The night of August 27, three men with a foreign background were attacked and assaulted without provocation within the span of half an hour in Stockholm's inner city. The perpetrators allegedly shouted racist insults and gave the Nazi salute. According to the prosecutor, this is a case of racist hate crime.
On the same day, three suspected men were arrested and this week they and another man will be brought to court. All are in their 20s and are linked to the Nazi Aktivklubb Sverige, of which three are from the Stockholm branch White boys.
This shows what happens after a few years with people in this group. Over time, the threshold for violence is lowered, says Jonathan Leman, researcher at Expo, who has examined the aktivklubbar.
Two of the defendants hold leading positions in the movement.
These people with leading positions seem to be able to do what they want and then they have the entire organization behind them – including their sister organizations in Greece, Germany, Poland, and Estonia, which make murals in support of the suspects.
Another leading man from the movement has commented on the violent incidents in Stockholm by saying that "there are no innocent non-whites" in Sweden, according to Leman.
The approach differs clearly from how the previously dominant movement within Swedish right-wing extremism, the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), usually acts.
When their members have committed attacks and violent acts, they have rarely wanted to associate the organization with the crimes. With Aktivklubb, it's completely different.
The attacks in Stockholm easily bring to mind the right-wing extremist skinhead violence that took place on the streets of Sweden in the 80s and 90s.
This is a grouping that has been surrounded by much naivety previously, "this is just guys who work out and so on". But this follows a long tradition of Nazi street violence.
Aktivklubb is the latest in a long line of newly launched right-wing extremist movements, which all build on the same Nazi foundation, says Leman. Several leading figures within the movement, including one of the now defendants, come from NMR.
This organization really has violence as its top priority. The focus is on building up the ability and it's quite obvious that they want to use their violence capacity.
The defendants deny the crimes and have consistently answered "no comments" during interrogations.
The indictment against four men in their 20s includes, among other things, aggravated assault, assault, and robbery.
During the first attack, a group of four men assaulted a man with punches and kicks on Kungsgatan without provocation.
Just minutes later, a lone man was attacked as he stood and smoked. Witnesses describe in the investigation how he was hit in the back of the head by a man and fell to the ground. As he lay on the ground, the man and several others continued to attack him with punches and kicks to the body and head. The violence resulted, among other things, in him losing several teeth.
He himself remembers nothing of the incident and cannot understand why someone attacked him, he says during the interrogation.
Shortly thereafter, another man was assaulted on the subway by three men. The entire incident was captured on surveillance cameras, where the perpetrators' faces are clearly visible, and shows how they jumped on the man with punches and kicks without provocation.
The right-wing extremist so-called aktivklubbar are part of a larger international movement that started in the USA, outwardly focused on strength training and martial arts.
A warrior ideal is advocated, and members are urged to prepare for an upcoming racial war, according to a report from American extremist researchers in Just Security.
The concept has spread quickly and is now present in at least 20 countries with over 100 groups globally and in most American states, according to the organization The Counter Extremism Project.
In Sweden, it formally got a base in 2023 with the network Aktivklubb Sverige, which functions as an umbrella organization for local clubs. The police have in an intelligence report warned that the group is believed to have access to weapons and explosive materials.
According to the Center Against Violent Extremism, it is believed that there are around ten clubs that have some form of recurring activity.
The number of activities carried out by the aktivklubbar increased sharply last year, according to Expo.
Source: Expo, CVE, TT
