Christer Mattsson & Thomas Johansson. British Journal of Sociology of Education. Volume 41, Issue 8, 2020.
Introduction
Schools in the Western world generally are expected to challenge and reduce racism within the community. Ever since the 1946 School Commission in Sweden, Swedish schools have been tasked with counteracting racism. This was a reflection of experiencing the emergence, growth and impact of fascist ideologies during the preceding decades. Since then, racism has been talked about and understood in various ways, ranging from a focus on individual racists and dismissive statements, to problematizing racist structures embedded and reproduced in society. In this study, we focus on how schools were challenged by pupils who became radicalized within current and recent neo-Nazi subcultures. It is a retrospective study, based on interviews with former neo-Nazis and their teachers at the time when they became involved in neo-Nazi organizations or milieus.
There are a number of different ways to approach, analyse and theorize about how young people become involved in and join extremist movements. Within the research field, a growing awareness has emerged that it is necessary to look beyond the somewhat superficial push and pull factor explanatory models on how recruitment to such structures plays out (Altier, Thoroughgood, and Horgan 2014). New ways of theorizing have been suggested, aiming to understand meaning-making in these communities and the meeting of needs that is achieved by joining violent extremist groups (Mattsson and Johansson 2020).
One stream in the literature with this ambition seeks to explain neo-Nazi trajectories using subculture theories. Hamm (2004) argues that extreme convictions should be explained in terms of how these ideas get appropriated by young people, rather than using the ideas as an explanation for their behaviour. According to Hamm, networks, symbols, language, style and knowledge bring meaning and signify belonging to an extremist subculture. The strong homological relationship between an ideology, a style and a group affiliation also create a safe haven; a place where likeminded people can socialize and get recognition for their views about society. Bjørgo (2008), a pioneer in research on neo-Nazi milieus in Scandinavia, argues that ideology is seldom the pull factor that initiates the radicalization process; rather, other psychological and social needs are met by becoming part of the neo-Nazi subculture.
There have been many attempts to formulate models for the reasons, driving forces and motives behind the recruitment of young people to extremist movements and how this is related to schools. van San, Sieckelinck, and de Winter (2013) point out that schools may often be aware of ongoing radicalization processes, but either underestimate their seriousness or simply do not know what to do. Research has shown that a young person’s situation at school, and pupils’ relationships with their teachers, have a clear impact on the processes that lead to their radicalization (Mattsson and Johansson 2018, 2019). Teachers’ attempts to confront and isolate the young “hateful other”—that is, the person engaging with neo-Nazi ideas and styles—in order to “cure them” is a strategy that often seems to lead to the opposite outcome.
In this study of former neo-Nazis and their teachers, we focus on the logics of pedagogy and what teachers’ decisions to intervene and confront extremist beliefs and lifestyles lead to. In doing this, we will ask the following questions.
- How do young neo-Nazisperceive and talk about their teachers’ attempts to educate and “civilize” them?
- Looking back on various interactions between neo-Nazipupils and teachers, how do teachers reconstruct these incidents and situations?
- What mechanisms and “causal” structures can be discerned when analysing reconstructions of engagements that took place between 10 and 15 years ago?
In the next section, we provide an overview of the relevant research. Thereafter follows a section on methods and methodology, and a section on the theoretical concepts used in the study. The main part of the article is devoted to the case study, and our analysis of the empirical material.
Research on anti-school culture and teaching anti-racism
There is little research available on the specific focus of this article, that is, interactions between young neo-Nazis and their teachers. Ezekiel (2002) points to the fact that a crucial component for recruitment into neo-Nazi movements is isolation from the surrounding community. He argues that schools could play a preventive role by breaking down this isolation but concludes that it seems to be the other way around: schools seem unable to reach out and engage with the lived experiences of young racist students so that they are willing to engage in discussions. Looking more broadly at clashes and confrontations between pupils and teachers in primary school, we find some relevant research. We will, therefore, discuss what is called anti-school culture in particular. We are well aware that it is not possible to equate research on anti-school culture among working class kids with studies of Neo-Nazis. However, in anti-school research there are some significant social dynamics and socio-cultural patterns which can be used to look more closely at confrontations between teachers and their pupils belonging to Neo-Nazi groups.
A classic example of a study of anti-school culture is Learning to Labour: Why Working-Class Children Get Working Class Jobs (Willis 1977). In his study of how young men are socialized into masculinity, Willis shows how contempt for the “other” helps to keep the group together and to sustain the social relationships within the group. The teenage working-class boys in the study revolt against the middle-class school culture and the teachers who are attempting to socialize and discipline them. This revolt involves not only a struggle against the predominant culture at the school, but also the development of a fragile and exaggerated feeling of superiority. Through jokes, sarcasm and mischief, the young men transform the legitimate school culture into something reprehensible. Group solidarity and male identity are created at the cost of respect for teachers, immigrants, and women. Willis shows how the school prepares young boys for a life of labour in both an implicit and explicit way. At this time, industrial employment meant having a secure position as a breadwinner, and it also acted to promote a traditionally hard and tough form of masculinity. However, this was all to change in the 1980s and 1990s. De-industrialization and a changing labour market, with a shrinking industrial sector and an expanding service sector, together with the rapid increase in low-paid, insecure and low-status jobs, led to a transition from learning to labour to learning to serve (Nayak and Kehily 2013; Standing 2016; Sernhede 2018).
Jonsson (2014) raises several questions about the master narrative of boys’ anti-school culture. He claims that anti-school culture and resistance tend to become a master narrative, and an explanation used for all forms of troublesome behaviours by boys in schools. Instead, he argues, it is important to investigate the complexity of young boys’ negotiations in school. Jonsson writes: “For further research on boys and schooling, I call for an analysis that considers various expressions of opposition as linguistic resources and their availability to some students, as part of their complex and ongoing performances of gender and pupil positions in everyday school life” (p. 289). Other studies also show great variations in how anti-school culture is expressed and articulated in different settings and national contexts (Abraham 2008; Högberg 2011; Ivanisuhina and Alexandrov 2018).
In addition to the literature on anti-school culture, there is also other relevant research in the area of Holocaust education and anti-racist pedagogies (see for example, Short 2000; Lund and Nabavi 2008; Johnsson and Weber 2011). Oser, Riegel, and Tanner (2006) claim that pedagogical interventions employed to reduce recruitment into right-wing extremist groups have little success, especially if they focus only on changing ideologies and values. They argue that racism and extremism are deeply rooted in social practices, and in society in general. Consequently, the wider context must be included and understood by those carrying out the intervention. Carlsson and Fangen (2012) make a similar point by pointing out that it is important to focus on combining the formal process of schooling with informal arenas of learning such as work training programmes at youth centres. Carlsson and Fangen maintain that there is a risk that an individual who is part of a racist movement may deepen his or her involvement when they are targeted by a single actor, for instance, the school. Another conclusion, in various studies, is that it is important to meet the individual’s needs, refrain from judgmental talk, and focus on behaviour rather than on ideological factors or a particular mindset (Ezekiel 2002; Pedersen et al. 2003).
Our survey of research in this area shows that there is a vast number of studies on anti-school culture, and especially on boys’ anti-school culture (For a critical discussion of anti-school culture today, see for example Sernhede 2018, and Johansson and Herz 2019). Although this research focuses on slightly different issues, we found clearly similar patterns and social dynamics, as in the case of young neo-Nazi students’ confrontations with their teachers at school. There is, for example, a clear sense of being misunderstood and marginalized at school, and of developing resistance strategies. There is also a significant tension between the teacher’s middle-class background and the working-class background of the majority of these students.
Method and methodology
This article is based on an extensive case study. The material was collected in two schools in different parts of Sweden. One school is situated in a small semi-rural area in the south of Sweden outside a major city, and the other is situated in a semi-rural part of middle Sweden also just outside a major city. In total, five students and six staff members (teachers, school counsellors, etc.) were interviewed: three students from one school and two from the other school, and three staff members from each school. The general situations of the schools are quite similar in terms of social conditions. They both had lively skinhead milieus; the areas had a lower educational level than the average in the region, with mostly blue-collar workers or people who were self-employed. The sizes of the schools are about the same. Both areas have a long tradition of National Socialist sympathies that date back to the pre-war period. In line with the similarities between their social settings is that in the nearby area there were very few immigrant residents and consequently there were very few pupils with an immigrant background in the schools. Finally, both areas repeatedly made headlines in national and international newspapers during the peak of the skinhead movement in the 1990s. Thus, the empirical material should not be seen as two cases, but rather as one case with two similar settings that provided enough data. The aim was to capture how schools, through their staff and representatives, talk about and relate to radicalization processes that occurred during the first decade after the turn of the millennium.
The case study is a holistic enterprise, that is, it implies the creation of a kind of systematic reality. Conducting holistic case studies means approaching and exploring the case from different angles. In addition, we used a theoretical perspective to guide our analysis of the case studies, while trying also to discern and generate conceptual tools from the data. Consequently, we have approached this study abductively, using conceptual tools to structure the material, but also added conceptual discussions to reach outside the existing framework (Merriam 1988). Thus, we have used a narrative and biographical method. The recorded data were transformed into verbatim transcripts, which were then processed and coded. This resulted in the identification of a number of significant main themes. During this process, the research team discussed the transcripts and possible interpretations to further develop our theoretical approach. In the interviews, a semi-structured approach was used to ensure that we covered key themes and at the same time were able to follow participants in their verbal reconstructions of a chronological narrative (Kvale and Brinkmann 2009). The period that the 11 informants talk about dates from 2001 to 2006.
Our study is thus based on oral accounts of contemporary biographical processes. The interviews mainly focus on how the informants remember and reconstruct their biographical trajectories during their membership of neo-Nazi movements. We looked mainly at what took place between 2001 and 2006. In this sense, we have used retrospective interviews. Oral history is dependent upon a number of subjective factors, such as avoiding sensitive topics, distorting of memory, under-reporting of reprehensible behaviour and over-reporting of favourable behaviour. In addition, oral history implies studying remembering, and memories are naturally gradually reconstructed and edited. Thompson describes oral history and the use of oral evidence in the following way:
Oral evidence, by transforming the ‘objects’ of study into ‘subjects’, makes for a history which is not just richer, more vivid and heartrending, but truer (Thompson 1978, p. 90).
Oral history offers a window into analysing the emotions and thoughts of individuals—empirical material that is inaccessible with more traditional historical research. Reading oral history interviews in a critical manner, as narratives that can be interpreted and contextualized, makes it possible and sometimes necessary to use additional sources (Tolson 2014). Therefore we consider our design to be a methodological development, that is, that we move on from single testimonies, which often end up as a linear reconstruction of a biographical history, to having multiple and contradictory testimonies concerning one and the same event. We found that there was a need to re-interview the informants. All the informants were interviewed on several different occasions. Repeated interviews provided a more complex and less linear life story. In addition, the narratives were not set in stone. When telling and re-telling their stories, the informants also gradually changed and edited their narratives. One’s relationship to the past is not frozen, but instead always in motion.
Remembering incidents that took place a decade ago can be painful, and the memories are partly distorted and may even be ‘erased’. Not uncommonly, the young informants had also put their lives on hold while they were active in a violent subculture. In subcultural settings, temporal orientation and the perception of time passing are often different from what might be experienced in a more normal everyday life pattern (McGrath 1988). As far as possible, we have transcribed verbatim what the informants said during the interviews. Thereafter, we have analysed the transcripts, searching for patterns and themes in the interaction between the young racist and their teachers. In selecting quotations and extracts, we have been guided by our research questions, and our conceptual tools. The study was conducted in accordance with the Swedish Research Council’s research ethics principles (Vetenskapsrådet 2017). The Swedish ethical review board approved the study; this means that all informants were told about the purpose of the study, that their participation was voluntary, and that they were free to interrupt or withdraw their participation at any time. Therefore, so as not to reveal the informants’ identities, names have been changed and their specific affiliations with neo-Nazi groups are not mentioned. Access to the informants was a sensitive and time-consuming process. Trust was established via a number of repeated short meetings, and also by recommendations from peers.
Theories of stigmatization, resistance and social identity.
We use three concepts to analyse our material: stigmatization, resistance and social identity. Stigmatization and resistance are often used as twin concepts, in the sense that stigmatization often leads to resistance (not always, however). Counteracting and fighting against stigmatization are also a process that leads to the formation or strengthening of a social identity.
According to Goffman (1986), the concept of stigmatization can be used when referring to persons who are—in one way or another—disqualified from full social acceptance. Why and how individuals become stigmatized varies and is highly dependent on changes in societal norms and value systems. Goffman (1971) argued that the process of stigmatization is a part of upholding the equilibrium within social interactions, i.e. what can and cannot be said and done within a particular social setting (cf. Tyler and Slater 2018). He distinguished between stigma related to the individual’s body, to their personal character (we will use the concept of social identity), and to their group belonging. The state of being stigmatized is referred to as being discredited; the person is shamed by his or her stigma. However, before the stigma is fully exposed there is an opportunity to conceal it and, in this state, the individual is potentially discreditable. In other words, there is a risk that one may be revealed as “deviant”. Consequently, concealing the reasons for a potential stigmatization become a priority. Therefore, young people develop various kinds of coping strategies to handle processes of stigmatization (Bos et al. 2013).
We will distinguish between primary and secondary stigmatization processes. Primary stigmatization is related to childhood and the family. Being brought up in a stigmatized family—a family marked by “social problems”—also leads to a higher risk of being categorized as different and as a potential problem and also implies a risk of being discredited because of their personal character. This kind of stigma affects the self-image and social identity of the person. How people perceive you will also potentially affect the way you perceive yourself. Secondary stigmatization is often a consequence of primary stigmatization and is not primarily connected to family background, but instead inflicted and caused by the person’s own behaviour. Unruly behaviour or criminality can further strengthen a certain self-image. In order to understand and analyse stigmatization, there is also a need to reflect critically on societal norms and structures. Stigmatization processes are not merely a “problem” for the individuals themselves, but also for the society, and they generate inclusion/exclusion and segregation.
The concept of resistance has often been used as a mirror for the concept of subculture. Subcultures are often the sites and sources of young people’s resistance to dominant structures. It has been argued, however, that resistance often loses its cutting edge as subcultures are subsumed into the predominant culture and become generalized and normalized (Johansson and Herz 2019). In the 1970s and 1980s, resistance was often understood as being opposed to power structures, such as patriarchy or nationalism/Englishness. In the literature on post-subcultures in the 1990s, the model of power/resistance changed. Post-subcultures were based on taste, consumption, and media culture; consequently, they produced more malleable, transitional, and fleeting subjects. On the one hand, this involved moving away from homogenizing and monolithic concepts of power structures, and towards a more dynamic conceptualization of power and resistance. On the other hand, it also meant that it became inherently more difficult to find ways to analyse and define power and resistance.
To allow us to use the concept of resistance as a meaningful theoretical tool in this study, we will first examine more closely how resistance works and is enacted in practice. Key questions arise about how young people construct their social identities in relation to societal changes and challenges. Resistance is not always righteous and ethically sound; instead, it is a standpoint and a series of actions that can be evaluated in relation to concrete cases. For instance, many right-wing extremists regard themselves as belonging to resistance movements. Resistance is often a statement – an expression of a possible alternate position and value structure. The ambition here is to broaden the usage of the term resistance. In studying resistance, we focus on how attitudes, values, and lifestyle choices change and transform over time. Studying resistance enables us to focus on a changing sociocultural and political landscape in which young people position themselves and form their social identities.
The data
This section presents and analyses the voices of the former neo-Nazis and their former teachers. We look at processes of primary stigmatization, secondary stigmatization and the perspectives and actions of teachers.
Growing up—processes of primary stigmatization
In this section, we use short excerpts from the young adult’s stories of their childhood and upbringing. The focus lies on the primary stigmatization process, initiated early in the lives of these young adults.
John, aged 32 at the time of the interview, became involved in a skinhead group as a teenager. He was also gradually drawn into the neo-Nazi movement. He describes his family and parents as unsupportive, and his childhood and his years at school as very boring.
I had an absent father, and a mentally disabled mother, more or less/…/It felt good when they separated. She just packed a suitcase and left all the children behind. This was much better than the other way around. She was always the one who quarrelled with me and she also hit me… My father was often away for work, so I had to raise myself. That’s the childhood I got.
His situation did not get any better at school. When we asked John if he encountered any supportive teachers or other adults during his childhood, he thought about it for a long while, and his answer was no. At school, he soon became a problem kid. He claims that the teachers had difficulty handling his behaviour. Instead of helping him to feel a part of the school and the other kids in the school, the teachers contributed to isolating him from the others; in particular by placing him in a group of students with similar behavioural “problems”.
Mathilda is 30 years old. She grew up with her mother and younger sister. Both parents where addicted to alcohol, and her mother was also mentally ill, addicted to psychotropic drugs and unable to work. During the first six years of school, Mathilda claims that she was bullied, but even so, the school provided structure – relief from the tense situation at home and, in addition, a proper meal. Mathilda experiences that she had no chance of doing her homework properly, but in spite of this she managed school rather well with the help of supportive teachers. By the end of middle school, Mathilda reports being drawn into a gang of rowdy girls. They could protect her from being bullied to some extent, on the condition that she adopted their skinhead style.
Richard is 32 years old. He describes his childhood and teenage years as chaotic, turbulent and often violent. My upbringing was, what can you say… turbulent. A bit like… psychological violence at home./…/I moved out as soon as I could. He soon became involved with a gang of skinheads. When talking about this period of his life, he describes embracing their friendship, and also their ambition to stop immigration and to counteract the Jewish conspiracy. He describes the group of skinheads as violent and unruly, but also as good friends.
Carl is 28 years old. He grew up in a socially vulnerable environment, with an abusive father but a caring mother. Carl had difficulties being accepted at school, by both peers and teachers. His older brothers had established a reputation as rowdy skinheads and this reputation was applied to him as well. During his first six years of school, Carl reported being severely bullied and was on psychotropic medication due to his attention deficit disorder. In seventh grade, he made friends with the skinhead group and for the first time he experienced people who protected him and provided a strong sense of belonging by recognising him as a peer. Carl’s difficulties with paying attention in class had already resulted in various forms of isolation during class hours. Unlike the other pupils, he was not allowed to choose his own seat in class and more and more often, he was taught in a small separate room that was in fact a storage room.
Tommy, 27 years old, grew up as the youngest child in a family of four sons. The father was an alcoholic and violent. He did not physically abuse Tommy directly, but he did hit his older brothers and their mother. Tommy reported feeling forced to protect his mother on several occasions and was then subjected to his father’s violence. The family was well known in the neighbourhood and all of the older brothers were rowdy skinheads. As Tommy remembers it, the skinhead lifestyle became less prominent when he got to high school. The racist subculture was as alive as ever, however. Tommy was very uncomfortable at school, had difficulty connecting with peers and even more so with teachers. He describes how he wanted to fit in with what he refers to as ordinary pupils. He did not know how to do this; and he did not know how to express a different side of himself than the one he had been developing in the small and stigmatized circles in which he grew up.
We were a gang [who grew up together]/…/I had social phobias that shaped me a lot, well we had these values and I hung out with this gang. They were a little bit older and I was the youngest/…/we were identified and labelled as problematic.
The informants all share experiences of being mistreated at home, developing early psychological distress. They expressed a desire to escape from their families, and from the shame of being different, and to seek comfort and confirmation elsewhere. Some of them found this partially in their first encounter with school, but as they grew older the school instead adds to their problems, especially since their rowdy behaviours are not handled appropriately. Gradually, as we interpret what happened, our informants realize that they lack the resources to maintain a socially accepted identity, their discredibility now results in them being discredited and thus stigmatized.
Secondary stigmatization through confrontations in school
Like several of the other informants, John was bullied before high school. Once he developed physically in his early teenage years, he was able to use his physical strength to retaliate and soon he became a bully himself and quite violent. He was forced out of his ordinary class, and put in a special education class, which was located in a separate demountable building. There he went up the ranks with the skinheads and soon joined the local Nazi movement. John was hanging out with a girl who was not a part of his skinhead circles.
… I had a crush on a girl in school, back then,… I really fancied her. But it was at that time [when he joined the skinheads]. I could not see her anymore, that very same evening my teacher called her parents and the parents of all my friends and told them I was bad company.
By the time Mathilda had moved on to high school, she had fully adopted the skinhead subculture and started hanging out with the local neo-Nazis. She instantly clashed with her teachers, but also with other teenagers who could not accept neo-Nazi skinheads. The situation also got worse at home and Mathilda was unable to function on any level. The school decided to put her in the special education group, located in a separate demountable building.
The school harshly pushed me out into that environment and left me very lonely. To that environment [silence]. With one simple decision, they took me away from my ordinary class, because I was difficult to handle. They moved me into a [separate] demountable. The three leading Nazis in the school were in that demountable.
During this period, Mathilda joined the neo-Nazi movement. She did not have to make any major efforts to become a part of it, or to maintain her involvement, since the movement was highly visible in her local community.
In high school, Carl joined the skinhead gang. Consequently, the school had an additional problem with him besides his rowdy behaviour and his inability to focus.
I had said nasty things to a girl with dark skin, an immigrant, and Mum was really upset with me. It was not okay at all but neither was how the school handled the situation. They banned me from school and she thought that we could work this out together. She thought like: ‘my son did something really wrong, but he cannot be punished by getting kicked out of school and so on’. They sent me to be taught at home…
After this event, Carl left school permanently, joined the neo-Nazi movement, and advanced into a leadership position until drug addiction took over.
Rickard talks a lot about how the teachers tried to argue against his neo-Nazi ideas, but also how he gradually became more agitated and angrier. He felt that he had identified real problems in society, and he was shocked by how the teachers ignored these problems. In particular, he was provoked by some teachers and their attempts to silence him.
If I was sitting and listening to some music that they didn’t think I should be listening to… There was a teacher. He forcefully took my CD away from me and he confiscated it and told me that he would report me to the police. Just because I was listening to that music with a friend. He argued that I was spreading hate speech. Instead of just talking to me about what he thought and so on, he tried to bust me, making me a criminal. It was just like crucifying me just for doing something I did every day, listening to music. This is not the way to do it, you can’t create good relations that way. All I ever heard from the teachers was that I was stupid, that I had moronic ideas and that I must not think like this. That just confirmed my suspicion that these [teachers] were acting based on someone else’s interests. You know when they keep seeing you as stupid and you aren’t, things just get worse. You turn more and more against people who act like that and when they are teachers, principals and social workers and they represent the society you live in, then you will be against the society. (Richard, 32 years old)
Richard was never separated from his peers like John, Matilda and Carl. He kept attending his regular class, but he also said that he kept on provoking his teachers and his classmates. His life was a struggle.
You make a fuss about things at home, and you make a fuss about things in school. There are so many things going on around you and… you lose faith in the future, and you don’t believe in it, so you just think—it’s all the same and you don’t give a damn.
When talking with Richard today, it is obvious that he still embraces the same ideas, but he is not prepared to engage in hate groups or any other hate movements.
At school, Tommy portrayed himself as a full-fledged Nazi and the school responded accordingly, trying their hardest to combat his racist mentality. The tensions between his social phobias, troubles at home and the school’s focus on his Nazism resulted, according to Tommy, in him becoming more engaged in the movement. Soon he was working around the clock for them. Tommy said that although he was not separated from his class, his social needs were not met either.
The informants claim that they caused their teachers a lot of concern, and their racism and affiliation with neo-Nazism had been taken seriously. The same cannot be said about how their psychosocial needs were attended to. Becoming an outspoken racist and skinhead led to harsh action including separation from and the loss of other significant peers. Consequently, they were pushed together in a discredited group with a bad reputation, and consequently a secondary stigmatization occurred.
The teachers
At the time when things got serious at school, several teachers argued that they tried to engage with and fight against the infiltration of neo-Nazi groups into the school. All of them had serious aims to counteract recruitment to neo-Nazi groups. When talking with them after many years, they all had vivid memories of the incidents and the chaos that ensued at the time. All the teachers interviewed claimed that they remembered the kids who were drawn into the neo-Nazi movement. One of the teacher assistants working at the school, Ingrid, described the situation in the following way:
It was the start of the period of baby Nazism [the adults at the school referred to these young skinheads as ‘diapers Nazis’], strange people appeared at the school, well-dressed young men who tried to recruit students to neo–Nazi groups, eventually we understood that they were looking for Nazis [to recruit]. Then things got very turbulent, and we arranged for two, three demountable classrooms to be set up in the school grounds/…/and then we put these pupils [into the demountables], so that we had them where we could keep an eye on them and then things calmed down at the school. However, the well-dressed young men remained./…/I talked to Ingmar [her colleague], you know he was formerly a police officer and he said that you have to use a bit of discipline when it comes to youngsters. I’m an adult, I’m supposed to have power over them to some extent, and I’m not afraid of them!
All the teachers actually saw this happen. They just had different views about what happened. When talking to Kent (52 years old), he was quite reluctant to delve into the question of what really happened at the school. All that the teachers could see was that certain students were being marked as different, and as neo-Nazis. This happened quite quickly, and although the teachers did not want to be part of this development, indirectly they were. One of the teachers, Kent, told us:
Unlike the other pupils [within the neo–Nazi milieu] Richard did not have learning difficulties, but he became so incredibly interested in white power and Nazism that it caused him to lose touch with school, while the others had learning difficulties./…/I guess that he did not feel a sense of belonging with his classmates, but instead found comradeship with his friends in the white power movement.
Interviewer: How would you describe his experience of being a pupil in this environment?
Kent: Well, he got himself into a corner and was labelled in a way that he couldn’t shake off.
Even though the teachers all knew about the “problem”, they found it very difficult to act, to do something about the situation. Things just accelerated and got out of hand, they claim. This is clearly expressed by Nils, a music teacher at the time, now 45 years old and more experienced.
We knew about the problem, but we did not have the tools to do anything about it. It was turbulent you could say/…/It was my first class and it was my first job as a teacher. Personally, I had no way of tackling this problem, I would certainly have seen the situation differently today. At the same time, it was crucial for us to act./…/Back then it was different, there wasn’t a lot of information about how to create a sense of belonging in a group. This is your class, these are your subjects, now get on with it. Then you had to get to know your pupils as best you could. They [those in the neo–Nazi milieu] did not get any help whatsoever to become a part of the community at the school.
Sue is 47 years old today. She worked as a youth worker at the school in 2001–2006. When she started working at the school, she became involved in developing a unit where the school placed “problem students”. So she became acquainted with the boys we have described earlier in this section. She described this “solution” as successful.
Interviewer: What was the problem with this group?
Sue: It was their attitudes towards other people in general, they were openly racists, and they had no respect at all for other people, probably they did not feel so good, any of them. I felt sorry for them./…/We had learned about a certain form of schooling [name deleted for ethical reasons] where a small number of pupils were taught by a large number of teachers [separated from the ordinary school]. We started this work with five pupils and things suddenly became very calm in the school.
Karin is now 54 years old. She worked at the school as a school counsellor from 2001–2006. She has a slightly less positive memory of how things worked out at the school. She describes a school where the teachers retreated to a space where no students were allowed. In addition, she describes a split school, and a lack of adult presence.
When I began my job at this school, there was this culture of bomber jackets, boots, it was all Ultima Thule [a white power rock band], and no grown-ups dared to make contact with the pupils. You never saw a teacher stop and sit down and talk to them./…/People instead talked about the pupils, but not so much with them./…/This norm, this youth culture [the skinhead subculture] was left alone, other people didn’t interfere. This culture, that the grown-ups only talked about them, meant that the grown-ups did not really know anything about them, what life was like for them, what was behind [their behaviours], they [the teachers] just assumed a lot of things.
Samuel (48 years old) worked as a teacher at the school. He describes a situation where the adults had lost control. Instead of developing a well-structured and coherent pedagogical strategy, different teachers used different strategies.
There was a police officer who gave a few talks to us teachers [about neo–Nazi organizations], but we had to confront the individuals on a daily basis./…/There was some general idea that we should foster relationships with them, but there was no structure, like this is how it should be done on a regular basis. We had no plan.
Although Samuel was critical of the school’s lack of pedagogical strategy, he did not—at this time—find any way out of this chaotic situation himself. For one term, he taught one of the pupils at his home. He describes Carl as very talented, but also as a young man with behavioural problems. Home teaching was implemented because Carl disturbed the other students, and had become a liability for the teachers.
To sum up: the teachers all describe a situation where the grown-ups had lost their authority and were searching for new ways to handle the kids. They cared about the students, and they were deeply worried about the students’ behaviours and neo-Nazi ideas. The response was, in one sense, quite harsh and hard-line. They decided to banish the “worst” students to separate and special classes. While in fact, the “war” against neo-Nazi ideas was going on within the whole school. Instead of reaching out to the young students, establishing a dialogue and promoting other types of meaning-making, the teachers’ acts and strategies led to a further accentuation of the secondary stigmatization process, and consequently to more closed positions.
Conclusion and discussion
As we have pointed out, it is a challenge on a methodological level to conduct interviews with individuals about matters that took place 10–15 years ago. Memories fade and are mingled with remembrances of other events, and uncomfortable memories are likely to be reinterpreted. We have been able to reconstruct the fateful moments—which occurred between the incipient neo-Nazis and their teachers—during the early radicalization process (cf. Mattsson and Johansson 2020). We have also gained access to their narratives, reconstructed and rewritten today. It would not have been possible to conduct this study while they were still in the movement, and the elapsed time has provided them with new perspectives. As we learned from listening to their stories, which were remarkably coherent, there is a visible pattern of stigmatization, resistance and identity formation—that is, of becoming the hateful other. In addition, there are also strong similarities between how the former neo-Nazis and the teachers talk about their conflicts. The two schools are separated by a significant distance (more than 300 km). Despite this geographical distance, they both responded to the situation in similar ways, using similar methods and getting similar results.
The former neo-Nazis all came from more or less dysfunctional homes and most of them reported having been abused. This was an ongoing situation during the period of interest of this study, and the teachers clearly remember these pupils as vulnerable. The pupils were also well aware of how they were seen by others, including their peers and teachers. They were lacking in everything they needed to do well at school: social capital, cultural capital, economic capital and psychosocial confidence. They knew that how they dressed, talked and behaved was putting them in a subordinate situation, and they were caught between crying out for help about their domestic situations, and concealing their shameful secrets. We see this as primary stigmatization. The primary stigma relates to our informants’ individual identities, i.e. being outcasts from dysfunctional families and lacking all form of capital.
What we see here is a pattern similar to that described by Willis and other researchers. Using different means—clothes, artefacts, Nazi symbols, and abusive language—the former neo-Nazis distinguished themselves and became the hateful others. Through their symbolic and behavioural resistance to the school’s attempts to discipline and socialize them, they also become targets for various interventions. The school tried to contain their behaviour through isolation and correction. The students felt stigmatized and seen as different. This is the process we refer to as secondary stigmatization. The strategies used by the school to contain and re-program the students did not work. Instead, the students become even more dedicated racists and Nazis. The school’s response did not succeed in changing the student’s behaviour, but rather helped them to construct and initiate an identity as neo-Nazis. This secondary stigmatization, as we interpret it, helped the informants to conceal their primary stigmatization. For many years, their family backgrounds had put them in the position of being discredited in the eyes of other, an experience that developed as they grew older, and peaked when they reached high school. By that time, they did not trust other adults to be able to relieve them from the mistreatment they received at home and at the same time they were also losing more and more ground in being able to get recognition from their non-stigmatized peers.
Becoming the hateful other, the Nazi, provided them with a secondary stigma, not necessarily desired, but a stigma that they could control. The secondary stigma then overrides the primary one, shifting it from a stigma tied to individual identity (personal character) to a stigmatization of a specific group belonging; the discredibility of being an open racist and outspoken Nazi. This was also somewhat of a relief to the teachers. They were then allowed to put their focus on the racism of our informants, as instructed by the curriculum, and at the same time reduce their efforts to satisfy the pupils’ psychosocial needs. The informants also found this to be beneficial, since they no longer needed to bear the stigma alone; they shared it with their neo-Nazi peers, and moreover they developed a form of social and cultural capital that was functional in that environment. They were also developing a violence capital, and for the first time in their lives, they had access to something that the rest of society feared. Consequently, they were no longer looked down on with pity.
Our overall conclusion is that the school and its staff were not able to distinguish between promoting an anti-racist agenda and satisfying the cognitive and emotional needs of the racist students. It also seems that they felt under pressure to take action on behalf of all the other students, so that they were not threatened by our informants’ behaviour and attitudes. This was not done to hurt our informants, but out of a lack of understanding of how to assist our informants to become part of a safe learning environment; an environment where they could have been met with respect and constructive criticism. Instead, already vulnerable due to their social backgrounds, their racist ideas led them to becoming further stigmatized, to the point where they fully embraced the role of the hateful other.