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'Islam is like Nazism': top Sweden Democrat

Published: 22 Nov 12 12:49 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/44588/20121122/

The Sweden Democrats' new justice policy spokesman, unveiled on Thursday as part of a reshuffle in the wake of a racist video scandal, has already made headlines for his comparison of Islamism to Nazism.

“We’re presenting a new team today after what happened last week,” Jimmie Åkesson said at a press conference, referring to the scandal after the publication of a video showing three party members in a drunken and racist tirade from 2010.

Åkesson presented Richard Jomshof, a former high school teacher who was previously the editor in chief for the Sweden Democrat paper SD–Kuriren, as the replacement for former justice policy spokesman Kent Ekeroth who stepped down on Wednesday.

Jomshof has previously likened Islamism to Nazism in the publication, a view he showed no signs of abandoning on Thursday.

“I’ve also compared Islamism with National Socialism and Communism. I stand by that. I think it’s a completely reasonable comparison,” he told TT.

Jomshof was then asked whether he equates Islamism to the religion Islam.

“Islam is an ideology. That doesn't mean there is only one direction within Islam or that all Muslims think the same. There are different directions in all ideologies.”

Party leader Åkesson did not dismiss his colleague's statements.

“It depends on how you make the comparison. Now we’re seeing an example in Gaza and other conflicts where extreme Islamists are involved, sometimes using the same symbols that the Nazis used," he said.

"Such a comparison can in certain cases be relevant.”

Meanwhile, the party also announced a replacement for Erik Almqvist, who stepped down last week as the party's economic policy spokesman. Taking his place is 44-year-old Sven-Olof Sällström.

The publication of the now-infamous video sent the party into a tailspin.

Its youth wing leader Gustav Kasselström was discharged from his duties as parliamentary secretary on Wednesday after he defended his disgraced colleagues.

Apart from the damage to their political careers, the three politicians implicated by the video may not be out the woods yet.

On Tuesday, Chief Prosecutor Mats Åhlund launched a formal investigation into whether they are guilty of racial agitation (hets mot folkgrupp), a crime punishable by up to two years in prison.

TT/The Local/og
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14:27 November 22, 2012 by Freedaysaregooddays
What do I think?

I don't really like The Local. I come here now and again when I want to get an English speaking perspective on the news in Sweden. But I am starting to wonder if it was not for SD, would The Local, like their Swedish speaking counterparts, actually have any real news to report on?

And who really cares if a somebody has compared Islam with Nazism. You the media, compare SD to Nazis all the time!
14:36 November 22, 2012 by Cephalectomy
nazis are like SD ? SD is like islam ?
15:20 November 22, 2012 by Eric1
Lets see, nazism and Islam both want to kill Jews, they hate Christians, hate personal freedom, hate anyone who thinks differently than they do. Some might place "journalist" in this equation but I'm ready to do this.
15:52 November 22, 2012 by kompis
To Eric 1.... who told you Islam want to kill Jews, who told you they hate Christians and who told you they hate personal freedom .....
15:54 November 22, 2012 by Svensksmith
There are similarites.
16:19 November 22, 2012 by Iraniboy
@kompis

There are some Muslims who hate and wanna kill Jews, Christians, Buddies and Atheists!

There are some Jews who hate and wanna kill Muslims and maybe Christians and Atheists!

There are some Christians who hate Jews and Muslims and wanna kill them!

There are some Buddies who hate Muslims and wanna kill them!

.

The bottom line is that if you belong to one of the groups above as SD, Nazis, Taliban, Breivik and Eric2 appear to be, then you'd rather assume that 'Some' is equal to all of that groups to justify your hatred and consequently violent behaviors!
17:25 November 22, 2012 by jostein
This obscene fixation on SD by the swedish media is telling a story for those who know how to listen. It is the same story being told by the medias and the swedish states obscene fixation on racism.

If Sapiens Sapiens is not naturally xenophobic, why are these things such an issue? And if Sapiens Sapiens is naturally xenophobic, why is the state behaving the way it is? In that case, why battle human nature? Its reminicient of the jihad of the catholic church against the natural sexuality of Sapiens Sapiens. What purpuse does it serve?
18:05 November 22, 2012 by ajs42548
@kompis.. Who said that Muslims want to kill Jews? Ummm Muslims and of course Mohammed who not only said it but personally killed hundreds of Jews. Every Islamic terrorist group said it and the Quran has many passages in it that implies that Jews should be killed? During WW2 the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem complained to Hitler that he wasn't killing Jews fast enough. Did I answer your question?
18:42 November 22, 2012 by Garaad
We should Ignore whatever SD say. They are probably only insulting Islam because they don't know what islam is all about and they are jealous. If they continue insulting Islam or bothering Muslims in any way, muslims should walk away from them.
19:09 November 22, 2012 by Just_Kidding
When Muslims obtain the luxury of ruling a country, they don't show any compassion towards atheists or believers of other faiths. One can look into the massacre of "Banu Qurayza" by Muhammad and Ali or the mass murder of political prisoners by Khumeini in the summer of 1988. By Khumeini's order, they asked prisoners if they were willing to do the daily prayings and if their parents were Muslims (to identify infidels), before deciding about their life. Hardliner Muslims issue fatwa's of killing of people like Salman Rushdie, Ahmad Kasravi, Lars Vilks, RafiqTagi, ...) while the so called "peaceful fraction of the Muslims" are completely silent. In Iran, where a group of hard-line Muslims (mainly affected by ideas of Gaddafi and Hizbollah) have imprisoned the masses by the rule of "lovely Islam", a person of Bahai faith is not admitted to Universities and is not offered a government job, in addition to the daily verbal and physical abuse from "peace loving Muslims that don't behave like Nazis at all".
19:32 November 22, 2012 by lewni
Poor Jimmie, it oftentimes feels like he's the only one in his party who acts like a politician. Best of luck to him getting through this, no other party has their flaws so breathtakingly scrutinized as the Sweden Democrats.
19:58 November 22, 2012 by cowboykodp
Did everyone miss the point this new SD weasel was making ???

I'm not surprised, considering the IQ of most of The Local's commentators.

He said Islamists/ extremism is like Nazism. I tend to agree with him.

The problem is that most people are too stupid to understand the difference between Islam and Islamists.

Although this one fact is pretty accurate, his intention is still the same. To brush an entire religion and its followers with the same brush.

In case people forgot, Hiltler was Christian.

Just look at some Jewish extremists who believe that unless you are Jewish you are damned.

In conclusion extremism, SD, racists, bigots, and all other hopeless loosers (some of whom are present on this very site daily) are the SCUM of the earth.
20:34 November 22, 2012 by skatty
It means there are over 1 billion Nazis around the world, with all the men circumcised!
20:44 November 22, 2012 by salalah
The rhetorics are just like in Germany in the 1930's: Blame one group of people for unemployment, greed, moral decay etc. I am surprised that no one has seen those similarities. Remember Hitler brainwashed Germans to believe that the Jews were to blame for everything. We are seeing this now. Most of the non-muslims who comment negatively about Islam have not really read about Islam. Islam means: submission to God. It is against killing innocent people. Those muslims who kill civillians are in great error. Woe to them!!!

Muslims are only allowed to defend themselves against people who attack them.

Those who interpret the verses wrongly are in great error.

SD confuse religion with culture. Some uncivilized people who say they are Muslims do lots of wrong things, are not kind and practice their own religion.

These are people who should learn Swedish, be kind to the Swedes and instead try to teach them the truth about Islam. Animosity only feeds hostility. Islam means to live with others in peace and to respect their religion. Islam teaches respect and acceptance of Christians.

Sura 2:62: Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in God and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve.
21:43 November 22, 2012 by Iraniboy
@skatty

Well the majority of circumcised men in the US are actually Jews and Christian! :) Good luck with your circumcised world :)

@Just_kidding

The fact is that when hatred is allowed against a group, you get no chance to explain if you are an Muslim Iranian/Arab or an atheist one! People will look at you before they talk to you and even if they talk to you you cannot go around saying hey I'm not Muslim! So you will be always a target in and SD/Nazi world!
22:32 November 22, 2012 by Freedaysaregooddays
@Ironyboy.

Yeah except SD is not an extremist group. What they mostly are is a bunch of law abiding Swedes who would rather not let your culture become theirs and that of their children's. I don't see why that is hard to figure out with some people. I wouldn't want your culture to replace mine either, and I have nothing against Iranians at all, but that is why there's an increase in support for the SD: because people are starting to question the Swedishness of Sweden's future under the current system of mass immigration.

Since you obviously feel there are similarities with SD and Taliban and other Islamic extremists, how about you do a Google image or a Youtube search for violent atrocities caused by SD and post some of this comparable evidence on The Local. Because I am just not seeing it. By comparison though, we can do a quick Google image search for Muslims, and even so called moderate Muslims, threatening westerners with sharia law and cutting their heads off for merely offending Allah, and we get back an almost endless supply extremist lunatics.

@Jostein.

I agree. Both with regards to how we as living creatures are supposed to interact to people from outside of our "in groups", and to how the Swedish media continues their character assassination on the whole SD party. I wouldn't trust Swedish media to do balanced, objective and fair journalism as far as I could throw them.
22:43 November 22, 2012 by Malangi31
every loser in world takes Islam as scoreboard to raise points and hide personal failure when they have nothing else left to do.

All the postulates of humanity vanish when it comes to Islam and muslims :S
23:02 November 22, 2012 by Iraniboy
@Freedaysaregooddays

Culture?! Immigration? That's what I've heard from SD supporters but SD members themselves rather talk about nations, races and religious groups which happen to be practiced mainly by special dark races! :) So unfortunately your valid point about vulture has no place in SD agenda! Besides, I have lived in Sweden long enough to know that the reason why SD is not very popular in Sweden is because it is inherently against Swedish culture. Tolerance, liberalism, and respect for other beliefs is core of Swedish culture that is violated by SD folk. That is the main reason why he vast majority of Swedes are against it!

My culture, you culture, his/her culture is a unfortunately an illusion. I do not have the same culture as my parents and so forth!

The similarity is already there, you mean SD hasn't got anywhere like Taliban and Nazis? Well they need time! Nazis didn't start killing Jews on day one! It was milestone and it all started by degrading and dehumanizing them!
00:16 November 23, 2012 by Eric1
kompis, they tell us all in their words, and actions. Read their web sites or newspapers in any Muslim country, not the English versions but Arabic language versions.
11:03 November 23, 2012 by Freedaysaregooddays
@Iraniboy

Posted earlier and for whatever reason it did not show.

What you said here in the first paragraph is that Sweden has a culture and in the second paragraph that it does not?

That does not make sense.

As for those traditional values that you mentioned like tolerance and respect for other people's beliefs being at the core of Sweden's culture? That might have been true at one point, but now it is increasingly cultural marxism which is at the core of Sweden's culture.

Tolerance and respect for other people's beliefs work both ways you know. It's pretty clear that currently Sweden's extreme left media, politics and hate-groups like Antifa, do not have to adhere to the same values.
14:51 November 23, 2012 by Iraniboy
@ Freedaysaregooddays

Well it doesn't if we see it as it is there without further elaboration. Every country has a dominant culture in many different areas but every individual gets something like 10 to 80% of that culture. So you may talk about a dominant culture of a country but you cannot assume someone's culture to be that of his/her country! A good example is a Swedish SD member who probably shares some Swedish culture but rejects what some other 90% truly believe in Sweden. So his individual culture is way different than in comparison with the dominant Swedish culture.

I'm sure the majority of Swedes who have those traditional values of tolerance and respect for other's belief do not agree with you that they are moving toward Marxism. You know better than me that they consider it human obligation and they refrain relating it to any political or religious establishment.

As for having it both ways, it should be like that! But what if it isn't? Then I guess the answer is 'Two wrongs don't make a right' and human values are not conditional. If someone does something wrong he shouldn't be stripped from his human rights. I think that's what they would tell you :)

As for media, it is not extreme left. We still have China and Russia. Their media is controlled by the government and it is extreme left. Then we have US, Israel and Iran who are pioneer in extreme right media. The fact is that in both groups you see that they need to marginalize their minorities within their own country. That's only way of survival for dictatorship/corporations to continue using people by 'Divide and Rule' and by blaming one group of people for economical problems. In Sweden people are not blamed when unemployment rises. So you should be very happy that your country's media is not corrupted like the rest of the world (left and right).
15:00 November 23, 2012 by CosmoKramar
"Islam is like Nazism" - this is the quote in your headline, but I'm yet to find it in the piece itself? And indeed, the first paragraph says that it was IslamISM he was comparing to Nazism, which is of course an important disctinction, since one refers to the religion and one to its politicised ideology - so, shurely shome mishtake? Which is it, Local? Heaven forfend the suspicion that you might be sexing up your headlines again and sacrificing truth and itegrity on the alter of page impressions?

Islamism - the political ideology of Islamist supremacy and governance by shariah law is a well-documented, abundtantly obvious phenomenon whose reality and effects are flagrantly displayed throughout the Middle East. It's there in Saudia Arabia, in the Hamas charter, in the Muslim Brotherhood, in the outlook of the people who shot a Pakistani schoolgirl in the head recently for wanting to go to school. It is a phenomenon well-known and well elucidated by people of much more intellectual repute and integrity than Sweden Democrat members or employees of The Local. And its effects and influences bear, in many respects, resounding similarities to Nazism. They are both totalitarian ideologies that sweep away civil liberties, crush cultural expression and human individuality under foot, and inculcate a nightmare of persecution for minorities.

The comparison is entirely valid, whether the man from SD realises how much so or not. One thing's for sure: before writing about this subject, The Local had better demonstrate at least a degree of the intellectual seriousness required to engage with these subjects. This piece, from its spurious headline onwards, is an execrable, cowardly, intellectually filthy piece of nasty insinuation and trouble stirring designed to get people wound up about a subject few understand, in order to generate hits and comments and readership statistics. The Local plainly lacks the knowledge, expertise and integrity in its staff to treat these issues credibly - until it does, it should write no more on them.

At the moment, The Local is anti-journalism - seeking to obscure truth, misrepresent reality and confuse/provoke readers for its own financial gain. If we're comparing things to Nazism, one might say Goebbels would be proud - although he might at least insist on better language.
10:12 November 24, 2012 by godnatt
Islam is like Nazism... except Islam has more blood on its hands.
18:56 November 24, 2012 by begum
and you call yourselves democrats and the most unsided country? shame on your ignorance and prejudicity
23:13 November 24, 2012 by Just_Kidding
Islam is like Nazism, the only difference is that Nazim failed in capturing countries and enslaving people, while Islam has been successful.
02:35 November 25, 2012 by bcterry
Islam is like nazism?

No, ...... it's worse.
20:03 November 28, 2012 by TheWatchman
Islam is the modern form of Nazism. During WWII, they were praying for the annihilation of the Jews and wanted liberation from British rule by the Nazis. Right now, they threaten free speech across the Western world, and stifle it in their own countries. Do we really need more of these people?
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