Anti-Fascism in the Nordic Countries

Pontus Järvstad & Kasper Braskén

During the Interwar years fascist and Nazi movements in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland were weak and marginal, yet they were still visible and active with their street politics. Initially anti-fascist politics revolved around international solidarity within the labor movement where fascism was mainly seen as an external threat. Fascism was also contested by established politicians, intellectuals and cultural workers (Dørum, Ericsson, Saarela, Rønning and Bayerlein 2019).

Nevertheless, there was also a strong current of contentious politics of anti-fascists confronting the new domestic fascist movements in the streets (Kristjánsdóttir-Järvstad, Krautwald, Lundin 2019). These militant spatial claims came from actors across the political spectrum (Krautwald 2020 and 2021) and often used bicycles to expand beyond their urban confines (Krautwald-Lundin 2023).

Examples of activities that broke from the national mold were communists smuggling arms to the Spanish Republic or boycotting shipping from fascist countries (Weiss 2019, Braskén 2021, Jørgensen 2023). While anti-racism was often secondary in the first formulations of anti-fascism the concerns of national minorities would put these questions at center stage (Kaihovirta-Wickström 2019; Braskén 2023) although e.g. Jewish-Swedish responses to Italian fascism and German Nazism varied considerably (Bortz 2023)

Finland was a Nordic outlier because of the comparatively large fascistic Finnish Lapua Movement, which attempted, but failed, to seize state power in the Mäntsälä rebellion of 1932 (Karimäki 2019). In line with a growing anti-fascists historiography, a recent anthology on all the Nordic countries (Braskén-Copsey-Lundin 2019), emphasizes the diversity of interwar and postwar anti-fascist practices and articulations that rejects simplistic attempts to delegitimize anti-fascism as a form of communism. New research has also rediscovered overlooked forms of cultural anti-fascism, including anti-fascist literature, theatre, music and the arts (see e.g. Geust 2023; Perera 2024)

During the Second World War, German occupation of Denmark and Norway brought forth a diverse resistance movement in these countries. In Norway the Germans put into power a domestic fascist dictatorship under Vidkun Quisling. The legacy of the resistance movements has had a longstanding influence in shaping collective memory and foundational myths of the postwar Nordic states (Stenius-Österberg-Östling 2011). Postwar Nordic anti-fascism was also shaped by collective memories of successful resistance movements or failures to save Spain from fascism (Scott 2009, Dalsager 2019), while Sweden’s neutrality has inspired much Nordic debate on appeasement to Nazism and fascism. The region’s proximity to Nazi Germany also made Sweden a central location and transition point for anti-fascist refugees from Nazi Germany (Frohnert 2024).

These movements and legacies informed Nordic anti-fascists as they opposed new and old dictatorships in Southern Europe during the Cold War. The 1960s also saw reinventions of anti-fascism that increasingly emphasized anti-racism as a means to confront the memory of the Holocaust, prejudices against national minorities and the plight of colonized peoples (Järvstad 2023 and 2024).

After having remained somewhat dormant, domestic fascism once again saw a resurgence in the 1980s with Nordic neo-Nazi movements. Facing this threat, a new generation of anti-fascist and anti-racist activists drew inspiration from previous militancy and contemporary autonomist left-wing movements (Mikkelsen-Karpantschof 2008 and 2016, Brink Pinto-Pries 2019, Mikkelsen 2019).

During the past decades, the reconceptualization of anti-fascist activism for today’s needs has formed a fundamental part of new efforts to counter fascist and racist movements and networks in the Nordic countries. In Sweden, EXPO has taken over a vital monitoring role, while contemporary anti-fascist research-activism is led by REDOX in Denmark. In Finland Varisverkosto has established itself as a nation-wide anti-fascist network that opposes fascism both politically, ideologically and physically, while e.g. in Sweden antifa.st and in Norway antifa.tk maintain militant Nordic anti-fascist traditions.