The Police

Reposting this as kind of a contribution to the current discussion about racism and police violence.

It’s a chapter from my graphic novel Me & my Daddy & Zlatan. I started working on this story back in 2009, trying to capture the feeling in some parts of Sweden (which is NOT a perfect country where Police are great and serviceminded to everyone and racism is a thing of the past if it ever even existed here, no matter what some people seem to think). Hope you enjoy it. I really wish it would have been outdated by now, but sadly it isn’t.

Click images to make them bigger/more readable:

zlatan-eng_a5-58 zlatan-eng_a5-59 zlatan-eng_a5-60 zlatan-eng_a5-61 zlatan-eng_a5-62 zlatan-eng_a5-63 zlatan-eng_a5-64 zlatan-eng_a5-65 zlatan-eng_a5-66You can order the book, ins Swedish or English version, from the Hybriden webshop.

75 years…

75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. Will we make it to 100 without a repetition of the Holocaust? This year, for some reason, someone somehow allowed the Sweden Democrats (our biggest racist party) be in charge of a remembrance ceremony. Oh, did I call them racist? I’m not sure that’s allowed anymore, because it would mean that a great segment of the Swedish population would also be racist for supporting them. And we can’t have that, can we? They did use to be nazis, and they do blame every bad thing they can think of on immigrants, muslims, leftists, descendants of immigrants, feminists etc. But that’s not enough anymore, it seems, as long as they don’t openly call themselves racist.

Anyway, I made these two comics (I only have Swedish versions, sorry for that) for the exhibition Mus, Mouse, Maus in 2010/2011, an exhibition to honor Art Spiegelman’s excellent comic Maus, and also in remembramce of the Holocaust:

And the follow-up, since they asked for a new, less provocative version for a later edition of the exhibition:

I really should translate these, shouldn’t I? I’ll try to do that at some point…

2018

Welcome to 2018 and the fictionalized world.

What used to be nerd trivia is now common knowledge. When I was a kid, it wasn’t ok to know things like: who is Aunt May, what are the superpowers of the X-men, what’s the name of Superman’s adoptive mother and Batman’s birth mother? Ok, the last two have no justification for their exaggerated status as common knowledge, if you get my drift, but still. Who would have guessed that there would ever be a Black Panther movie that people in general (even in Sweden) would look forward to? Who would have thought that a Punisher TV series would even be possible?

That’s fiction gaining ground in the general consciousness. Superhero fiction it may be, and I’m not saying it’s a lower form because it’s superheroes because I know there are some good stories coming out of the genre, but you know, who would have thought that this underestimated genre could become so successful in the mainstream? And, maybe more importantly, what will come from it? Because out of a superhero-dominated North American comics culture came lots of interesting stuff, within the genre and from other parts of a culture whose lifeblood was those menand women in tights. Now I’m talking about a period that spans the 1980s and forward that is still evolving.

Speaking of women in tights… Did you know that, for example, the X-men comics were doing things with gender equality in the late 70s/early 80s that the movie industry is still working to catch up with. Could you imagine that the Wonder Woman movie, as progressive as it is in some respects, is actually a step backwards in many ways. It’s shameful to have to wait until now for this kind of big female superhero main character. At the same time it’s great that it finally came. It’s great that it opened the door for more. At the same time it’s shameful in the execution. How Wonderful wouldn’t it have been to have this Amazon woman come into the early 1900s world of men and simply not accept any of it. To have her look at the guys running the world, be they “good” or “bad”, and simply decide to fix it. Instead we got a character who decided to go shopping for clothes and play along as if she’d been indoctrinated into the role of the “fairer sex” all her life. Logically she would see Ares in all of Patriarchal society rather than one single man. I’m just saying. It could have been a great movie.

Anyway. While the nerd in me is hopeful, there’s also a darker side to this development. The city I live in has been depicted as a warzone, invaded by bearded men from foreign countries. And it doesn’t matter that it’s not true if real-life laws and policies are based on that image.

Similarly, if regular news is being treated as fake news and fake news is being treated as the hidden truth that the “elite” has tried to hide from us, sooned or later this new “truth” will be the basis of real-life policies (as if that wasn’t already enough of the case). The “elite” clearly not being people like the US president or the third biggest party in Sweden, but someone else. It’s not the Jews anymore, so probably the secret Leftist/Muslim conspiracy. You know, the ones who really rule the place, which explains why we all live in a Socialist Sharia dystopia. The ones who keep enforcing the belief that the Earth is round and other such nonsense…

So yeah, the future is going to be… interesting…

Here’s some of what I plan to be doing this year:

The theme for the AltCom 2018 comics festival, in late August, will be: HOW TO SURVIVE A DICTATORSHIP. There will be exhibitions and talks from people who have already lived through dictatorships as well as people who plan to survive future ones (you may have already guessed that 2018 is election year in Sweden).

I have a bunch of plans for new books, some of which involving the concept of the fictionalization of reality, but I don’t want to jinx anything so I won’t tell you what they are. Except I’ll have a comic in the upcoming CBA vol 38|39: Fragments that will be released really soon.

I will probably also have some part in the upcoming exhibitions FRAGMENTS and BEST OF CBK in the first half of the year. Both exhibited at Hybriden in Malmö.

Other than that, most of my time will be spent working with the zine workshop, FANZINEVERKSTADEN, a new project run by Tusen Serier with financing from Arvsfonden, which will be a space for selfpublishing of comics. I won’t talk about it more just yet, but when we get closer to actually opening, there will be announcements, so look for them.

Up next:
What other fictions did I live in during 2017? A special blog post dedicated to the games and books and comics and movies and so on that I ingested last year as inoculation for all the bullshit. Also about some of the things I produced, though it was a slightly less productive year than usual…

Why we’re not at the Book Fair this year…

You may or may not have noticed that we won’t be at the Gothenburg book fair* this year.

WORMGOD, TUSEN SERIER and CBK decided collectively not to participate at the book fair after learning that Fria Tider** are once again welcomed by the organisers.
Some months have passed since this news came, and several voices have been raised against the book fair, but it doesn’t look like they have listened to the criticism.

We know what Fria Tider stand for. They have connections to national socialist organisations (the kind that actually calls/recently called themselves nazis) and they want to remove people like us.
Among us are immigrants, homosexuals, anarchists etc, and we have an international perspective in most of what we do. We do not accept the idea that Swedish culture would be superior to others or even big enough to be able to stand on its own. So when the Book fair open their doors to Fria Tider, we take it as a sign that we are not welcome.

Shutting someone out who wants to silence others would not be a crime against the freedom of speech, as some people claim. Rather, it’s self defense. The Book fair should be about culture and communication. So it wouldn’t be wrong to make it a free from those who want to reduce the cultural sphere to only include what they see as “Swedish” culture.

We hope that the Book fair in the future will take their part of the responsibility for preventing the fascist and nazi regimes of old to happen again. In the name of free speech.

Translation: -Hello, we’ve come to ruin everything. -Of course, everyone have the right to their opinion. Welcome! Everyone is basically white here anyway, except some of the cleaners…

 

*The annual book fair in Gothenburg is the biggest one and one of the biggest cultural events in Sweden.

**A web-based “news” site with strong ties to the Swedish nazi movement.

CRACK! and other recent stuff…

So I came back from CRACK! a couple days ago and tomorrow is the first day with no meeting or things I have to do, so I will set the phone to silent and stay away from any other means of contact with the outside world.

Maybe spend the day in New Bordeaux or in space or the future.

But before I go into my 24h hibernation, here are some things from recent times that you may find interesting:

New books:

En Andra Chans (Tusen Serier) was written by me and drawn by Shko Askari. It’s written in Swedish & Arabic and consists of two interconnected stories, read in different directions, that meet in the middle. About war, racism, integrity and migration.
You can order it here.

CBA vol 36|37 (CBK) was edited by me, with stories by Akab, Spyros Verykios, Elena Guidolin and Serena Schinaia, with a cover by Radovan Popovic. I’m very happy with this latest volume of the international art comics anthology. This one is all in English.
You can order it here. Here’s another pic of the cover, this one modified during CRACK!:

Speaking of CRACK!… One of the things that happened there was a gig with Noise Against Fascism, for which I made this backdrop (which turned into a kind of cape during the gig):

And while I’m writing this I’m answering Facebook comments on this text. Some people seem to be unable to think outside the boundaries of the law, even if the law is immoral, which is kind of worrying. Others seem to have problems with texts longer than a tweet, so here’s a short summary:

When I grew up, in the 1980s/90s in a small town in Sweden, anything out of the “normal” was weird and something to stay away from (reading comics/listening to techno/being gay/being born somewhere else/watching foreign movies/being female etc).
Parallel to this, it was hard for immigrants to get asylum here (and it’s worse now, no matter what right-wing propaganda you hear). And anarchism was unheard of as a viable ideology. The mainstream ruled.
It’s all connected so what we do in CBK/CBA is antiracist by providing a printed space for what isn’t seen as normal.

Of course, it’s more elaborate in the blog post, so maybe read that…

Here’s an excerpt, which I think may be the most controversial part:

Once, a bunch of years ago, I was with a large group of people outside the refugee detention centre in Malmö. We were there to stop a deportation of a man from… I don’t even remember from where. The police came to get him. We stood in the way, blocking all entrances. After a while, the cops said: “All right, now you’ve made your statement. You’ve expressed your opinion. Now stand aside and let us do our job”. That hit me on a deep level. We were there to save someone’s life, and they thought we just wanted to express out opinion and then things could go back to repressive normality. Of course we didn’t move. We stayed there all day, hungry, getting burned by the sun, until the guy managed to break a window from the outside and get out. Within minutes he was in a car being driven away from there, to a life in hiding. Maybe eight months later, he got his permit of residency, proving us right.

People here seem to think that opinions is something everyone can have, as long as they don’t interfere with reality. Conversely, they also see them as something harmless, which is why we’re supposed to be so lenient towards racism. Because it’s just an opinion, which anyone is entitled to, and it has nothing to do with real life (and, incidentally, they won’t hurt you as long as you belong to the white mainstream (but who worth considering isn’t white mainstream?)). Except it does. Anything that today is ‘just an opinion’, may tomorrow be the new mainstream, with real-life consequences.

In other news… A while ago I made this book cover for Malvarma Bufedo (SLEA) the Esperanto version of Jenny Wrangborg‘s Kallskänken. Got my copies of the book the other day (and you can (soon anyway) order it here):

Also, if you drop by Hybriden these days (it’ll probably be closed but if you’re lucky or look through the window), you can see the Berättelser från Yunnan (Tusen Serier) exhibition by Emei Burell. Or you can order the book here.

And you will also see our banner in support of the XM24 squat in Bologna:

I’ll finish this off with two pages from Transgressions (Wormgod) that I think illustrate part of the point I wanted to make in that CBK blog post (click for bigger version):

You can, of course, order it here

Asylkalendern 2017

Coming soon: Asylkalendern 2017!

I think it’ll be out in December so you should buy it then! It’s the 2017 calendar from Asylgruppen Lund that they sell to support their support work for asylum seekers. Each year, they invite various artists and writers to provide material for it. This is my entry for this year (click images for bigger version):

kanin-sammagamla01

English:

I am so fucking tired of this same rant over and over.
But now those assholes have gone and done it again and made it even harder to get some humane treatment if you come here to apply for asylum.
Harder to get into the country, harder to get into Europe…
…harder to get residency. And they’ve made it easier to deport people.
People who never even set foot there are being sent to Afghanistan just because they are willing to receive them, according to the new deal that Swedish authorities have been able to work out with the Taliban.
I’m sure it looks great in the statistics, because now they can enforce more deportations.
“Hooray.”

kanin-sammagamla02

English:

And Afghanistan may not be the safest country for a vacation, rather one of the worst…
…but now the Taliban have SAID that they represent the country and that it’s safe for refugees to return (even though some of them were born in Iran and have never been in Afghanistan).
And it may be inhumane to send lonely children there, so we solve that problem by just waiting until they turn 18.
So our poor, hard-working officials can go on sleeping well at night.
Assfuck.

 

Yeah, that’s right. You may have a different image of what Sweden is like, but it’s time to forget that now because that’s old news… It’s also noteworthy that this is a Sweden run by the Social Democrats, so we don’t even need the right wing for this, even if they’d probably do the exact same, or probably worse.

By the way, if you read Swedish, here’s a statement from Tusen Serier.

Immunology

I feel I should write something about terrorism and the need for levelheadedness in the face of these things. How it’s important to not become paranoid or racist when attacks like the one in Paris happened. How yes, our Western society and it’s media and its people tend to care more about “our own” French people than the ones in Syria or Beirut or any of the other places where atrocities happen, but it’s still about a lot of people being murdered for reasons that we can’t condone or ignore. I would write that what we do about it is important. Because what we want is peace and not more meaningless bloodshed (see now, I’m trying not to sound like some Defence Leaguer so instead I come off like a hippie, and it’s all the terrorist’s fault).

Maybe somethingabout the Swedish terrorist hunt recently and about how they caught the guy who seems to have just gone on with his life like he wasn’t the Most Wanted (which is kind of suspicious), but I don’t have enough facts about it, so I can’t really say a lot. Except that I didn’t suddenly start trusting the police/authorities in general for no reason…

/Edit: Seems that they let the guy go, so I guess he was innocent. Is there still a terrorist running around the country, or was the whole thing a false alarm? Since they knew exactly who to look for, I would lean more towards a false alarm. They had his name and a pixelated photo, yet somehow they couldn’t find him (he lived at the address he had given to the Migration Boeard, with his name on the door, and his Facebook profile was open and available, so they could easily have found a better photo), and when they did get him, he was just going about his everyday business.

Compare this to when they found lots of explosives in a barn belonging to a Sweden Democrat who was obviously up to no good. In that case they didn’t raise any official nation-wide threat levels. And when a wave of fires against refugee accomodations sweep the country (around 30 so far this year), that’s also obviously nothing to take seriously… End edit/

Definitely something hopeful about how now maybe people will be more understanding towards refugees from Syria. Because this thing happened to people “we” can identify with because maybe we’ve been to Paris or at least seen it in some film. Or maybe something bitter about how it doesn’t seem that way because “we” just put up extra passport controls on the border and people seem to go on being stupid and paranoid about it.

I should also write something about the Roma that were evicted from the Sorgenfri camp in Malmö and who have been sleeping outside City Hall since it happened, even though the City has repeatedly stolen (with the help of the parking guards and police) their trailers, mattresses, blankets, clothes. And now it’s snowing. And the politicians (Social Democrats) do nothing except congratulate themselves and exacerbate their situation.

I probably have something to say about the term racism and how it’s lost all meaning to people who say racist things. To them, it’s just an insult, not a word that means anything. I could also reflect on how cartoon characters used to seem overtly simplified when they talked about themselves as “evil”. I would have said that no one would see themselves as evil. But now I hear that in some mainstream(?) circles in Denmark, for example, they talk about “good” people as some kind of bleeding-heart wimps and/or dangerous enemies of society (because they try to avoid being or acting like racists/fascists). Which I guess means that they consider themselves evil?

Basically, I would talk about how a lot of things are turning more and more to shit.

However, I’ve heard that people prefer to hear good news, so I’ll settle for showing you the comic I got the honorary award for at the Oulu Comics Festival a while ago (it was included in their Hunger of Horror anthology where they spelled my name wrong but who cares?). It’s probably going to turn up in CBA at some point as well, but I’ll show you the whole thing now anyway (more news later about CBA and also about Myling that got 3rd prize and will soon be a Tusen Serier book).

So here it is: Immunology

(click images for embiggening)

immunology-1 immunology-2 immunology-3 immunology-4-5 immunology-6 immunology-7 immunology-8

Ett historiskt dygn

Detta dygn är historiskt. Eller kanske veckan som kommer, beroende på hur utdraget det blir.

Vi har vuxit upp med Katitzi och hört om saker som Sverige gjorde Förr. Berättelser om orättvisor mot ett folk utan nation. Från en tid då Sverige och dess myndigheter gjorde saker som att jaga bort romer från deras hem, då man steriliserade romer för att de inte skulle föra vidare sina “asociala” gener. Även efter andra världskriget, då man egentligen inte längre kunde skylla på att man “inte visste bättre”. Ändå var det mycket av den gamla tidens sätt att hantera samhällets utstötta som levde kvar. Sverige var Socialdemokratiskt, vilket väl antagligen betydde att man kunde ha gott samvete när man gjorde sådana saker, för det handlade om att bygga upp Välfärdsstaten. Det Svenska Folkhemmet.

Kanske såg man det som att man bekämpade fattigdomen genom att ta bort de fattiga så resten av oss slapp se dem? Ungefär som att våra beslutsfattande representanter för Malmö stad nu säger sig skydda de boende i Sorgenfrilägret från den giftiga marken de bor på, från den ohygieniska situationen som har byggts upp i brist på ordentliga sanitetsanläggningar. Återigen genom att köra bort dem därifrån och låta dem själva hitta ett alternativ. Kommunen har gjort sin plikt, nu är det upp till romerna att hitta nya lösningar på egen hand. Sålänge de håller sig borta från parkerna, för där ska vara rent och fint. Det är därför polisen ser till att väcka de som ändå vågar sig på att sova där. Varje natt. Och på gatorna kan man ju inte sova. Inte i Sverige 2015 där det inte finns någon riktig fattigdom.

De som har bott i lägret vill väl inte heller bo på giftig mark, men vad har de för alternativ?

Det här är knappast människor som kommer hit för att sno åt sig av vårt välfärdssystem, för det har de inte tillgång till. Välfärdssystemet ska ju dessutom vara till för just de som inte har några andra resurser. Vi betalar skatt för att samhälleligt dela på resurserna och hjälpa dem som har det sämst, men här gäller inte det för nu är det inte svenska medborgare det handlar om. Många kommer från ett område som drabbats av översvämning. Många kommer för att dra ihop pengar till vårdräkningar för sjuka barn eller matpengar till sina familjer. Gärna genom att lönejobba, men det är inte så lätt att få jobb när man inte kan språket och inte har tillgång till hela, rena, fina kläder att ha på sig på en arbetsintervju som man hursomhelst inte ens blir kallad till. Så de flesta, de som inte kan få tag i ett jobb med lön, får sätta sig på marken med en mugg och hoppas på medborgarnas godhet och generositet i ett allt kallare Sverige.

Och nu återupprepas historien. SDs framgångar har med saken att göra, men man kan inte bara skylla på dem. De har inte majoritet, så ansvaret ligger på de starkare partierna som inte ser det som att de kör bort smutsiga invandrare utan ihärdigt motiverar agerandet med sin egen godhet, sina goda intentioner. Även om de intentionerna inte sträcker sig längre än till “Vi måste upprätthålla lag och ordning, det finns faktiskt regelverk att rätta sig efter”, vilket egentligen inte har någonting med varken godhet eller medmänsklighet att göra. För den som tar lagar som garant för att ett beteende är rätt och riktigt och moraliskt försvarbart glömmer att nazisterna som genomförde Förintelsen inte alls bröt mot lagen utan snarare upprätthöll den.

Och där kom kopplingen till nazismen in i bilden. Det var väl bara en tidsfråga och det har faktiskt inte med saken att göra och det går inte att jämföra detta med Förintelsen. Nej, kanske går det inte att jämföra, men parallellerna finns där, klart och tydligt. För nazismen handlade också om att städa samhället, om att rensa bort de som inte var önskade, dölja det man inte ville se. Och romerna som dog i koncentrationslägren var en del av de miljoner som osynliggjorts i efterhand. Judarna fick ta största smällen, men det är ingen ursäkt för att glömma alla de andra. Precis som romerna försvunnit ur den statistiken då ska de nu försvinna ur “vår” stad. För det vi inte ser har vi inte ont av.

Förintelsen började inte med koncentrationsläger, det var något som byggdes upp till steg för steg. Steg i vilkas spår vi verkar följa ännu en gång.

Utvecklingen och vräkningen är ivrigt påhejade av de medborgargarden som tidigare slagit sönder romernas tält och kroppar med basebollträn, som bränt tiggarläger och asylboenden och som inte vill kalla sig rasister, för det är ju inget man vill bli kallad. I samma facebookkommentar går det nu att säga “jag är inte rasist” och “ut med packet” utan att blinka. När jag skriver detta står de utanför lägret. Kanske inte just samma personer, men personer som är del av samma mentalitet, samma samhällsutveckling. De väntar på att få heja på polisen när de ska riva vad som i flera månader varit folks bostäder. Polisen som pratat med de företag som har lokaler i närheten och kommit överens om att de ska ge sina anställda ledigt imorgon när rivningen ska ske. Antagligen främst för att de inte vill ha någon insyn från “vanliga” människor. Det räcker de vänsteraktivister som är på plats för att med sina kroppar försvara lägret. För dem är det ok att slå med batong eller rida över med hästar och dem är det ändå ingen som lyssnar på om hur jobbigt det var. För att inte tala om romerna själva som helt enkelt får skylla sig själva. De har ju faktiskt haft sin chans att lämna platsen.

Så detta dygn är historiskt, för det visar att vi fortfarande lever i gårdagens samhälle. Där mätta, rena, varma människor med fast inkomst kan bestämma var hungriga, kalla och fattiga människor INTE får bo, istället för att hjälpa dem hitta en ny plats.

Ett historiskt dygn som knappast kommer att bli ihågkommet som något annat än en del i det som ledde fram till en ny mörk tidsålder. En händelse vid sidan av lasermän, brandattentat, skolmord och våldsamma tvångsdeportationer. En händelse som legitimerar fascisters och rasisters handlingar och retorik, oavsett om de kallar sig för just fascister eller rasister eller bara vanliga Svenssons. Indignerade över att behöva utsättas för att se att världen inte endast består av välmående svenskar utan också av folk som behöver hjälp och stöd. Stöd som inte tar formen av en vräkning från det enda hem de lyckats hitta och bygga i det här landet.

Storage…

Storage is a comic I made for the AltCom 2012 NO BORDERS anthology.

On page 3, you can see a deportee being strapped to a special chair that is used for transporting “difficult” persons by plane. People who, for some reason, do not want to be forcibly deported, even though the Swedish authorities have declared that it is correct, almost that it is done with the best interests for the person in mind. Because why would the Swedish authorities do something like that if it wasn’t the right thing to do?

storage-irl

Instructions: If you see someone being taken on the same plane as you against their will, stand up, make a fuss, etc. Get more people to do the same. The plane is not allowed to take off until everyone is seated, and the pilot has the final say. Several deportations have been stopped in this manner. This may give the person more time to appeal again and maybe even get residency. Also, they may not have to be drugged and wake up in another country where they may have no viable prospects for a decent life.

As for the comic, it was inspired by a passage from Fortets Murar, a report from various detentions centers (prisons for asylum seekers/refugees whose only crime was to try to stay within the wrong borders. In Sweden, they are called “storage”) in Europe.

Click images for bigger, more readable, versions:

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