White Nationalists Give Up Trying To Be Respectable
Daniel Friberg, a media-savvy Swede, stood there in Charlottesville alongside the hooligans.
By Benjamin R. Teitelbaum
The Wall Street Journal
August 14, 2017
Amid the chaos of Saturday’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., one white nationalist, Daniel Friberg, walked the streets with relative ease. Dapper in a smart suit and sunglasses, and speaking to camera crews calmly with a Johnny Cash bass voice, he stood out from the howling, baton-wielding masses that surrounded him.
Mr. Friberg, 39, has been a central figure of radical anti-immigrant activism in his native Sweden for more than two decades, and he is no stranger to confrontation. Still, his appearance in Charlottesville was a surprise. Virtually all of his projects from the early 1990s until recently have focused on moderating and mainstreaming the white-nationalist cause—on counteracting the stereotypes of brutishness and chauvinism that were on display in Charlottesville.
His participation in the rally reflects a shifting zeitgeist within organized white nationalism, which is moving from accommodating critics to ignoring them. Although the media coverage of Saturday’s events focused on its scenes of violence, the appearance of figures like Mr. Friberg has the most to teach us about the current state and future of this movement.
More so than the careers of sensationalized figures like David Duke and Richard Spencer, Mr. Friberg’s path shows the broader trends and transformations of latter-day white nationalism in the West. He grew up during the 1990s, when skinhead subculture attracted waves of disgruntled young white men.
Despite its mobilizing power, skinhead subculture rarely led to much beyond petty violence and rabble-rousing, especially in Mr. Friberg’s home country. By 2000, Sweden had an oversized nationalist skinhead scene with a world-leading white-power music industry but no serious anti-immigrant political party in Parliament to show for it. And while Mr. Friberg had entered activism through neo-Nazi skinheadism—shaving his head and doing most of his political networking at concerts—he quickly began cultivating alternatives, striving, like many of his reformist-minded colleagues, to be everything skinheads were not.
He co-founded newspapers, book wholesalers, blog portals, publishing houses and an online encyclopedia. Whereas he once staged music-centered festivals, he gradually turned toward organizing seminars.
He likewise sought to transform the rhetorical and ideological content in these channels. Some of his early projects voiced Third Reich nostalgia and demonized nonwhite minority groups, but anti-Semitism and racial supremacy later were replaced with calls for a purportedly non-chauvinistic ethnic separatism. His campaign of reform even trafficked in fashion: Throughout these years he moved from looking like a skinhead, to an “average Joe” in jeans and sneakers, to a sharp banker.
Mr. Friberg’s assumption—that a white nationalism cast in this methodological, ideological and stylistic mold would be more politically formidable—seemed validated. By 2015 his portfolio of projects included Arktos Publishing and the Wikipedia-inspired site Metapedia, both of which command a considerable global following. His ideas and the language featured in his initiatives have shaped the activism of anti-immigrant causes, both mainstream and fringe.
Then came the alt-right and Donald Trump’s candidacy. The movements of 2016 suggested to white nationalists that major political advance was possible even when striking an unrefined and unapologetic posture. The alt-right, after all, does not project the erudite, upstanding and inoffensive image to which people like Mr. Friberg once aspired. Nor did Mr. Trump. The alt-right’s true distinguishing features are not ideological but methodological and stylistic—its tactics of vulgar antagonism waged in the lowbrow, juvenile arenas of online trolling and meme culture. Sympathetic spectators were also able to witness Mr. Trump challenge feminist and multiculturalist dogma with unabashed swagger while vying for power in the liberal West—and win.
All this is poised to change white nationalists’ calculation that only accommodation and covert infiltration of the mainstream can lead to success. Perhaps now they will move about the public square as their true selves, whatever that may mean.
While they may be wrong to draw such conclusions—overestimating the acceptance of explicit white identity politics in Western society—figures like Mr. Friberg seem to be acting on what they see as a newfound freedom to appear wherever and however they like. Don’t expect to see them at their rallies with shaved heads and swastika armbands. But do expect to see them walking next to the hooligans, now unashamed.
Amid the chaos of Saturday’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., one white nationalist, Daniel Friberg, walked the streets with relative ease. Dapper in a smart suit and sunglasses, and speaking to camera crews calmly with a Johnny Cash bass voice, he stood out from the howling, baton-wielding masses that surrounded him.
Mr. Friberg, 39, has been a central figure of radical anti-immigrant activism in his native Sweden for more than two decades, and he is no stranger to confrontation. Still, his appearance in Charlottesville was a surprise. Virtually all of his projects from the early 1990s until recently have focused on moderating and mainstreaming the white-nationalist cause—on counteracting the stereotypes of brutishness and chauvinism that were on display in Charlottesville.
His participation in the rally reflects a shifting zeitgeist within organized white nationalism, which is moving from accommodating critics to ignoring them. Although the media coverage of Saturday’s events focused on its scenes of violence, the appearance of figures like Mr. Friberg has the most to teach us about the current state and future of this movement.
More so than the careers of sensationalized figures like David Duke and Richard Spencer, Mr. Friberg’s path shows the broader trends and transformations of latter-day white nationalism in the West. He grew up during the 1990s, when skinhead subculture attracted waves of disgruntled young white men.
Despite its mobilizing power, skinhead subculture rarely led to much beyond petty violence and rabble-rousing, especially in Mr. Friberg’s home country. By 2000, Sweden had an oversized nationalist skinhead scene with a world-leading white-power music industry but no serious anti-immigrant political party in Parliament to show for it. And while Mr. Friberg had entered activism through neo-Nazi skinheadism—shaving his head and doing most of his political networking at concerts—he quickly began cultivating alternatives, striving, like many of his reformist-minded colleagues, to be everything skinheads were not.
He co-founded newspapers, book wholesalers, blog portals, publishing houses and an online encyclopedia. Whereas he once staged music-centered festivals, he gradually turned toward organizing seminars.
He likewise sought to transform the rhetorical and ideological content in these channels. Some of his early projects voiced Third Reich nostalgia and demonized nonwhite minority groups, but anti-Semitism and racial supremacy later were replaced with calls for a purportedly non-chauvinistic ethnic separatism. His campaign of reform even trafficked in fashion: Throughout these years he moved from looking like a skinhead, to an “average Joe” in jeans and sneakers, to a sharp banker.
Mr. Friberg’s assumption—that a white nationalism cast in this methodological, ideological and stylistic mold would be more politically formidable—seemed validated. By 2015 his portfolio of projects included Arktos Publishing and the Wikipedia-inspired site Metapedia, both of which command a considerable global following. His ideas and the language featured in his initiatives have shaped the activism of anti-immigrant causes, both mainstream and fringe.
Then came the alt-right and Donald Trump’s candidacy. The movements of 2016 suggested to white nationalists that major political advance was possible even when striking an unrefined and unapologetic posture. The alt-right, after all, does not project the erudite, upstanding and inoffensive image to which people like Mr. Friberg once aspired. Nor did Mr. Trump. The alt-right’s true distinguishing features are not ideological but methodological and stylistic—its tactics of vulgar antagonism waged in the lowbrow, juvenile arenas of online trolling and meme culture. Sympathetic spectators were also able to witness Mr. Trump challenge feminist and multiculturalist dogma with unabashed swagger while vying for power in the liberal West—and win.
All this is poised to change white nationalists’ calculation that only accommodation and covert infiltration of the mainstream can lead to success. Perhaps now they will move about the public square as their true selves, whatever that may mean.
While they may be wrong to draw such conclusions—overestimating the acceptance of explicit white identity politics in Western society—figures like Mr. Friberg seem to be acting on what they see as a newfound freedom to appear wherever and however they like. Don’t expect to see them at their rallies with shaved heads and swastika armbands. But do expect to see them walking next to the hooligans, now unashamed.
Article Link To The WSJ:
0 Response to "White Nationalists Give Up Trying To Be Respectable"
Post a Comment