Today is fifteen years since the Norwegian terror attack that killed 77 people, most of them children. I have been reading articles about it, and crying. All day, crying.
I was 21 when it happened. Older than most of those kids ever got to be. I'm 36 now. Those kids would have been in their early thirties. Maybe have children of their own. Probably still politically active; fighting for a better world. There is no way of knowing what would have been different, had this crime never happened.
At around the same time as the terrorist prepared his attack, a man was shooting people in Malmö. He targeted people with non-European features, Roma, and Muslims. He murdered 2, attempted to murder 8 more. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2013. He is often compared to the so-called "Laser man" of Stockholm, who murdered two and attempted to murder ten more, in the 90s. He also exclusively targeted non-Europeans. A few years after that, in 1995, 14-year old John Hron was beaten to death by Neo-Nazis. The 90s were a dark time. We believed they had passed. Until Malmö. Until Norway.
In 2015, four years after the Norwegian attacks, a man walked into a middle school in Trollhättan, Sweden, armed with a sword. He killed three people, one of whom was a child. Like the ones above, he only targeted non-white people; he even allowed white students to pass by unbothered as he searched for victims. He was 21 years old. The same age I was when the Norwegian attack happened. One of his victims was a year younger. One was 15. The perpetrator was killed by police.
I remember the parents of the victim saying that they moved to Sweden to provide a better life for their children. One without violence. Only to have him bleed to death in his own school at age 15. All because he wasn't white.
Last year (it's hard to believe it was last year, it both seems like forever ago and like it happened yesterday), a man entered a community college in Örebro and opened fire. This school had many students who were immigrants; they were there to learn Swedish and study for work licenses. 10 of them didn't make it home. The perpetrator took his own life. Police claimed there were "no ideological motives" behind the attack. The public generally do not believe them. He specifically chose this school, one with a large non-European student body, when he could have picked anyone.
This year, Sweden holds a general election. The Sweden Democrats are the second biggest political party. Despite what they'd want you to believe, they have not moved far away from their Neo-Nazi roots. They're just better at hiding them behind propaganda. For four years, our far right government have worked hard to make Sweden a worse country to live in. They blame it on immigrants, on Muslims, on the "woke left". But the truth is that the real threat to Sweden, to Scandinavia, to the world in general, is the fascists and racists that live among us. They are the ones that kill children, that shoot up schools, that try to divide us. Fifteen years ago, one of them murdered 77 humans, most of them children. Since then, they've only gotten bolder, louder, stronger.
I was 21 when it happened. I watched it unfold on a TV screen. It felt unreal, it was so close, just the neighbouring country. My friend in Norway wrote on Facebook about the explosion in Oslo. I ran between the TV and my computer to get updates as it happened. I wrote a post on Facebook, screaming: "WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?!"
"It must be Islamists," the media screeched. Then the news came in from Utoya, and it became clear it wasn't. They targeted the left. Political activists. That's not what Islamists do. Only one group of people do that.
My friend in Norway: "They're killing the children..."
In 1945, everyone said: Never again.
In 2011, everyone said: Never again.
Then it kept happening. It keeps happening.
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