This text has been translated from Norwegian with the assistance of GPT UiO.
For as long as he can remember, Jimmy has felt distrustful of society. The system that everyone else around him called democracy did not seem particularly democratic in Jimmy’s eyes. He had realised how corrupt politicians and civil servants could be. And in the background, the international companies were pulling the strings.
Why was no one else able to see how rotten it all was?
As a result of the civil war in Syria in 2015, refugees poured into Sweden. Jimmy was living in Norrk?ping with his wife and their five-year-old daughter. He was a manager in a local company. Privately, Jimmy thought that the intake of refugees was not sustainable. Swedish society was already far too burdened by gang crime and increasing social inequality.
One day Jimmy met representatives from the Nordic Resistance Movement, who were out handing out leaflets. Jimmy realised he was standing there talking to outright Nazis, but he couldn’t help being impressed.
– Here, finally, were people who dared to speak out and take to the streets to do something about this emerging refugee crisis. I thought they were brave; they dared to stand by their views, even though those views went dire
Exposed as a nazi
Jimmy became a supporting member of the Nordic Resistance Movement. He started reading more, went to meetings and got to know other members; quite quickly he became more involved. Jimmy began writing for the online newspaper Nordfront, under a pseudonym. For two years, a kind of radicalisation process took place, according to Jimmy – he became more and more extreme in his views.
– But after two years in the movement my identity was exposed by Antifa. I was publicly outed as a fully fledged Nazi, and then a lot happened in a very short time.
Jimmy was fired from the company. Friends pulled away. The premiere of the play his theatre group was about to put on was only a few weeks away – but even so, they managed to find a replacement for him.
After a year, his wife left.
– It was the end of everything. I had ended up in a situation where I thought: OK, now I really have nothing left to lose.
Beyond the point of no return
So Jimmy put the pedal to the metal. He went all in and became even more active in the movement. Quite quickly he became head of a regional branch in Sweden. He organised actions, wrote articles, built networks. It was only when they decided to obtain weapons for a possible attack that Jimmy stopped and looked around.
What was he actually doing?
– It was at this point that I was contacted by Christer Mattsson, an extremism researcher at the University of Gothenburg. He wanted to talk to me. I thought I’d be able to convince him, get him to see what I saw, says Jimmy.
– During our conversations, Christer said almost nothing; he just let me talk. In the end I think I myself started to realise that what I was claiming simply could not be true. Could it really be as simple as us having the truth, while everyone who contradicted us were liars?
Jimmy explains that he gradually began to see the sect-like nature of the movement he was at the centre of – this idea that white people were somehow better suited to rule the world than others, solely because of their skin colour.
In the end, Jimmy made up his mind: he wanted out.
– But it wasn’t easy. It took about a year before I could say publicly that I was stepping down. I received death threats and had to be very careful.
The distrust is the same, the analysis has changed
Without income from the movement, Jimmy had to go out and find work. That turned out to be difficult. When employers found out about his Nazi background, everything stopped. Jimmy applied for more than 200 jobs. A couple of times he was hired, but then he was dismissed again after a short time. By then, the company had had time to read up about him on the internet.
Jimmy changed his surname, thinking it would be easier that way. But the outcome was the same; it just took a little longer. Eventually Jimmy decided to move.
– I moved a thousand kilometres north in Sweden. Also to protect my daughter, he says.
– I’ve managed to create a sort of life. No one knows who I am. They don’t know my history. But I’ve had to learn to live much more simply.
Today Jimmy drives a taxi. He says he has moved a long way away from the ideas he once held. When Jimmy talks about the past now, it feels a bit like this: how could I think like that? How could I reason that way?
– At the same time, the distrust of society and democracy remains. But the analysis of the causes has changed, he says.
– Nowadays I think that it is power itself that is the problem, not who holds it. Power corrupts people. That is why we must try to spread power as widely as possible. That’s my conclusion. Only then can we have a real democracy.
Once a nazi, always a nazi
When Tore Bj?rgo began researching far-right environments in the 1980s, the credo was clear: once a Nazi, always a Nazi. During the 1990s, Bj?rgo interviewed more and more people who had been involved in, but were no longer active in, neo-Nazi groups. He began to realise that the picture was more nuanced.
In 1997, Bj?rgo was therefore involved in launching the first Exit project – a programme that far-right extremists could contact if they wanted to get out.
– The concept spread quickly across the world. Now we have Exit in the USA, in Sweden, in Germany, he says.
Today, Bj?rgo is a professor at C-REX – the Centre for Research on Extremism. He explains that Norway no longer has an Exit programme, but that municipalities and the correctional services have incorporated mentoring schemes for people who are either at risk of ending up in extremist environments or want to leave them.
– The Exit idea has become part of the public toolbox, you could say. For my part, this work has been the most important contribution of my life, where research-based knowledge has been translated directly into practice, which in turn has helped many people. It has been extremely meaningful.
Open science
Jimmy Marklund is one of the fifteen former far-right extremists who have so far been interviewed by Tore Bj?rgo and Robert ?rell, former head of Exit Sweden. The conversations have been made available as a dataset of transcribed interviews, and now also as podcasts on C-REX’s website.
The background to the initiative is the pressure of requests – from researchers, students and journalists – for access to people with a background in far-right environments in the Nordic countries.
– We know that very few are willing to come forward. It is a huge strain for them to talk about these things. That is why we have been reluctant to put people in touch with former extremists, says Bj?rgo.
– Part of the point of this dataset is to make the material available once and for all. It’s what is known as open science. Now, when we receive requests, we can send them to the dataset. That way, research in the field can continue, while these people are left in peace.
Robert ?rell explains that most people who exit a far-right milieu find themselves in a huge emptiness.
– There aren’t many people queuing up to be friends with former Nazis. First come all the upheavals that follow from leaving such an often violence-oriented movement, and then the emptiness afterwards.
Good people who refuse to forgive
For a relatively small number of people, it is the far-right ideology itself that draws them into a milieu. For the vast majority, it is something more social that appeals, according to Tore Bj?rgo and Robert ?rell.
– They are looking for a sense of belonging, an identity, acceptance or protection. For many, the ideology comes later, says ?rell.
– For some, it may be a traumatic experience, such as having been subjected to violence by a gang of immigrants or something similar. Or it may be something completely different in their upbringing that has been traumatic and leaves them with a kind of pressure in their lives; they are, in a way, wide open, and this is what gets hold of them.
How difficult it is to leave the milieus usually depends on the role the person has played, the extremism researchers explain.
– Jimmy became a leader because he had a lot to contribute. Others become more like foot soldiers. It is often easier for them to withdraw without it having excessively serious consequences, says Bj?rgo.
– More high-profile figures often experience exclusion from friends and family. Some receive threats from former comrades, who see them as traitors. Others receive threats from militant anti-racists who are not willing to forgive.
Debt relief
Jimmy would prefer not to talk to anyone about what he has been involved in. He nevertheless agreed to take part in a documentary film about neo-Nazi environments in the Nordic countries, thinking it could help others who were on their way in, or out.
But afterwards he regretted it.
– I don’t want to spend the rest of my life being an ex-Nazi. I don’t want that to be my identity. I just want to be Jimmy again. Every time I take part in an interview about my past, it tears everything open.
Jimmy has built up a lot of debt during the period he has been without work. For the next five years he will live at subsistence level. Under a state debt arrangement, everything he earns above a certain amount goes to the state.
After five years, all the debt is written off.
– My daughter is fifteen now. She is the one I live for. She still lives in Norrk?ping; we cannot see each other very often. But I hope that in time we can live closer to each other, when all this has calmed down. That we might be able to be a family again.