The past and the present: Following in the footsteps of a neo-Nazi movement in a rural Sweden school

Abstract

This case study aimed to describe and analyse how students and staff at a school in a geographical area with a tradition of high neo-Nazi activism perceived and talked about racism and sexism in particular, and the ‘school climate’ in general. The case consists of 10 school professionals and 14 students. The selected school was located in a traditional mill town, once built around a dominating industry, but over the last decades it has been characterised by deindustrialisation and economic decline. The town became the founding area of the Swedish National Socialist movement during the interwar period and has since hosted vital parts of the movement, which is ongoing. Today, the local movement comprises middle-aged former skinheads who have children attending the local school. The study scrutinised the encounter between the mill town’s ingrained racism and the school’s duty to prevent racism and promote tolerance. The outcome shows how Nazi movement has generationally reproduced itself in Shortfield for a century, in the midst of the municipality and indeed also within the roams of the school’s professional work – with the teachers well aware of the continuous history – but with only people from the outside realising the problem of racism in Shortfield.

Introduction

In October 2015, the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), a neo-Nazi organisation, paid a visit and a tribute to the former veterinary villa in Shortfield (pseudonym), Sweden, which once belonged to the first Swedish National Socialist party leader, Birger Furugård. NRM posted a picture of the villa on their webpage, and one of the stickers from the NRM is visible in the foreground with the message: ‘Mass immigration is a ticking bomb’. Almost 91 years earlier, Birger Furugård and his comrades had held the first National Socialist meeting in Sweden, a few hundred meters from the villa. Since then, Shortfield has been a stronghold of the Swedish National Socialist movement, and later the neo-Nazi movement. Today, Birger Furugård still holds an iconic position within that movement. During the 1990s, Shortfield became home to a skinhead group and attracted neo-Nazis from all over Sweden and Europe. A white power concert in 1995 was particularly notable; it was held in the same building where Birger Furugård hosted the founding meeting for the first Nazi party. The skinhead movement was up and running several years after the turn of the millennia, and for a period, they called themselves NS-Shortfield. Today, the remains of that skinhead group are middle-aged parents who continue to maintain their own club house, and their children attend the local school.

Previous research from Sweden, Germany, and the U.S. revealed a geographical pattern in how and where the neo-Nazi movement reproduces itself (Cantoni et al., 2019; Ezekiel, 1995, 2002; Lööw, 2004). The movement’s strongholds during the interwar period tend to remain strongholds a century later. To a significant extent, this is an unexplained empirical fact. However, Blombäck (2017) conducted an innovative quantitative study that sampled the demography of 35 municipalities in Sweden with high and long-lasting neo-Nazi activism. Based on that sample, she compiled a comparable matched demographic group based on municipalities with no or very low neo-Nazi activism. With the two samples and a data base of longitudinal attitudes and value surveys, she showed that inhabitants of geographical areas with a high level of neo-Nazi presence are significantly more intolerant towards immigrants and ethnic and religious minorities, and they have less belief in democracy and democratic institutions than inhabitants in areas with an equal demographic setting, but without a historical neo-Nazi presence. It is plausible that neo-Nazi activism reproduction occurs in relation to what can be understood as an intolerant and racist background noise.

Shortfield, being such a municipality, forms the basis for this case study, which aimed to scrutinise how the generational reproduction of neo-Nazism plays out and affects the ambition to counteract racism and Nazism at the local school, and how the school relates to this reproduction. We sought information on how teachers and students perceive the local neo-Nazism history, whether they engage in this matter, and if so, how. The study was guided by the following research questions:

1. How do teachers and students talk about the history and presence of their municipality?

2. How do teachers and students talk about the vivid neo-Nazi presence?

3. What conclusions can be drawn about the school’s role in the generational reproduction of neo-Nazism?

The neo-Nazi movement in Sweden

The Swedish National Socialist movement was unsuccessful in both political gains and attracting a significant number of followers during the interwar period or during the Second World War (Lööw, 2004). However, in the decades after the war, they had an advantage compared to their comrades in other Nordic countries, in that their movement was never forbidden; nor did Sweden undergo any de-Nazification, as did other European countries. Hence, Sweden became a safe haven for Nordic, and to some extent also European, Nazis, and fascists during the 1950s and early 60s (Lööw, 2004). This led to the establishment of a neo-Nazi party, the Nordic Reich Party (NRP), in 1953. This group gathered activists from the war-period; provided an organisational platform, social connections, and archival resources; and re-cultivated the idea of a common white ‘Nordic Reich’. NRP kept the neo-Nazi movement on a back burner until the end of the 1970s, with their members largely living and active in the same geographical areas as during the war.

By the late 1970s, two important shifts coincided that would change both the Swedish and international neo-Nazi scenes. The first was the reoccurrence of political nationalism as a force with its edge pointed towards immigrants and the so-called political establishment (Demker, 2014). This political movement shook the neo-Nazi movement to its ideological foundations. To a large extent, the nationalist movement was reaching out to the same potential supporters as the neo-Nazis but without carrying the burden of the Nazi-German legacy. This created a need to revitalise the NRP but without throwing away their ideology. Simultaneously, the so-called skinhead movement, or rather subculture, was established in the Western world (Mattsson and Johansson, 2021). NRP saw the potential for exploiting the young skinheads and formed ‘Reich action groups’, equivalent to the Nazi-Germany SA-groups (i.e. Nazi thugs spreading the word with their fists). This led to two major changes for the neo-Nazi moment, the first of which was a generational shift. By the late 1970s and early 80s, the war generation already comprised elderly people in need of finding successors. Although the rowdy skinheads were not ideal successors, they were at hand. This ultimately resulted in a divergence between generations, leading to a split through which new neo-Nazi groups were formed. These new groups had their roots in NRP action groups but now formed new break-out groups, that later became known as ‘White Aryan Resistance’ (WAR). WAR was clearly inspired by the U.S. Nazi organisation that went by the same name. Groups like WAR had a weaker connection to the skinhead milieus and white power music scene; however, they were still dedicated to the Nazi ideology.

This was the formula for a prolonged period of neo-Nazi violence from the mid-80s until a few years after the turn of the millennia. By then, former skinheads had grown up, violent neo-Nazi leaders had been imprisoned, and the world had turned its gaze to the war on terror after 9/11 (Mattsson, 2018). This led to yet another neo-Nazi movement transformation, where the ideological followers from the skinhead generation took control of the movement and formed two Swedish neo-Nazi parties: The National Socialist Front and what was later to be named the Nordic Resistance Movement. Today, only the latter is still active and has gathered the remains of the war generation, skinhead generation, and newcomers. However, the Nazi movement never became a mass movement in Sweden during the 1920s and 1940s. It was always divided and troubled by internal conflicts. This is also true for the post-war era. During both the skinhead period and contemporary era, the so-called pure National Socialists were holding on to become a mass movement (Lööw, 2004). In 2018, inspired by the interwar German Nazi movement – as Birger Furugård and his followers did 90 years earlier – the NRM marched under the banner, ‘Now we will become a mass movement’, with clear references to the Third Reich. In a 2019 photo, that could be emblematic, the former NRP party leader, Vera Oredsson, who was formerly a member of the Nazi-Germany youth movement, is visiting the Hammerskins club house in Shortfield as an honourable member of the NRM. The photo has Vera in the foreground and an old photo of Birger Furugård in the background.

Survey of research

To situate our study, we examined relevant studies on everyday racism in schools and studies on radicalisation and neo-Nazism expression in schools.

Research on how racism and sexism play out in schools and among students is a growing field. It focuses on different aspects of everyday school violence, ranging from the impact of societal structures on the school environment (Gillborn, 2021), to school initiatives for handling everyday racism and sexism among students (Zimmerman and Astor, 2021), and racism’s impact on students’ well-being and health (Jenkins et al., 2015). Although the presence and enactment of racism greatly vary between schools, many studies point towards an endemic problem of racism in the Western schools. The normalisation of everyday racism has also been documented in many studies (see, e.g. Bourabain and Verhaeghe, 2021; Essed, 2001).

Research on rural schools, young people’s everyday life, and schooling in rural areas (Öhrn and Beach, 2019) is also growing. Overall results indicate that demographic changes and immigration have a large impact on the school environment and lead to increased challenges for managing racism and sexism prevalence. Myers and Bhopal’s (2017) study of several rural English schools found that schools acknowledged, to some degree, the presence of racism but also tended to describe it as part of the school history rather than a contemporary problem. In addition, since certain methods and measures were in place to address racism, problems were downplayed and ignored. In this process, white identities were often privileged and protected, while those of non-white students, who may have complained about the situation, were not. A study of a rural Swedish school reported related results. Focus group and individual interviews with 14- and 15-year-old students identified high levels of everyday racism (Odenbring and Johansson, 2019). The study showed how Muslim girls, in particular, were harassed by boys in the school. The boys argued that they should be allowed to wear caps in schools (this was forbidden by the teachers), if the Muslim girls were allowed to wear a veil. Consequently, racist attitudes were sugar-coated as arguments of fairness. The authors asserted that these tensions and conflicts in the school must be read and understood in the context of a rural society in decline, increased immigration, and growing social tensions in the local society (cf. Dovemark, 2013).

Previous research on handling racism in schools indicates that teachers are willing to engage but are uncertain about how to conduct rewarding interventions (Arneback and Jämte, 2021; Lynch et al., 2017). Moreover, the presence of racism is often understood and encountered as an individual problem (i.e. some students are racist) rather than a structural problem, and there is often a denial of racist issues (Hällgren, 2005; Kempf, 2013). In a study of strategies employed by Norway teachers to handle racism, Trysnes and Skjølberg (2022) defined five strategies, from avoiding conflict and hence accepting hate speech to a certain degree, to contesting students’ minds by provoking and instilling debate. Overall, the scholarly literature contains very little guidance for teachers on how to handle open racism in the classroom.

Theoretical considerations

We explored how school professionals and students talk about racism and the use of neo-Nazi symbols. Using their narratives, we approached the school as a frame for understanding how whiteness concepts are reproduced, following Ahmed’s (2012): p. 50) methodological view on how institutions work:

Institutions provide a frame in which things happen (or don’t happen). To understand how ‘what happens’ happens, we actually need to narrow (rather than widen) the frame: to think about words, texts, objects, and bodies, to follow them around, to explore what they do and do not do, when they are put into action.

Our study focused on how student and school staff narratives become entangled, co-constructing a specific approach towards the use of neo-Nazi symbols and the constant presence of racist slurs in everyday school life. We used the concept of institutional racism to capture this social dynamic (Ahmed, 2012; Cole, 2004). Consequently, we did not connect racism to specific individuals but rather focused on the systematic and institutional reproduction of racism in everyday school life. We also avoided a primary focus on overt and intentional racism, focusing instead on how schools and students handle the unintended consequences of daily repeated expressions of racism. We were not interested in individuals but in the school’s climate as a whole. Targeting individuals and psychologising racism often maintain and uphold institutional racism.

Institutions provide a stable background of routinised activities and rules of conduct, making it difficult to reflect on ‘the order of things’, and create change. Ahmed (2012) talked about banging one’s head against a brick wall. Inspired by phenomenology, Ahmed also discussed how bodies are oriented in specific directions, and how they inhabit space. She writes: ‘We “become” racialized in how we occupy space, just as space is, as it were, already occupied as an effect of racialization’ (Ahmed, 2006a: p. 24). Through institutional racism’s mechanisms, bodies are brought ‘into line’; whiteness becomes a baseline against which everyone is measured and defined (Ahmed, 2006b). As a heuristic tool, the wall of whiteness reflects a co-constructed unawareness of how power works and is maintained and reproduced. This does not mean that all attempts to criticise, reflect on, or change institutionalised racism are hopeless.

Our ambition was to use the concept of institutional racism in a critical manner, to dissect certain social dynamics and patterns in everyday school life. According to Patel (2021): (p. 94):

Institutional racism is illustrated, for example, by the denial of racism whenever named, blaming rogue individuals, the denial of racialisation, the denial of individual and institutional responsibility, the absence of justice and reparations for historical and current racism as well as institutional failures to take measures to prevent structural racism and to ensure racial equity.

Aware that the concept of institutional racism tends to reduce individuals to agents of a racial power structure, it is important to stress that our focus was not primarily on overt or intentional racism but rather on the social mechanisms and dynamics contributing to the reproduction of racism in schools (cf. Berard, 2008). Therefore, we applied an open-minded empirical approach to analyse the school professionals’ and students’ narratives. Although institutional racism is often part of the hidden curriculum – a set of unintended norms, values, and beliefs conveyed implicitly in both the classroom and social environment – this does not exclude that some teachers and students are well aware of structural racism’s existence. However, as long as this awareness does not result in any affirmative action, it contributes to upholding a school’s structural racism (cf. O’Brien, 2009).

Method and methodology

Pedagogical research frequently uses case studies (cf. Ball, 1981; Wyness and Lang, 2016). This research is a case study of a rural area Swedish school, selected on the basis of a continuous historical presence of the neo-Nazi movement. The study primarily used empirical material comprising individual and focus group interviews to conduct an in-depth analysis of the fabric of attitudes and sentiments present in our informants’ narratives. Our analysis directed us towards racism, sexism, and neo-Nazi narratives. Since this is a carefully selected and very specific case, we cannot generalise our results to other rural schools, but we discuss the possibility of using this case study to investigate how a high historical and contemporary presence of neo-Nazism affects schools’ psychosocial environment and the strategies they employ to handle racism and sexism. The case is based in the small town of Shortfield in mid-Sweden. Shortfield is located in a rural area and was built around a 19th century mill, which is long gone. All the students pursuing education after the ninth grade require commuting. Job opportunities in Shortfield are limited in numbers and requirements; thus, few people with good academic education remain or settle here.

The case study was initiated by a focus group interview with carefully selected individuals. To establish a baseline and develop a historical perspective of Shortfield, we interviewed four teachers who had lived in the area for long. The interview lasted for one and a half hours and covered a number of themes on the school’s history, the neo-Nazi movement, and the local area. The main study comprised interviews with six school professionals (i.e. teachers, headmasters, and student health team workers) and 14 students. All interviews were conducted individually and lasted about 30–45 min each. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed. Reoccurring themes were coded and compared for similarities, nuances, and discrepancies (Braun and Clarke, 2006). This process extracted three main themes that formed the empirical outcome. We are well aware that the dataset for this study is limited. However, the limitation is more related to the aspect of what conclusions can be drawn from the case study as such, than to case building. The dataset covers the methodological and theoretical need to conduct a well-informed and empirically based case. The study’s limitations and how they may inform future studies are discussed at the end of the article.

The study was conducted under the [blinded for review] guideline for ethical research and approved by [blinded for review]. All participants were anonymised, and any details that could reveal their identity have been omitted. However, we decided to provide crucial historical information about the town in which we conducted the study. Even if the name of the town was anonymised, it could be identified by people with particular knowledge of the Swedish neo-Nazi movement, and these contextual factors were vital to reporting the study outcomes.

Results

The results are divided into three sections: the first scrutinises Shortfield’s social texture and understanding; the second focuses on the shadow of the Nazi past and present; and the last concerns how a very harsh racism was institutionalised but separated from the Nazi heritage. Most informants talk about Shortfield as a mill town (i.e. a municipality that was built around a 19th century mill that is long gone). However, it is claimed that this former dependence on a lost mill still upholds a mill town mentality among inhabitants, which tends to become circular evidence explaining every possible aspect of social life in Shortfield. Petra, a teacher in Shortfield, explained what she considered to be a mill town mentality:

[People living here always talk like] … ‘There used to be a taxi company here and people had an employment’ … Well, people do have jobs, but not all of them and a lot of people have hardships, [so] they do not feel too well. A lot of the children have trouble at home, lots of depression and alcohol abuse. Nowadays drugs among the young one’s are common. […] It is like a big grey cloud over Shortfield. I would not say that it is a happy municipality, I think not. [In school] there is so much sociopsychological suffering… it is like ‘Dad is always drunk’, do you see what I mean?

Petra and the other school professionals repeatedly return to this narrative to explain all problems and everything that is not functioning the way they desire. This is a contextual factor that is part of our findings and needs to be considered as we scrutinise the remainder of the findings.

The past and the present

Despite participants’ depiction of Shortfield as a mill town, characterised by the mill town mentality, there were also expressions of pride and a sense of wanting to defend the town, and even to make it stand out as a positive example.

There is also an incredible love to this town. There is no other place on earth that one could picture oneself living. Listen to [name omitted for ethical reason] when he talks about Shortfield, and about the history of the soccer team and the handball club and how this was done together, with the people from Shortfield, all the love to Shortfield to this very site. It is like ‘We in Shortfield….’ You see where I’m going? What we have achieved, what we have done, and all the improvements made by us. (Focus group)

The above statement is an outsider’s perception of how Shortfield’s inhabitants try to defend their hometown. This was appreciated by the study participants, and to various degrees they seemed convinced that this example of optimism was representative of the municipality, but always with the backdrop of being a ‘mill town’. In the focus group interview, participants started to talk about the Nazi past fairly quickly. Oscar, who has worked in Shortfield for more than 30 years, reflected upon Shortfield’s constant neo-Nazi presence, saying that he was always aware that they were there, but he did not notice them as a continuum until recently. He explained:

Well, I think that we maybe… well rather me, I saw it as an individual problem to a very large extent, at least back then. But surely it is a pattern. It is only now, when I can see it all from the outside, that I reckon that Shortfield is the platform. You know, it is a stronghold for mid-Sweden, having this club house and it is here that these individuals and organizations find each other and connects, The Hammerskins, the Nordic Resistance Movement, Alternative for [Sweden]… or whatever. There are no waterproof barriers between all these organizations, they find each other, building nests, but they also have the local municipality to build it all from, that is the backdrop. Now I can see it so much clearer, I can see the structure where I before just saw individuals.

Over time, Oscar connected the dots; where he saw individuals before, he now realises a cultural pattern, a structure that lasts, with individuals passing by. Oscar’s observation led to a discussion among other focus group participants, some of whom had not given it much thought. Olof, who had worked in Shortfield only for a short period, expressed a different experience. Although he agreed that the problem is structural, he insisted that this was his understanding from the start. He also explained that, in his current position, he is constantly reminded of the neo-Nazi presence in the region, rooted in Shortfield.

As I see it as an outsider, it is different [than for those living there] it is the stronghold [of the neo-Nazi’s movement] in mid-Sweden. It forms the basis for several organizations, that still today are recruiting new members. As when Bellum [a small neo-Nazi group] or the Nordic resistance movement offers training for martial arts. This last summer Bellum put up posters around the county, to us they were a new name, but we soon learned that it was the NRM that were behind it all. When we [in the town hall] are asked to let out training facilities to individuals we always have to ask ourselves ‘Is this perhaps NRM again?’ And we must make inquiries to make sure that we are not letting it to neo-Nazis. This is how it works, the NRM often ask an individual to contact us as a cover up for who is behind, and what is the true purpose. At the end it is all about recruiting new members.

What Olof and Oscar noticed was how the neo-Nazi movement is institutionalised in Shortfield in two layers that both last over generations. First, the movement has reproduced itself for almost a century in the same small municipality and is obviously well-adapted to shifting times. When it started in the early 1920s, Furugård was friends with several high-ranking Nazi officials (Lodenius, 2021), and the movement’s expressions and attributes were inspired by the Third Reich. In a most peculiar way, this historical connection to the Nazi-Germany’s past has been locally upheld, and each wave of stylistic shifts in the neo-Nazi movement has been incorporated into the local appearance of the Shortfield neo-Nazi group. Thus, today, the movement in Shortfield stays true to not only its 1920s origin but also upholds the aesthetics from the skinhead movement, calling themselves Hammerskinns. On another layer, their presence and ongoing outreach activities and recruitment have made public officials aware that they must always keep in mind that a person who wants to rent a gym may in fact be a neo-Nazi going about his (or in some cases, her) daily business to keep the movement going.

The neo-Nazi club house

The neo-Nazi movement in Shortfield has had a constant historical presence; however, the movement’s visibility and impact have varied a lot over the years. Occasionally, the neo-Nazi movement has materialised and become visible. Teachers who worked at the Shortfield school for many years remember when people in the movement gathered and had celebrations and political meetings in the local townhouse. Manfred told us:

I remember in the 1990s, when the Nazis had a big party or a meeting or whatever in The Town House in Shortfield. This meeting got a lot of attention in the national media, and being a youngster, I became really scared of it all. I do not remember what year this was, but it must have been in the middle of the 1990s. I still remember that no one was allowed to go out that evening. We had to stay at home, even though we lived quite far from this location.

The meetings in the Town Hall linger in some of the teachers’ memories as well, having grown up in the local neighbourhoods. Today, there are no meetings in the Town Hall, but the movement has a club house in Shortfield and neo-Nazis frequently meet there to drink beer, talk politics, and invite national and international people from the movement. Although many students and teachers are aware of the club house, there is not much talk about this materialisation of the movement in Shortfield. One student, Ville, illustrated how the presence of a club house and people branded as neo-Nazis are handled in Shortfield. As long as they keep on their side of the road and melt in, they are regarded as harmless, and also sometimes even as nice and friendly people.

Interviewer: Exactly, hmm, have you been in contact with any one from a racist or Nazi organization or something similar? Is this something you have been in contact with?

Ville: Yes probably, because I am a really social person, so I have definitely talked with several persons. But you cannot notice anything particular about them, but yes, I have talked to them. They have a Nazi hangout close to the petrol station, and yes, I have talked to them, because they are just ordinary people. When you talk to them, you cannot notice that they are racists or Nazis; and a person is also larger than his opinions.

Looking closer at the interaction between people living in Shortfield and the local neo-Nazis, it is possible to discern an intimate interconnection between local people in general, and local neo-Nazis. The club house is not seen as breaking news anymore. It is just a house with some people gathering, and potentially planning to spread their political messages and beliefs. A teacher, Manfred, described this normalisation as a process of trivialisation and attempted to downplay the club house’s significance.

When the club house was new, it was mentioned in the newspapers, and there was lots of talk about it also, but now, it has evened out. They do not make a lot of noise around here, as they probably do when having their meetings in different places in Sweden. I am not that informed about it all, but surely things happen. As soon as there has been something going on there, people talk about it, and my brother he tells me about it. But it is like, he pretty much sees a gang of old men, gathering to have a barbecue, and behaving silly. This is how people look upon them. One does not take them seriously, and maybe that is a bit dangerous also.

A student, Nicole, lived quite close to the club house. Her father had told her about the neo-Nazis gathering there, and she felt safe walking close to the club house. She was used to the neo-Nazis’ presence, and it is not something she talks a lot about with her friends or parents. It is just there.

Nicole: I do not think about it [the neo-Nazi club house]. When I think Nazis, then I think about what they do. They have their own way of looking at things, but I do not know, I do not feel, I do not know. I do not think it is creepy, because I do not reflect upon this at all. If I see someone, walking with my dog, then I just turn over the road, and continue. I do not feel that uncomfortable. The gates to the house are often closed. So, I do not worry at all.

Interviewer: But you know what they stand for or?

Nicole: No. I just know that my dad has told me that they are Nazis.

Interviewer: And what is a Nazi?

Nicole: Nazis, well, they want everyone to be in a certain way. For example, they think [less about] everyone with a dark skin, or black hair, red hair, colored hair… they want everyone to look in a specific way. They want everyone to have a certain religion. They want it all their own way, as I have understood it.

Talking with teachers and students at the Shortfield school, it became clear that the neo-Nazi movement’s historical presence is mostly seen as something ‘natural’. When Manfred talked about the meeting in the Town Hall in the mid-90s, he remembered being scared. Today no one is scared. The people gathering at the local club house are not seen as a threat; and to some students, they are not even considered negative. Therefore, how do this presence and the potential level of racism in the local community affect the school climate and everyday school life?

Institutional racism and the art of denial

Focusing on the school’s psychosocial climate, we looked more specifically at the occurrence of racist slurs and presence of neo-Nazi symbols and salutes. Both the teachers and students were more or less aware that sexist and racist jargon is used at the school. Acceptance of these events varies a lot, but what struck us was the strong tendency among both students and school professionals to downplay, and sometimes dismiss, everyday sexism and racism. Instead of talking about racism, some teachers talked about xenophobia, arguing that it was a milder form of fear of strangers, and not proper racism.

Cecilia: …we do not have much xenophobia at the school. It is like, we have a pretty mixed group of students here. They have different backgrounds, and they seem to accept each other. But, of course, they sometimes call out different words. But we do not look upon this as a problem, and we do not need to address this, and do something about it. No.

Interviewer: So, what kind of words are called out then?

Cecilia: Well, like Arab. We also have nigger, which they are not allowed to use, and Muslim, these kinds of words come out (Cecilia, Special Teacher, Shortfield).

These kinds of paradoxical narratives were quite frequent in the interviews. Although words, such as ‘nigger’ and ‘Arab’ were used in a derogatory way, these routine expressions were not regarded as a ‘problem’. The sexist and racist jargon becomes normalised, and as Melissa pointed out, eventually, the students do not react anymore.

It is like, one gets to hear this so often that nowadays I do not even react upon this. Of course, if someone would say this a lot, then I would react, of course. Like, now it became too much, but if someone would just say fuck, and cunt, and whore, then I would not think about it. It is just the same, but it is very sexist, of course, but yes (Melissa, Student, Shortfield).

Basically, these acts of micro-violence become a part of everyday school life, something students have to endure.

In the lower grades, students use words, such as ‘Fucking Arab’ as a swear word. It does not matter to whom this is addressed, anyone can be a ‘Fucking Arab’. This happens once a week or so. It has also escalated during the spring. It is not connected to any specific groups so far, but more like, I know that one can say like this because ‘you are different’. There is no real thought behind this, they use these words because they know that it is bad, and that everyone reacts when you say it (Sussanne, Principal, Shortfield).

There is a strong tendency to psychologise or use the mill town mentality as an excuse for why students use racist and sexist expressions. Talking with a student, Loke, it was obvious that everyday life at the school is marinated in racist and sexist acts, and that this is somehow regarded as normal, something one needs to accept and adjust to.

Loke: Cunt and whore, yes both the boys and the girls use these words. It is like the N-word, it is used as any swear word. It is not regarded as that negative on this school, anyway. Yes, someone can be particularly hurt by this, but then they just talk with the teachers, and they deal with this.

Interviewer: Do students use any other expressions as Hitler salutes or so?

Loke: Yes, some students salute Hitler. But they do not talk about this. They pretend that they wave at someone, but in reality, you know, they do it. Just for the fun, supposedly.

Interviewer: Have you made the Hitler Salute?

Loke: Yes, I have. But I have been thinking about it, that I ought not to.

In addition to racism and sexism, some students also flirted with neo-Nazi symbols and expressions. The teachers reacted in different ways to these racist and sexist acts. They were, of course, aware of the constant micro-violence at the school and tried to maintain order and react to the abusive acts, but there was also a tendency to treat the students as ignorant and innocent.

Interviewer: If you find a swastika, what happens then?

Petra: It depends. Obviously, we talk about this in the class. I try to explain what the symbol means and talk about its origin. Often, they do not know (Laugh), they do not know exactly what it stands for, besides that this is a racist symbol or antisemitic. But the main message is that we do not use this symbol, there is not that much to discuss. There are sometimes also Hitler salutes. Here. Especially among the high school students. They think it is a cool thing. But to the school, this is unacceptable. They will be reported. While it is so offensive (our italics).

The local community and its history have seeped into the school. There is, in general, a high acceptance for the constant buzzing of certain words, such as the N-word, ‘whore’, and other derogatory words. In addition, some students are in close contact with the local neo-Nazi community. They learn how to handle these confrontations through friends and relatives. Minding one’s own business seems to be a common strategy.

Annie: I have a friend in my parallel class, her stepfather is a Nazi. But we do not talk with them about this. They can be whatever they want, and I will take care of my business, and they can take care of their business. This is the way it is.

Interviewer: How do you know about this?

Annie: She has told me, and she has also told me that she is a racist or so. I do not know if she is, but she has probably been tricked into it, as she lives with him, and he is a Nazi (Annie, student, Shortfield).

Neither the teachers nor the students at the school were intentionally racist. However, our analysis identified repeated performative acts, such as using racist and sexist words and flirting with neo-Nazi symbols, which were downplayed by both students and teachers, but clearly reflect a successive adaptation to a high level of racism and sexism. This can be interpreted in terms of institutional racism as a ‘wall of whiteness’, and an inability to perceive and react to everyday racism and sexism. Based on our empirical findings, it is to bold to argue that the school, as an institution, is explicitly engaged in the reproduction of outspoken racism or even neo-Nazism. However, we would argue that the wall of whiteness is a vivid and performative practise that implicitly enables generational reproduction of also neo-Nazi by turning a blind eye towards the everyday racism.

Discussion and conclusions

Everyday racism comprises racist ideas upheld and reproduced by people who do not necessarily perceive themselves as racist. Moreover, the term is often used to distinguish the so-called unintentional racism from outspoken racism situated in other places, times, or groups, such as Nazi-Germany and the South African apartheid regime (Sawyer, 2000). By situating racism as something far from one’s life and world, everyday racism may be reproduced as a structure within the society and as power structures within institutions, without any racist intent.

Based on the Shortfield case, we argue that everyday racism may also be reproduced in conjunction with outspoken and intentional racism. Hence, there is no disconnection between unintentional and intentional racism, but rather, there is a continuum. Although all participants noticed neo-Nazi symbols, expressions, and behaviours, racism was still not considered a ‘problem’. Quite the opposite, the attributions were understood as exceptions and expressions of individual behaviours, rather than as routine and constant harassment. This is also how Oscar, in the focus group, understood in retrospect how he did not put things together and failed to identify the historical pattern. Shortfield, being a part of the Swedish society, is certainly structured by the wall of whiteness, as accounted for in the theoretical section. However, as we understand our participants, the wall of whiteness is not only the vertical exercises of power contributing to unintentional racism. The outspoken racism that we encounter among our informants and the ignorance to acknowledge this intentional racism as racism pushes the case of Shortfield further.

Shortfield’s wall of whiteness – at first-hand – is not concerned with how non-white people are measured, but how white people see themselves among other white people and their beliefs that white people are not racists. Therefore, when white people in Shortfield routinely express racism and appreciate neo-Nazism, they are perceived as uninformed, and more importantly, as not representative in any way. When people act upon their obviously racist convictions, school professionals dismiss the actions as resulting from being breaded and marinated in a mill town mentality; therefore, not something to be taken seriously. In this sense, the wall of whiteness is just another form of the fundamental error of attribution (i.e. non-desirable behaviour among in-group members is seen as an exception, and not as a representative pattern). Consequently, the Nazi movement has generationally reproduced itself in Shortfield for a century, in the midst of the municipality and indeed also within the roams of the school’s professional work – with the teachers well aware of the continuous history – but with only people from the outside realising the problem of racism in Shortfield. Hence, the school in Shortfield is unwittingly becoming a part of the reproduction, not only of the wall of whiteness but also the neo-Nazi and right-wing extremist milieus by individualising the problem rather than encounter the structures.

To conclude, racism is institutionalised in society at large, leading to much more serious problems than the openly expressed racism in Shortfield. However, we would argue that Shortfield’s case may inform us of an eventual shift in the understanding of racist practices in Swedish society. While the wall of whiteness has been a vertical solid structure, but implicit watershed mechanism for sorting who passes as white or not, in the case of Shortfield, we see a more horizontal construction of the wall of whiteness. White people, without any particular positions in the local society, enable an explicit standard of whiteness that the teachers do not have the strength, will, or capacity to challenge. This more horizontal construction may help us understand the rise of influential political movements in the Western world calling out for white domination; these movements try to cut their ties to a racist or Nazi past. Shortfield, however, is an example of geographical space with a Nazi past, possibly transforming into a geographical location cultivating an Avant-Garde for the neo-nationalistic cultural war. However, that is a matter for further and future research.