Nordic Fascism: Fragments of an Entangled History

243 Pages·2022·4.498 MB·English

by  Nicola Karcher, Markus Lundström (eds.)

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Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right
NORDIC FASCISM
FRAGMENTS OF AN ENTANGLED HISTORY
Edited by Nicola Karcher and Markus Lundström
Foreword by Roger Griffin
Nordic Fascism
Nordic Fascism is the first comprehensive history in English of fascism in the
Nordic countries.
Transnational cooperation between radical nationalists has especially
been the case in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, where fascism
has not only developed through interdependent processes but also through
interactions between and beyond national boundaries, and where “racial
relationship” has been a core argument. With chapters ranging from the
inception of fascism in the interwar years up to the present day, this book
offers the first fragments of an entangled history of Nordic fascism. It illu-
minates how The North occupies a special place in the fascist imagination,
articulating ideas about the Nordic people resisting the supposed cultural
degeneration, replacement, or annihilation of the white race. The authors
map ideological exchange between fascist organisations in the Nordic coun-
tries and outline past and present attempts at pan-Nordic state building.
This book will appeal to scholars of fascism and Nordic history, and
readers interested in the general history of fascism.
Nicola Karcher is a historian and an associate professor in social science at
Østfold University College, Norway.
Markus Lundström is an economic historian and an associate professor in
sociology at Uppsala University, Sweden.
Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right
Series editors
Nigel Copsey, Teesside University, UK and Graham Macklin, The Norwegian
Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies (HL-senteret).
This book series focuses upon national, transnational and global man-
ifestations of fascist, far right and right-wing politics primarily within a
historical context but also drawing on insights and approaches from other
disciplinary perspectives. Its scope also includes anti-fascism, radical-right
populism, extreme-right violence and terrorism, cultural manifestations of
the far right, and points of convergence and exchange with the mainstream
and traditional right.
Titles include:
Nordic Fascism
Fragments of an Entangled History
Edited by Nicola Karcher and Markus Lundström
Histories of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Australia
Edited by Evan Smith, Jayne Persian and Vashti Jane Fox
Foreign Fighters in the Ukraine
Kacper Rękawek
The Nature of Identitarianism
Göran Dahl
Nazi Occultism
Between the SS and Esotericism
Stéphane François
Inside the Black Box of ‘White Backlash’
Letters of Support to Enoch Powell (1968-1969)
Olivier Esteves
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Studies-in-Fascism-and-the-Far-Right/book-series/FFR
Nordic Fascism
Fragments of an Entangled History
Edited by
Nicola Karcher and Markus Lundström
with a foreword by Roger Griffin
First published 2022
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Nicola Karcher and Markus
Lundström; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Nicola Karcher and Markus Lundström to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Karcher, Nicola Kristin, 1979- editor. | Lundström, Markus, editor.
Title: Nordic fascism : fragments of an entangled history / edited by
Nicola Karcher and Markus Lundström foreword by Roger Griffin.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Series:
Routledge studies in fascism and the far right | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022029173 (print) | LCCN 2022029174 (ebook) | ISBN
9781032040301 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032044002 (paperback) | ISBN
9781003193005 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Fascism--Scandinavia--History. | Right-wing
extremists--Scandinavia--History. | Ethnicity--Political
aspects--Scandinavia. | Scandinavians--Ethnic identity. |
Scandinavia--Politics and government--20th century. |
Scandinavia--Politics and government--21st century.
Classification: LCC DL87 .N656 2022 (print) | LCC DL87 (ebook) | DDC
320.53/30948--dc23/eng/20220727
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029173
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029174
ISBN: 978-1-032-04030-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-04400-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-19300-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003193005
Typeset in Times New Roman
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Contents
Contributors vii
Foreword: Nordic Fascism and the Story of Coalescing Asteroids xiii
ROGER GRIFFIN
The Nature of Nordic Fascism: An Introduction 1
NICOLA KARCHER AND MARKUS LUNDSTRÖM
1 Early Nordic Fascism and Antisemitic Conspiracism 15
SOFIE LENE BAK AND TERJE EMBERLAND WITH CONTRIBUTIONS
FROM HELÉNE LÖÖW AND OULA SILVENNOINEN
2 National Socialisms in Clinch: The Case of Norwegian
National Socialists in Interwar Germany 51
NICOLA KARCHER
3 A Pragmatic Revolutionary: R. Erik Serlachius and Fascist Visions
of Society and Community 71
OULA SILVENNOINEN
4 Nordic Heretics: A National Socialist Opposition in Norway
and Denmark 95
CLAUS BUNDGÅRD CHRISTENSEN AND TERJE EMBERLAND
5 Hidden Knowledge and Mythical Origins: Atlantis,
Esoteric Fascism, and Nordic Racial Divinity 114
GUSTAF FORSELL
6 Esoteric Nordic Fascism: The Second Coming of Hitler
and the Idea of the People 138
MATTIAS GARDELL
vi Contents
7 Window to Europe: Finland and Nordic Fascist Networks
during the Cold War 166
TOMMI KOTONEN
8 Ethnocultural and Racial Ambiguities of National Socialist
State-Building: Finland and the Nordic Resistance Movement 188
DANIEL SALLAMAA AND LEENA MALKKI
Index 212
Contributors
Sofie Lene Bak is an associate professor in modern history at Copenhagen
University, Denmark. Her fields of expertise include the Holocaust,
antisemitism, and racism studies, and she has written intensively on
Danish national socialist movements. Bak received her PhD from
Copenhagen University in 2003 with a dissertation on antisemitism
in Denmark from 1930 to 1945 and published ground-breaking
monographs on the Holocaust in Denmark, the repatriation and
restitution of Holocaust victims, and most recently on the legal fight
against antisemitism and national socialism. She is a former curator
and Research Manager at the Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen
and by virtue of her theoretical and methodological interests in oral
history and memory studies is continuously dedicated to public history
in developing TV documentaries, educational textbooks, and features.
As a leading national expert, she has edited several anthologies on
contemporary history and published articles in Danish, English,
and German on the Holocaust, antisemitism, Danish Jewish history,
and occupation history. She is editor of the journal Fra Krig og Fred,
published by the Danish Commission for Danish Military History, and
of Rambam: Tidsskrift for jødisk kultur og forskning, published by The
Society for Danish Jewish History.
Claus Bundgård Christensen is an associate professor in history at Roskilde
University, Denmark. He has published a number of scholarly books and
articles in Danish, Dutch, English, French, and German on the First
and Second World War, the Holocaust, national socialism, the war of
extermination on the Eastern Front, the far right and radicalism. He is
the author and co-author of critically acclaimed books, including Under
hagekors og Dannebrog. Danskere i Waffen SS 1940–45 (1998), Danskere
på vestfronten 1914–1918 (2009), Danmark besat – krig og hverdag 1940–45
(2009), Fra verdenskrig til borgerkrig. Østfronten 1914–1924 (2009), and
Waffen-SS – Europas nazistiske soldater (2015). He received the Danish
History Book of the Year Award 2009 and the Svend Henningsen Award
2009. In 2013 and 2015, he was nominated for the Danish Award History
viii Contributors
Book of the Year and in 1998 and 2009 for the Weekendavisens prize
in literature. Bundgård Christensen has received highly competitive
research grants for his work on the First World War experience of the
Danish minority in Schleswig and as co-researcher for the project The
History of the Waffen-SS. Ideology, Atrocities, and Reckoning with the Past.
He recently published Følg Wilfred! Radikalisering – revolusjon – nazistisk
subkultur (2022) on Danish interwar national socialism. Bundgård
Christensen is a member of the NORFAS steering committee.
Terje Emberland is a research professor at the Norwegian Center for
Holocaust and Minority Studies (HL-senteret) and affiliated researcher
at the Centre for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of
Oslo, Norway. Emberland is one of the foremost experts on the history
of Norwegian fascism, antisemitism, occupation history, and conspiracy
theories. He has written several articles and monographs in these fields
and co-edited several anthologies. He has been Senior Researcher in the
government-funded research project Norwegians in the Waffen-SS from
2006 to 2012 and in the research project Democratic Institutions Facing
Nazi Occupation: Norway in a Comparative Perspective from 2013 to 2016,
financed by the Norwegian Research Council. He was key to developing
the permanent exhibition on the Holocaust and antisemitism in Norway
at the HL-senteret and curated the exhibition The Nazi Occupation of the
Past at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History in Oslo. Emberland is
frequently lecturing at the University of Oslo as well as other universities
in Norway and abroad. He has participated in developing several TV and
radio documentaries on historical and modern fascism, antisemitism,
occupation history, and conspiracy theories and has frequently appeared
as an expert commentator in these fields. Emberland served as an expert
witness in the trial against Anders Behring Breivik.
Gustaf Forsell is a PhD student in Church History at the Department of
Theology and at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism
(CEMFOR) at Uppsala University, Sweden, working on a thesis about
Christian national socialism in Sweden from 1925 to 1945. His research
interests include fascist Christian theology, esoteric fascism, fascist ideas
of a Nordic race, intersections of Christianity and esotericism, and the
history of racism. Forsell has previously investigated conflations of race
and Christian theology in the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in the article “Blood,
Cross and Flag: The Influence of Race on Ku Klux Klan Theology in
the 1920s” (Politics, Religion & Ideology, 2020) and “clerical fascism”
in interwar Sweden in the article “‘I tro på släktets framtid’: klerikal
fascism, Sveriges Religiösa Reformförbund och den svenska kulturens
förfall” (CHAOS, 2017). Forsell is a research fellow in the Network for the
Historical Study of National Christianities, an interdisciplinary network
involving historians, church historians and historians of education at
Uppsala University.
Contributors ix
Mattias Gardell is Nathan Söderblom Professor in Comparative Religion
and researcher at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies of Racism
(CEMFOR) at Uppsala University, Sweden. He is an awarded
international expert in the fields of religion, politics, racism, and
violence, and a leading scholar in areas such as fascism, black and
white radical nationalism, white power culture, Islamophobia, political
Islam, torture history, esoteric fascism, religion and fascism, the history
of racism and religion, hate crime, and political violence. Gardell has
substantial experience in directing large research groups and building
cross-disciplinary research environments. He was Director of Research
at CEMFOR from 2017 to 2021 and served as team leader and steering
board member of the IMPACT of Religion: Challenges for Society, Law
and Democracy, a Linnaeus Centre of Excellence at Uppsala University,
from 2008 to 2019. Gardell has published 11 peer-reviewed research
monographs and more than a hundred chapters, articles, and essays.
His latest publications are Lone Wolf Race Warriors and White Genocide
(2021) and “‘The Girl Who Was Chased by Fire’: Violence and Passion
in Contemporary Swedish Fascist Fiction” (Fascism, 2021). He served as
an expert witness in the trial against Anders Behring Breivik. Currently,
Gardell works on several projects relevant to the field of fascism studies,
including White Nostalgia. The Politics of Home and Belonging, financed
by the Swedish Research Council.
Nicola Karcher is a historian and an associate professor in Social Science
at the Østfold University College, Norway, where she leads the research
group PRIS (Politics, Religion, Ideology, and Society in Education)
and is a member of the Research Steering Committee on her faculty.
She is also a steering board member of the National Network of Social
Science in Education, Norway. She was researcher in the research project
Democratic Institutions Facing Nazi Occupation: Norway in a Comparative
Perspective from 2013 to 2017 at the Norwegian Holocaust Center
(HL-senteret), financed by the Norwegian Research Council. She has
been a visiting researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and
Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. Karcher’s pioneering doctoral thesis
in 2012 dealt with Norwegian-German fascist networks in the interwar
period. She has published articles and books in Norwegian, German,
and English on the history of fascism, occupation history, antisemitism,
and racism, particularly with respect to the Nordic countries. In her
monograph Kampen om skolen (2018, English translation The Struggle for
the School), she analysed fascist education in light of Nazification policy
and civil resistance in occupied Norway. Karcher is co-coordinator of
NORFAS and a member of the NORFAS steering committee.
Tommi Kotonen is a political scientist and postdoctoral researcher at the
University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Between 2018 and 2021, Kotonen
worked as a research coordinator of the Academy of Finland profiling