Mr. Arne Ruth (moderator) AR
Ms. Judith Vidal-Hall (moderator) JvH
Dr. Marie Gillespie MG
Mr. Rafal Pankowski RP
Mr. Toralf Staud TS
Mr. Carl Wennerstrand CW

AR opened the session by stressing the importance of Internet, sit-coms, soap operas and music. All of these different media are more important than the traditional journalism. Then AR briefly introduced the panel members.
MG spoke on her paper. It deals foremost with the sit-com Goodness gracious me (Curry nam-nam, in Swedish). This kind of humor runs the risk of backfiring if the audience is laughing with the racists, not at them. All joking relationships are power relations. MG listed a number of reasons for Goodness gracious me becoming a success in Great Britain.

– It is sophisticated humor
– It makes fun of Asians as well as Europeans
– It follows in a tradition of European Jewish humor
– It uses the stereotypes
– It has a lot of catch-phrases

The sit-com has meant empowerment and identification for the Indians in Britain. It raises a lot of questions on integration. MG finds it very important that the broadcasting companies are proactive in trying to find young talents.

AR makes a comparison with a number of Swedish films, such as Det nya landet, Vingar av glas and Jalla jalla. These are all films where the immigrant is not only an immigrant but a person just as complex and interesting as anyone else. In fact in the films mentioned they are all leading characters. This films fits MG’s description of Goodness gracious me very well.

After that RP gave a shocking report on the state of Central and Eastern Europe. 15,000 youths are involved in the racist scene in Poland. This rising youth culture is not an economic or political movement but above all a politics of identity. He also pointed out that a lot of the racist networks are moving to Central or Eastern Europe. Legislation there is more permissive and production costs lower, for example. He ended by calling for more and better monitoring of the groups in Poland.

TS gave an equally shocking description of East Germany, telling how some villages had completely fallen in to the hands of the right-wing extremists. These are what the extremists call “the liberated areas”. In these areas the extremist is no outcast but a highly respected citizen. Just as in Poland or Sweden, record sales are a big industry in East Germany. There are approximately 100 different bands and the CD industry has made 1.5 million the last eight years. The Internet, similarly, is a big problem. At present there are 500 different racist web pages in Germany. At the same time as this is a threat, the Internet is a mixed blessing for the racist movement. Napster, for example, drains their music industry of money.

CW told us his own personal history from the racist movement. Since he wasn’t big enough to be the fighter or the bully he took on the role as the thinker. He then tells us how he used the stories in the tabloid papers to boost claims in his propaganda material. He was riding a populist wave in Sweden after the rise of the New Democracy party. The use of newspaper articles on immigrants made his writing appear more credible. When New Democracy failed the papers started to report on the incorrectness of the numbers they themselves had previously printed . When Carl saw the wrongs he had been agitating for, he withdrew from the movement.

Question from the auditorium: What do you do to counteract all this?
RP referred to the CD Music against nazism, which he claims made quite a difference.
TS believed it probably had to do with the unemployment. But then he pointed out that those who are active are not always unemployed. There is also a feeling of not being properly represented in the political system.

AR described the view taken by Exit. According to him they regard Nazis as gangs and try to form counter-cultures to help members to get out.

Question from the auditorium: How does the ban on nazi organization in Germany affect the groups?

TS replied that it was very hard to decide which group was similar enough to the NSDAP to be convicted. He is himself against legislation. The Internet, for example, he feels is impossible to legislate against.

Susette Bronkhurst described work in a Dutch monitoring center. They contact the web host of a site with illegal material and tell him/her that its content is illegal and that he/she has 48 hours to close the page before they contact the authorities. As stated earlier, it is only a medium and can’t be prohibited before it’s published, that would be censorship.