The more general background of the recent disclosures includes mention of Sweden's history of neutrality, including during World War II, as well as its more recent reputation for sinister activities fostered by the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme and the sensational literary and film success of the characters created by the late novelist Stieg Larsson in the Millennium Trilogy of crime novels.
Earlier this month, the Indicter published a column headlined Olof Palme and Julian Assange subjected in Sweden to same hate campaign by the same political forces and with the same purpose: to defend U.S. geopolitical interests. The column commemorated the 30th anniversary of Palme, who had criticized the Vietnam War years earlier. This editor is on the Indicter's board of directors, whose other board members are primarily European.
The circumstances of the Palme death remain controversial, albeit beyond the scope of today's column. Perhaps most relevant is that the Indictor's editor, Ferrada de Noli, was a torture victim of the Chile's late U.S.-supported dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and has long worked in Europe with kindred spirits to expose and prevent similar human rights abuses.
Pinochet succeeded the assassinated Chilean President Salvatore Allende in a coup and ruled Chile from 1974 to 1990.
Aside from his medical school work, two of Ferrada de Noli's most frequent topics as an editor and commentator have been legal irregularities connected with the Assange case and the complacency of Sweden's conventional thought leaders in the media and legal systems. In a 2011 column The "Duck Pond" Theses: Explaining Swedish journalism and the anti-Assange smear campaign. the professor accused many in the media of succumbing to group-think like so many ducks in a pond.
Another such myth-shatterer was Larsson, who died in 2004 just after his 50th birthday. He was a Swedish journalist who researched right-wing extremism, experiences he drew upon for his breakthrough first novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
It and two sequels, all published after Larsson's death, chronicled the adventures of fictional heroes Lisbeth Salander, a much-abused computer hacker, and journalist Mikael Blomkvist, her friend and fellow researcher into sinister demonic figures using respectable fronts in Sweden. The journalist Blomkvist and Salander are featured also in films and Larsson's novels The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest.
The kind of murder, terror and intrigue fueling hit spy novels and movies inevitably exceeds that in real life, at least as far as most of us can read in the newspapers or reliably know.
Nonetheless, there are at least some parallels between the Swedish world of Salander/Blomkvst and that of the more sedate journalist Martin Fredriksson, the award-winning investigative report and paid police asset.
This Month's Martin Fredriksson Revelations
That background brings us to Fredriksson, who achieved honor in Swedish media circles primarily by investigating right-wing organizations. The account below is from a news report March 2 in Svenska Dagbladet (SVD), one of Sweden's leading daily newspapers, under the headline, When the real Salander sold out to SÃ ¤po.
Reporter Sam Sundberg described how Fredriksson had just release a "bomb" on Twitter by revealing his status for many years as a paid SÃ ¤po informant during a time when he was active in the Antifascist Action and Research Group. The following translation of the article from Swedish to English is primarily via the Google automatic translation tool, with slight revisions by a non-Swedish-speaking editor to comport with more standard English.
"Fredriksson is best known as co-founder in the journalist community of the Research Group, which conducted an extensive digging job of the right-wing's digital activities. In cooperation with the Expressen and Aftonbladet newspapers, he revealed the anonymous authors of racist sites Exposed, Free Times and Avpixlat and hateful writers on the web forum Flashback.
"For a collaboration with Expressen, Fredriksson, along with five colleagues in the Research Group, has been awarded the guldspaden, one of Sweden's greatest prizes for investigative journalism. He has also worked as a researcher for Robert Aschberg TV show "Insider."
"During the 2000s, Fredriksson spied on the extreme right as a part of the left group Antifascist Action Intelligence. In other words, he is one of those who had the best insight into the activity on both the political front flanks of the past decade. By his own account, it was only the investigations of violent right-wing that he handed over to the Security Service. But it is clear from the comments in social media that even his former allies now shivering.
"In the activist groups where Martin Fredriksson thrived, there is a general revulsion against the idea of collaborating with the security police, but also a nervousness that Fredriksson may have leaked information about their own activities. Several of Fredriksson's old colleagues have now hurried to distance themselves from him, including the Research Group. On their website, they write that SÃ ¤po-cooperation took place before the group was formed.
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