Policing Violent Extremism: How the Global War on Terror Meandered Into Local Municipal Policies in Sweden

Abstract

The present article analyzes Swedish local municipal action plans for prevention of violent extremism. Sweden began adopting local policies for detection and prevention of violent extremism in 2015. Until today, about 40% of Swedish municipalities have done so. The present article examines how policy ideas have been transferred from abroad and the transnational level into a national Swedish discourse and has continually, via vertical transfer, ended up in local municipalities. This is seemingly being done without any profound understanding of or reflection on local needs, that is, the presence of violent extremist groups or other forms of violent radicalization. A major focus in these plans, as revealed in the study, is on instructing school and social welfare agencies to develop systems for detecting risk signals and instructing, among others, teachers to search for and report pupils who might be radicalized to the police or the security police. These policy ideas are then horizontally transferred to neighboring municipalities. The article, making use of critical discourse analyses, investigates the consequences for the teaching profession, as regards changing the preconditions for social practice, which might occur when teachers are instructed to monitor their pupils’ thoughts and behavior.

Nordic Societal Security

“…Counterterrorism has become a question of having the right attitudes and a form of mental robustness. As a consequence, local actors such as teachers, social workers, and youth workers are turned into security actors representing the state and looking for alarming signs of attitude change (Mattsson, 2019). This is a dangerous trajectory for a democratic society because most individuals with a radicalised worldview will not use violence as a tool.…”

“…Examples of such events are the terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011 by Anders Behring Breivik, the Copenhagen terrorist attack in 2015 by Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, the stabbing attack in Turku in 2017 by Abderrahman Bouanane, the truck attack in Stockholm in 2017 by Rakhmat Akilov, and the mosque shooting attack in Baerum by Philip Manshaus in 2019 (Sivenbring and Malmros, 2019). During this time period, all the Nordic countries have published a considerable number of counter-radicalisation strategies, especially focusing on preventing terrorism at the local level where municipalities, schools, and social workers are now responsible for detecting, reporting, and preventing radical individuals (Mattsson, 2019;Sjøen and Jore, 2019).…”

Counter-radicalization policies and policing in education: making a case for human security in Europe

“…In their counter-radicalization policies, France (Niemi et al, 2018, 3;Ragazzi, 2017, 34, cf. 17) and Sweden (Mattsson, 2019) now ask their schools/teachers to police their students for possible signs of radicalization. Some other European countries (EU and non-EU), e.g., Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Kosovo, 6 etc., have developed or are developing similar policies, although they are only now beginning to involve the education sector (Ragazzi, 2017, 17, 31-38).…”

“…Meanwhile, scholars have argued that the policy requiring schools/ teachers to spot radicals, based on certain signs/indicators, would naturally make students entertain fears and hide their emotions and critical views. Hence, it constitutes a threat to their fundamental human rights, particularly their freedom of expression (Sukarieh and Tannock, 2015;O'Donnell, 2016;Mattsson et al, 2016;Thomas, 2016;Taylor and Soni, 2017;Ragazzi, 2017;Mattsson, 2019). The situation is made worse by the fact that some of the so-called signs/indicators (to spot radicals) are vague: "mundane behavioural changes in lifestyle and critical attitudes towards authorities and the values of mainstream society" (Ragazzi, 2017, 10, cf.…”

“…The Prevent strategy has always been the subject of considerably more criticism in the UK than the other strategies of the country's CONTEST, notably because of its policing elements in education (e.g., Qurashi, 2018). Hence, Mattsson's subtle position stating that Sweden has transferred the idea of counter-radicalization policing from abroad and from intergovernmental organizations into its education system without paying adequate attention to the local Swedish needs (Mattsson, 2019) seems to be narrow. Essentially, the notion of policing in education in countering the "supposed radicalization of students" is never the local need of any country.…”