospital and the Karolinska Institutet for antisemitic discrimination.

According to the Lawfare Project, “Dr. Svensson” (a pseudonym to protect his identity) and other Jewish physicians were targeted with harassment and discrimination that included a supervisor posting antisemitic statements and images on Facebook, and subjecting them to classic antisemitic tropes.

Among the complaints documented was that Svensson was told that he has a “Jewish nose,” is stingy and “whines like a Jew.”

Additionally, the complaint says that he was prevented from operating to the same extent as his colleagues, reassigned and blocked from continuing research. He and another Jewish physician received the lowest salaries among their colleagues, despite higher qualifications, according to the complaint.

The Lawfare Project said that when Svensson complained about the antisemitism, Karolinska did not stop the harassment and retaliated against him with a “years-long campaign of reprisals to intimidate and silence him.”

It said that Karolinska even submitted a complaint against the doctor to Sweden’s Health Ministry, identifying his Jewish identity as “relevant information” with regard to the risk he allegedly posed to patient safety. That complaint was ultimately dismissed.

Ultimately, he was fired after he notified Swedish government officials about the discrimination and retaliatory conduct he was subjected to.

“It shocks the conscience that the Karolinska not only failed to address antisemitism but openly tolerated it and actively retaliated against a Jewish doctor brave enough to stand up against it,” said Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the Lawfare Project, in a statement.

Karolinska University Hospital is a teaching hospital affiliated with the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden—one of the world’s top medical schools and as part of the Nobel Assembly, awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine each year.

“Neither of these honors is warranted when these institutions are so infused with systemic Jew-hatred that they must be brought into court to assure that Jewish staff members can live and work without discrimination and harassment,” said Filitti.

The lawsuit is the latest case of discrimination at Karolinska. In 2018, a report in Haaretz documented years of antisemitic bullying of Jewish physicians.

That same year, the Simon Wisenthal Center included Karolinska Hospital in its “Top 10” list of worst outbreaks of antisemitism for systematic discrimination against three Jewish doctors. This past October, Karolinska faced two legal defeats in related cases.

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A non-Jewish man in Sweden was called a “Jewish bastard” when he donned a kippah to show solidarity with Jews facing anti-Semitism.

The post WATCH: Non-Jew wearing kippah to protest anti-Semitism attacked in Sweden appeared first on World Israel News.

Following the dissolving of the Jewish community of Umea in Sweden last year, the community of Malmo might be next due to rising anti-Semitism and violent crimes.

By Tsivya Fox-Dobuler, World Israel News

Swedish community spokesman Fredrik Sieradski told JTA on Tuesday that Malmo, Sweden might follow Umea in dissolving its Jewish community. This is the first time in decades that European Jewish communities have disappeared due to security concerns.

It is estimated that there are 20,000 Jews presently living in Sweden. Most live in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo.

Though Sweden’s Parliament gave official recognition, in 2000, to its Jewish citizens as one of five minorities in the country, and also recognized Yiddish as an official minority language, Sweden is not known for its pro-Jewish stance.

Jewish ritual slaughtering of animals (shechitah) has been against the law since the 1930s. Circumcision for boys under 18 is allowed by a medical doctor. However, there is constant lobbying to ban the practice.

JTA reported in 2018 that the Jewish Community of Umea was dissolved, in part, because of Neo-Nazi intimidation.

The BESA Center reported in 2018, “Sweden has taken in the highest number of migrants in western Europe as a percentage of population. Most immigrants come from Muslim countries where societies are permeated by extreme anti-Semitic prejudices. The authorities there promote Jew-hatred as national policy. Sweden can thus be characterized as a major importer of anti-Semites out of humanitarian motives.”

These immigrants have led Sweden to become the test case for the rest of Europe and especially the safety of Jews. President of the European Jewish Congress Moshe Kantor stated, “The challenges that the Jewish community in Sweden face today are sadly indicative of far wider phenomena taking place across Europe.”

Last week, The Jerusalem Post reported that a third of the population in Malmo comes from Muslim countries. The city has several hundred Jews who have experienced dozens of anti-Semitic incidents annually.

The paper wrote that two philanthropists had donated more than $4 million to boost security for the Jews of Malmo. Dan Olofsson, one of the donors, told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that his support was to “instill some hope in the Jewish population, so they feel that even if the politicians do not want to do something, there are people who are prepared to stand up for them.”

Rabbi Shneur Kesselman, the Chabad movement’s emissary to the Malmo region, told JTA that he had personally witnessed and experienced hundreds of anti-Semitic incidents. He said that most of these were verbal assaults, although violent crime against Jews is rising. Kesselman said that almost every anti-Semitic incident came from Middle East immigrants.

Unless circumstances change, Sieradski estimates that Malmo will dissolve itself by 2029.

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Danish police arrested a suspect in the brutal street attack on a Jewish woman one day after it occurred.

By World Israel News Staff

On Wednesday, Danish police arrested a Muslim suspect in the stabbing of a Jewish woman in neighboring Sweden.

The woman, in her 60s, was attacked in the city of Helsingborg on Tuesday morning while on her way to work. She remains in serious condition after being stabbed nine times.

Anti-Semitism is the suspected motive as the woman is married to a senior figure of the Jewish community in the city.

Reportedly, there is a high level of anti-Semitism in Helsingborg. The JTA reports “the region’s 1,200 Jews encounter dozens of hate crimes annually.” Helsingborg is located about 40 minutes north of Malmo, a city which has become a poster child for critics of Muslim population and its attendant problems, including anti-Semitism.

Talia, a young Jewish woman who lives in Stockholm, told World Israel News, after the recent attack, “I’m not shocked. It’s not safe to be a Jew in Sweden.”

Even the Orthodox rabbi wears a hat rather than a kippah, fearing for his safety, she said.

She declined to give her surname, saying that when she looks for work, a potential employer could find the article. “It’s not good for one’s career here to be pro-Israel,” she explained.

“Once again, Jews in Europe are in danger,” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin stated. “Today’s brutal stabbing of a member of the Jewish community in Helsingborg, Sweden is yet another reminder that we cannot rely on fading memories of the Holocaust to keep today’s Jewish communities safe, as our schools, synagogues and community centers are turning into fortresses.

“We will fight anti-Semitism with all our might, and will speak out against these dreadful incidents. Our thoughts and prayers are with the injured, her family and community.”

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For anyone curious to see just how ugly ultraliberalism can get, Sweden is the ideal case study.

By Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, Besa.org

In this century, only one Jewish community in all of western Europe has decided to dissolve itself because of nonstop threats from neo-Nazis: the community in the town of Umea, in northeastern Sweden. Jews in Sweden account for less than 0.2% of the population, but they are the targets of profound hatred. This does not comport very well with Sweden’s image as a near-perfect liberal democracy.

Major anti-Semitic threats to Swedish Jews have come out of parts of the Muslim community. In 2017, a movie was shown on Bavarian television about the visit to Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city, by the German Jewish author Henryk Broder and the Egyptian writer Hamad Abdel Samad. They met several local Jews, including the town’s American rabbi. He told them the shrinking community had installed bullet-proof windows at the synagogue, but even that precaution didn’t keep them safe.

A bomb went off in front of the synagogue and another was thrown into the chapel of the Jewish cemetery, which was totally destroyed. The rabbi himself is regularly harassed when walking on the street. Objects thrown at him have included an apple, a lighter, a glass, and a bottle.

In an indication of the lack of police control, when Broder and Samad came to Malmö, they were told by police not to open the windows of their car when they were driving through a Muslim neighborhood.

The number of complaints about hate crimes in Malmö reached a record in 2010 and 2011. It did not lead to any convictions.

In December 2017, two Palestinians and a Syrian threw Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in Sweden’s second-largest city, Gothenburg. Some 20 youngsters who were meeting in the building took shelter in its cellar during the attack. A Swedish appeals court overturned a criminal tribunal ruling that had decided that one of the perpetrators, a Gaza-born Palestinian, would be deported at the end of his two-year prison term.

The court said he should not be deported because the anti-Semitic nature of the attack could put him in danger from Israel. The court thus preferred the imagined interests of the perpetrator over the actual interests of his victims. The judges were apparently unconcerned that if he stayed in Sweden he might commit more crimes.

In recent years, Sweden has taken in the highest number of migrants in western Europe as a percentage of population. Most immigrants come from Muslim countries where societies are permeated by extreme anti-Semitic prejudices. The authorities there promote Jew-hatred as national policy. Sweden can thus be characterized as a major importer of anti-Semites out of humanitarian motives.

But anti-Semitism in Sweden is not limited to Muslims and neo-Nazis. A recent scandal concerns the highly reputable hospital of Karolinska University, near Stockholm. This institution annually awards the Nobel Prize in medicine.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) wrote a complaint to the hospital’s dean when it became known that open anti-Semitism among the hospital’s senior physicians had been ignored by management for almost a year. There were also anti-Semitic comments posted on Facebook.

Two Jewish employees had already quit over this issue. Management finally acted only after Sweden’s largest paper, Aftonbladet, reported on the hatemongering. Thereafter one of the physicians in question left.

There are many problems in Sweden that the government doesn’t want to confront.  Before the Swedish parliamentary elections, then Norwegian Immigration Minister Sylvi Listhaug traveled to Stockholm and visited the extremely violent Rinkeby suburb. She made a point of noting that there are more than 60 no-go zones in Sweden. The Swedish migration minister responded to this observation by canceling her meeting with Listhaug.

The problems with immigrants have given rise to the growth of a right-wing populist party, the Sweden Democrats. In the September 2017 elections they got 17% of the vote, an unprecedented level of support. This party promotes the prohibition of nonmedical circumcision. While this measure is aimed primarily against Muslims, who vastly outnumber Jews, it is serving to introduce a new anti-Semitic element into Sweden.

Sweden has also long led western Europe in anti-Israelism. The country’s best known postwar PM, the Social Democrat Olof Palme, was one of the very few leaders of a democratic country to openly compare Israel’s acts to those of the Nazis. The current Swedish Foreign Minister, Margot Wallström, also a Social Democrat, has asked for an investigation into the killing of terrorists by Israel.

She hasn’t made any such request from other democratic countries where terrorists have been killed after attacks. By singling Israel out in this way, Wallström committed an anti-Semitic act according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition.

The above is but a small selection of events to illustrate the falseness of Sweden’s image as a near-perfect liberal democracy. For anyone curious to see just how ugly ultraliberalism can get, Sweden is the ideal case study.

Freedom House, according to its website, is an “independent watchdog organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom and democracy around the world.” Sweden is one of the few countries to which it has granted the maximum possible number of points for freedom, one hundred.

Freedom House bases its judgments on issues like political rights, civil liberties, pluralism, the functioning of government, supposed freedom of the media, and so on. The few cases mentioned above indicate not only that Freedom House’s ranking system is flawed, but that absolute freedom is far from desirable.

The philosopher Karl Popper has pointed out that freedom representing an absence of constraining control will lead to major abuse. He added that “unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

All in all, the attitude towards Jews and their experience in a country may be a better indicator of that country’s democratic reality than a Freedom House ranking. This is certainly true concerning Sweden.

Sweden urgently needs to appoint a national Anti-Semitism Commissioner. Such a person might point out the anti-Semitic threats coming regularly from neo-Nazis and Muslims, the flaws of the police and justice system, and other failures of the authorities to deal with anti-Semitism.

But Stockholm is highly unlikely to appoint such a person. Though it purports to be a model democracy that believes in free speech, Sweden would not welcome the revelations that would result.

The post Analysis: Sweden’s ugly ultraliberalism and the Jews appeared first on World Israel News.

Swedish Jews protest violent neo-Nazi group’s plan to rally near Gothenburg Synagogue on Yom Kippur.

By: Ben Cohen/The Algemeiner

Swedish Jewish leaders are appealing to police in Gothenburg to reroute a neo-Nazi march that will pass close to the city’s synagogue on September 30 – when Jews mark Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.

“It’s the day of the year when many Jews who normally don’t go to the synagogue will gather there. On this day, the police have decided to grant the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) permission to march through Gothenburg, no more than a stone’s throw away from the synagogue,” Aron Verständig, chairman of the Official Council of Swedish Jewish Communities, and Allan Stutzinky, chairman of the Jewish community in Gothenburg, wrote in an opinion piece quoted by the Swedish daily, The Local.

“Aside from out of fear for our own security, it evokes uncomfortable associations for us Jews,” they added. “During the Holocaust it wasn’t unusual for the German Nazis to conduct their horrendous atrocities on the most important days of the Jewish calendar.”

According to The Local, the NRM had initially sought permission to stage the march on one of Gothenburg’s main avenues, Kungsportsavenyn, but was only granted a permit if it agreed to change the route. The new route means the neo-Nazis will parade close to the synagogue.

The NRM openly describes itself as a “National Socialist” organization, and operates branches in Norway and Finland as well as Sweden.

The group declares that it will “[B]y all available means, and with a long-term perspective, work to regain power from the global Zionist elite who have economically and militarily occupied the greater part of our world.” Its goal is to “[E]stablish a National Socialist society where resources are distributed in such a way that benefits all people, both strong and weak, and where everybody has the opportunity to reach their fullest potential.”

Set up by neo-Nazi activists in 1997, the notoriously violent NRM is reported to have increased its membership significantly over the last year. Following US President Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2016, more than 600 hardcore supporters of the NRM clashed with anti-fascists in downtown Stockholm.

In July, three member of the NRM were sentenced by a Swedish court to up to nine years in prison for a series of homemade bomb attacks against refugee shelters.

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