AFA Malmö has revealed that two active nazi parents, members of the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR), have been lying to the government for years and isolated their children from society. Pulling the threads in their web of lies and contradictions leads us to a small house in Vitaby, nazi combat training and idle naive bureaucrats.
In February 2017 the English speaking podcast Nordic Frontier, created by the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR), featured an interview with a Swedish-American citizen and member of the organization. He told a story of Nazi organizing, ideologicaly racist awakening and about life as a family man in a world dominated by non-whites. The listener was taken on a autobiographical journey that stretched from Swedish Sjöbo to Philadelphia and California. From studies in Sweden to work abroad. The story wrapped up with depictions of family life and child-rearing. The listeners of the episode The Johan Conversation and Point no.02 of the Party Program did not know it at the time, but the traces of this story would soon lead us back to a small village in Sweden, outside Simrishamn.
The American-Swedish national socialist, who in the podcast went under the alias Johan Svensson, shared the microphone with his wife, alias Jenny Svensson. The pair talked about life as nazi parents in different podcast episodes and about how their involvement in the national socialist movement had started. They also talked about the importance of being able to act as sovereign citizens in a society controlled by enemies that conspire against you.
The two parents tell the tale of how they, partially due to dual citizenship, have been able to enroll their children in a school in the USA, to be able to home school them – and also keep the children from both the American and Swedish government. It turns out that through a complicated web of rules, loopholes and lack of oversight, the parents have been able to fully control their children and achieve what they call “total freedom” for their family. The family would later move back to Sweden and settle down in the region of Österlen in Skåne. In the podcast they are painted as the ideal of the Nordic nuclear family and they share stories to inspire other nazis to become interested in family, parenthood and maybe even homeschooling.
Behind this tale of a small Swedish-American family lurks another darker story, one about the loopholes and glitches in Swedish bureaucracy that has enabled a two nazi parents to indoctrinate their children through homeschooling. The real people behind the aliases Jenny and Johan Svensson are two Nazi activists, living in the small town of Vitaby.
Christer and Carolyn
Christer Anderson and Carolyn Whealan-Anderson, the real parents behind the pseudonyms, settled in Vitaby after long periods of moving back and forth across the Atlantic. Christer has been the host of the Nordic Frontier podcast since 2017, where both he and Carolyn discuss their lives and political views. The stories are, as turns out, much more complicated then what might appear at first glance. The stories also share eerie similarities with other stories: stories about parents wanting to take control over their children and raise them without interference from the rest of society. Through Christian and Carolyn’s own stories and through contact with the Swedish government we can piece together the truth about how they fooled both social services as well as the school board.
The beginning of this story takes place on a small farm near Sjöbo, where Christian grew up with his parents who according to him raised him with traditional values in mind. On Nordic Frontier Christer openly talks about his thoughts during childhood visits to the city. He talks especially about the time he visited the store with his mother and saw a person with dark skin. According to him he instantly felt that something was wrong. This became his point of reference for larger ponderings concerning race and how society was structured. Even at a young age he wanted to take a stand against consumerism, as he saw the city dwellers “acting like robots” as if in a commercial hamster wheel. These were ideas that he would hold on to for the rest of his life and that affects views on everyday life and his membership in NMR.
At the age of 25, in august 1991, Christian started studying technical physics at Lund University, where he also studied engineering three years later. During his time at the university he would meet Carolyn Whealan, his future wife. Carolyn was studying landscape architecture at UC Berkeley and had traveled to Sweden as an exchange student. Carolyn came from California and attended a catholic school in a small town that she describes as homo-genially white. She, much like Christer, also described the separation from the white homogeneity in her childhood. The other students called her a rich white girl and she says that her feeling unsafe at Berkeley was a main factor for moving to Sweden.
The couple went to California after finishing their studies. Carolyn continued to study and Christer worked odd jobs that he was overqualified for according to him. They married in 1995 and for a long time they traveled between Sweden and the USA, until the early 2000’s, while studying and working in America. It was in the end of that period in America that Christer felt he “awakened” politically, as he states on Nordic Frontier. Christer was working as an engineer in the aeroplane industry, a good job with a nice salary. It was when the company was bought by a bigger New York based company that, according to Christer owned by jews, and the new owners would bring in cheaper laborers and start changing workplace structures, resulting in less pay for Christer and his colleagues. Eventually Christer would quit his job, unable to support his family, and they moved to Sweden.
Skåne, USA and back again
In late 2007 the married couple bought their house in Vitaby, just outside Kivik, for 325 000kr (roughly 50,000 dollars at the time). Christer would soon become active in the local Sweden Democrat (SD) party organization in Simrishamn, but he became disillusioned with them as they did not engage in the politics he was interested in. This was a crucial point in the history of SD as they were whitewashing their far right beliefs to push for an Islamophobic narrative. When he describes this period on Nordic Frontier he describes SD as being ideologically anxious and silencing him every time he tried to raise “the Jewish question”. With their new focus on Muslims, the party could not allow antisemitic sentiments to be raised publicly.
In 2011 Christer received media attention when he and another party member, Jan Olof Kjellgren, wrote a motion to municipal council in Simrishamn to abort all efforts to reduce carbon emission as “carbon dioxide is not dangerous for the environment at all” according to them. After a few years in Sweden and SD Christer would move back to the USA in 2012, as records from the county administrative board show. Christer and Carolyn already had three children at the time with another one on the way. Their main reason for moving was their feelings concerning Swedish public education. They decided to settle down again in the mountains of California, this because they sought states with “the best” laws regarding homeschooling according to them. On Nordic Frontier Carolyn and Christer criticize Swedish schools for being full of political indoctrination and teaching “the wrong things”. By their own admission they chose Idaho for the state’s complete lack of rules and regulations about homeschooling, unlike California. “In Idaho they have a completely different view of the matter, they don’t even need to know if you have kids. It is very relaxed.” Christer describes the state like the frontier in old western-movies:
“There is no one attacking you there, no government – it is real freedom. No paperwork, nothing. So we are registered there, which means that we can do whatever we want, educate our children there the way we want to educate them.”
In that way the couple could themselves educate the children during their stay in the USA, partly due to an association of parents in Idaho, something that would continue when they moved back to Sweden. Christer describes this in the Nordic Frontier: ”We chose to move back here because we have our house here, but we are still registered there [in Idaho], so we will continue with the homeschooling even in Sweden.” in 2016 the family moved back to the house in Vitaby and the four children were registered as re-imigrated to Sweden, but with continued homeschooling in the USA.
Home schooling according to Swedish law
Christer and Carolyn state on Nordic Frontier that the family has dual citizenship and describes how they manage to avoid Swedish law regarding school through this. By claiming that they reside in Idaho they can fly under the radar of the Swedish government. According to Swedish law, mandatory schooling begins at the age of six. In Sweden there are special rules for what can be called “särskild undervisning”(special education), the term homeschool or homeschooling is not used in the Swedish system. There are very limited possibilities to practice homeschooling as “särskild undervisning” is to be applied in the event of prolonged inability to attend school, such as medical conditions or other reasons that the child cannot attend regular school. The Swedish national agency for education (in Swedish “Skolverket”) explains what this means on their website:
“There is something called [särskild undervisning] and it is available to students that cannot participate in regular school activities due to sickness or similar conditions. Education in this form is only for students that cannot participate in regular school activities for a prolonged time due to sickness or similar reasons. [Särskild undervisning] happens at home or in another appropriate place, unless recommended otherwise by a doctor. [Särskild undervisning] should come as close as possible to the education that the student is unable to attend. To provide education in the home consent from the students legal guardians is required.”
Although there seems to be no particular reason for it, no prolonged disease or likewise, and although the family resides and works in Sweden, Christer and Carolyn chose to keep the children outside of the Swedish school system. The whole ruse is made possible through loopholes in the rules, by inattentive institutions and last but not least by the parents lies about their children’s residencies. The way they did it, avoiding contact with institutions and the government, as well as supposed trips abroad and the special education that the children received, reminds us in many ways of another case that received a lot of media attention.
The scandal of the Ystad-parents
The summer of 2019 the southern Swedish paper Sydsvenskan could reveal that five children in Ystad had been kept isolated from society by their parents. When the story came to light one of the children had already reached adulthood and other younger siblings where in their teens. None of the children had ever attended school and were seized by social workers as suspicions of abuse arose instantly when social services visited their home. The municipality delayed for nine years before checking the real status of the children and when it was finally discovered they were placed in custody as the children lacked temporal awareness, had difficulties with language and motor-control as well as difficulties performing everyday tasks as taking care of their hygiene.
The Ystad-parents had through lies about their family’s situation been able to fool the county into believing that the children resided elsewhere. The couples oldest child was enrolled in a private school in Ystad county for few years, but did not participate at all in the education. In 2009 the parents enrolled the child in an american school and in that way tried to keep the child outside the Swedish school. By reporting the child as sick, asking for time off work and claiming that the family was traveling frequently the Ystad-parents could avoid the Swedish rules. The child was deemed “permanently residing abroad”, which, after meetings with the county, exempted them from Swedish mandatory schooling. The children were, according to the parents, registered in an American online-based school according to the records the family sent to the county. An investigation into the status of the status the family’s civil registration would not reach a decision until 2018. The Swedish taxation agency revoked the parents civil registration status in Sweden and warned Ystad county.
In the case of the Ystad-parents it was the regional head of schools in Ystad that finally uncovered the inappropriate conduct and double checked the claims of the parents with the American school where the children were supposed to be enrolled, as well as visiting the family home to control their status. In the case of Christer and Carolyn, Simrishamn county has yet to make such inquiries although reasons to investigate their case have been made clear.
Homeschooling and Simrishamn county
Christer and Carolyn are since 2016 registered in Sweden, along with their four children. Christer says in documents provided to the Swedish social insurance agency in the same year that the family intends to live in Sweden for the time being and has no intentions to visit another country during this time. It was soon made clear by double checking with other government institutions that the Anderssons have been providing contradictory and false statements to different instances that oversee the statuses of the Anderssons and their kids as Swedish residents.
In 2016 the Anderssons were registered as re-immigrated to Sweden and have since then received both child support and the parental allowance as provided by the government. Child support for the four children has, according to the social insurance agency, been paid out since June of 2016 to the family as they were deemed permanently residing in Sweden. At the same time Simrishamn county has received information, signed by Christer and Carolyn Andersson, that the children are “permanently residing abroad” in Hayden, Idaho: “We travel frequently to the USA for longer periods of time and we attend a homeschooling program from Idaho, USA.” This explanation was accepted by Simrishamn county, although the Anderson couple has stated that the children are not enrolled in a school there, only that they follow an educational program as well as Idaho’s state curiculum.
In June of 2019 the two parents were contacted by the administration for children and youth in Simrishamn county, who stated that they were “looking over the routines for how we handle children obligated to attend school registered in Simrishamn county that are not enrolled in a school in the county.” The mail was sent the day after the case of the Ystad-parents came to light. It contained among other things a request to come into contact with the school that provided homeschooling for the familys children. No follow up seems to have come after this, nore any scrutiny of the contra-dictionary statements that the couple had provided to Swedish authorities. When asked about it, the chief of children and education for Simrishamn county has said that there is annual contact with the parents, but that contact with the Taxation office and social services has revealed “indications that the children are not residing abroad”. Meanwhile the family was receiving child support for children living in Sweden.
One explanation to the fact that the Andersson family has been neglected is that Simrishamn county and the chief of education at no point has met neither Christer nor Carolyn in regards to this matter. The examination of the familys’ real status as residents in the county has been made mainly through contact with the Taxation office, where the case worker seems to have drawn conclusions about the residency of Christer, Carolyn and the children based on their taxed income. The family has, according to the same case worker, paid far too little taxes to be considered as living in the county or in Sweden at all.
Nationalsocialist indoctrination
Carolyn Anderson describes the homeschooling of the kids as liberating on the NMR podcast the Nordic Frontier. She says that they are relieved of the social anxiety of regular school as well as having to meet “a bunch of foreigners”. She describes further that the two parents have a very open attitude to child-raising and politics.
We speak very straightforwardly with them, about the truth of our history, the truth of whats going on. They are a part of our conviction. We do not hide it from them, nor do we sugarcoat anything. They know what we believe in, with consideration given to their age”
For Carolyn, the most important thing is that the children are kept outside the Swedish school. The couple wants full control over how the children perceive the world: “They don’t need to go to school and listen to the lies, just to come home and need reprogramming, or to come home and say “today we learned that white people are bad because we killed the Indians. They don’t need to hear that stuff and soak it in day in and day out.”
Motivated by reasons concerning politics and racial biology the four children have been kept out of Swedish – and to a high degree American – schooling by their parents. While the family has claimed to be traveling, that has not stopped them from participating actively in the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) and in their activities. They have attended demonstrations as well as internal activities. Since 2015 Christer has been observed participating in activities and traveling to different parts of Sweden to attend everything from May 1’st marches to Nordendagarna (the Nordic Days) as well as co-hosting the organization’s English podcast.
Christer Andersson has at several times participated in larger NMR events, both dressed in the organizations uniform, white button-up shirt with the party symbol, as in the case of May 1’st in Borlänge 2016. He was also seen in civilian clothing in the widly publicized demonstration in Gothenburg in September 2017, when nazi activists where found guilty of violent rioting. Since then Christer has participated in both the May 1’st demonstration in Ludvika 2018 aswell as the march in Kungälv the following year.
But Christer and the family has also participated in internal activities, with or one or several of the children. At NMR’s Christmas dinner 2015 Christer was identified attending alongside three of the younger kids, seated with their father and other activists from Nest 3 of NMR (NMR call their local chapters nests). This dinner was the first time that the family’s participation was documented, but it would not be the last. During the nationwide event known as Nordendagarna (the Nordic Days) – when activists and members from Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland meet to participate in training, agitation, competition and entertainment – Christer was seen with his family both in 2016 and in 2019. At these times Christer and Carolyns younger children can be seen spectating the martial arts competitions that take place as a part of the organizations competition “årets Nordman” (Nordic man of the year). The children have also been seen as spectators where NMR activists practiced knife fighting, as well as during speeches held by the leader Simon Lindberg, among others.
Through homeschooling the kids, keeping them isolated from the rest of society and raising them in a neo-nazi organazation the parents hope, by their own admission on Nordic Frontier, to keep them from the influence of the society and the schools. Laws and rules does not seem to matter to them and they have used the bureaucracy of the county to their own advantage to avoid getting caught for illegally keeping their kids out of school. The utmost consequence of this does not affect Christer and Carolyn themselves, but the children. It is not rare that the children growing up in fascist environments are exposed to violent and racist ideologies. In the case of Christer and Carolyn Andersson however, the choice is both conscious and deliberate to raise their children through Nazi indoctrination, through isolation and without contact with “undesirable” elements of society. Christer summarizes it himself in the Nordic Frontier: “Its a simple thing… take your children out of school.”
Last we heard they were registered at this address :
Andersson, Nils Christer
Whealan Andersson, Carolyn
Residence Inn by Marriott Boise Downtown/University
1/2 1401 Lusk Ave
Boise, Id 83706
USA
If you know their current address, please let us know through the e-mail address listed below.
Antifascistisk Aktion Malmö hopes that all relevant instances of government examine the case of the Andersson family. We hope that the children can be taken care of according to their rights and best interest, and be given an education and the possibility of development as well as socialization with other children. It is both noteworthy and troubling that two politically active nazi parents can withhold their children from society and that this seems to happen without the knowledge of the state. Do you feel personally touched by this article and want to make a difference?
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