Jenny’s Pennies

My gut feeling is to agree with Per Gudmundson in today’s Svenska Dagbladet (and it doesn’t happen often that I agree with their editorials).

Background for non-Swedish readers: a few days ago, the Swedish police performed searches at members of Svenska Motståndsrörelsen, SMR (the Swedish Resistance Movement). Weapons and explosives were found, and three men are detained for illegal possession of weapons and preparation to inflict serious damage (I guess that means blowing stuff up).

SMR is a neo-nazi organization which wants to abolish democracy and create an authoritarian national socialist society, hates Jews, Muslims and homosexuals, and struggles for the ultimate victory of the national socialist ideology and the creation of a new world order. (More in Swedish at Expo here.)

They have organized paramilitary training camps for their members, they idolize people like Hitler (obviously) and William Pierce, they want racial war, obviously store weapons and explosives, and their leader, Klas Lund, has been convicted of bank robbery, assault, illegal possession of firearms and manslaughter.

So, my gut feeling is to agree with Per Gudmundson when he says that the SMR members should be charged using the law on terrorist crime. Because that law says that terrorism is (big disclaimer about me not being a legal expert and knowing how to translate legal text accurately) to seek to “instill grave fear in a population” or “to seriously destabilize basic political, constitutional, economical or social structures in a state”. And that seems to fit pretty nicely with a movement that wants to destroy our society and install a dictatorship.

But.
Just as Svensson, Christian Engström and Mårten Schultz, I think that we should be careful to use the terrorism rubber stamp. Individuals can be guilty of acts of terrorism, but to label a whole movement or organization as “terrorist” is problematic. Especially when the organization or group is incoherent and multifaceted - that may not be the case with SMR, but it is certainly true of other organizations that we, in the era of the “war on terror” have put the terrorist label on.

And, as Christian Engström writes - the law on terrorism has mostly been used against non-Swedish citizens. It has allowed the state to deport them to torture and to freeze their assets, all in breach of human rights and rule of law. Even though it is tempting to put an equal opportunity spin on it and for once use the terrorism law against shiny white very Swedish people, we’d better not. Terrorism can and should be addressed using our perfectly fine “normal” laws.

And I really don’t want something like this in Sweden - The law HR.1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, which is being passed in the USA. It defines “homegrown terrorism” as: the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.

This is what the American Civil Liberties Union have to say about it (they’re not too excited, as you can imagine). A snippet:

“Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be extreme.”

So true. So even though my gut feeling tells me that of course the SMR members should be tried as terrorists, the implications, real and possible, makes me think that it might not be such a good idea after all.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Crime, Human rights, Nationalism, racism etc, Sweden, Swedish politics, The "war on terrorism". You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.