Over the years, I’ve often noticed Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents.com criticize Richard Spencer but I don’t recall Richard answering back (at least not in writing).
This week that changed.
Back in 2015, Greg interviewed Daniel Friberg.
Daily Beast Dec. 5, 2016:
The French Ideologues Who Inspired the Alt-Right
Elderly Frenchmen Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye are far from household names in Europe and the U.S. But their ideas have fueled white nationalism across both continents.
…Greg Johnson, who runs the Counter-Currents website, and other white nationalists told The Daily Beast they’ve met de Benoist at conferences in the U.S. and Europe, and have communicated with him over the years while overseeing translations of his books. Yet Benoist said their names were barely familiar to him.
“The French New Right has been a big influence on me and the alt-right,” Johnson told The Daily Beast. “Benoist and Faye come up with great stuff. Europe’s being colonized by Islam. They replicate their forms of society within our forms of society, and the end result is that we will lose our homelands. Faye tries to understand why people won’t defend their own. After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the French were more concerned with Islamophobia than with those who were massacred for their opinions.”
Benoist and Faye owe one white nationalist in particular for the spread of their work outside the French-speaking world.
Daniel Friberg, 38, a Swedish-born former mining executive, began Arktos, now the biggest alt-right publishing company in the world, seven years ago. Friberg grew up happily in a small, homogenous town in Sweden with what he said were “leftist liberal” parents. All that changed, he said, when at 13 he went to junior high school, where there were many immigrant students, part of the first wave of the large-scale immigration that began in Sweden in the mid-1980s.
“I had been taught to think multiculturalism was great until I experienced it,” Friberg told The Daily Beast. “But the reality was a culture shock. The media and everyone else told me that it was all good. It was a rude awakening. It wasn’t good. There was a lot of chaos, crime, drugs, bringing guns to school, you name it.”
Feeling he’d been lied to “by everyone” and wanting to “understand this transformation Sweden was undergoing,” Friberg started reading political-science books voraciously, in particular Benoist and Faye. Even though Friberg had only a schoolboy knowledge of French, he understood the texts.
“The French New Right books were the first I read, and they were an eye-opener for me,” Friberg said. “I couldn’t find anything in them I disagreed with.”
In 2009 Friberg left his day job to start Arktos and Right On, a blog for the alt-right. One of the first things he did was approach Benoist and Faye, and buy the rights to publish their most popular books in English—and later other languages.
“We’ve red-pilled people all over the world, even China and India, with these books,” Friberg said, using the term favored by the alt-right to describe the process of turning others on to their ideas. “Many of our customers are surprisingly young and surprisingly well-educated. Many are former leftists who as we like to say [are] former members of the ‘regressive left.’ A lot are disenfranchised libertarians.”
Friberg has written his own book, The Real Right Returns, and like pretty much everyone in the alt-right universe, he is thrilled with Trump’s election.
“We’d be growing with or without him,” Friberg said. “But now it’s clear. Right-wing populism is here to stay.”
Carol Schaefer wrote in The Atlantic May 28:
Prior to Arktos, Friberg also had long-standing and prolific ties to far-right extremists in Sweden. As a teenager, he was heavily involved with neo-Nazi groups and, at the age of 28, helped construct and manage the online forum Nordisk.nu, a 22,000-member-strong gathering place for Scandinavian national socialists, including Anders Breivik. Friberg also served time in prison for various offenses from 1995 to 2010, including for possession of a stolen AK4 rifle (a rifle formerly used by Swedish army) and other illegal weapons.
More recently, Friberg has sought to obscure his violent transgressions under a cover of intellectual legitimacy. With an MBA from Göthenberg University and work experience at Wiking Mineral, a company founded by far-right political backer (and fellow Budapest resident) Patrick Brinkmann, Friberg now sports a “fashy haircut” and suits. He prefers to mingle with coiffed intellectuals and politicians in lieu of skinheads. He has spent his far-right career repackaging eugenicist ideology by rebranding the same or similar material with words such as “identitarian,” “traditionalist,” or “archeofuturist.” His partner, U.S. white nationalist Richard Spencer, has been criticized for doing the same thing by hate-watch groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center.
While Gyöngyösi admits to knowing Friberg, he claims he knows nothing of Friberg’s criminal history. Gyöngyösi was skeptical before I read from his arrest record, and ultimately admitted that he is “not particularly happy … about any criminal from any country living in Hungary.” But most important to Gyöngyösi is “that nobody from outside imposes on Hungary some social model that is not welcome in Hungary.”
In Budapest, Arktos is surrounded by alt-righters who have made the trek to the increasingly illiberal Hungary. Michael Polignano, co-founder of Counter-Currents, moved to Budapest in 2016, and joined the nationalist scene. After moving to Hungary in January 2017, men’s rights activist Matt Forney wrote: “Imagine there’s no leftists. It’s easy if you try. No protests in the streets, and in front of us, only cute white girls. That world exists, and it’s called Hungary.” Ferenc Almassy, a French nationalist, has worked as a translator for Jobbik. He helps other French nationalists new to Hungary acclimate to their haven. Popular American far-right YouTube and Twitter personality RamZPaul, who has lived in the Hungarian capital off and on since 2013, tweeted in February to nearly 35,000 followers: “Budapest is like Paris of the 1920s. #Hungary.”
Greg Johnson wrote circa May 24:
The claim that I made an ultimatum that I would not speak at the Scandza Forum unless Daniel Friberg was excluded is 100% false and malicious. This is what happened. The Scandza Forum was a private, invitation-only event. The Scandza Forum’s organizers and donors include people who have been burned financially and personally by Friberg in the past. So of course he was not invited. When he heard about the event, he asked to be invited. When the organizers mentioned it to me, I urged them not to change their minds and told them that if they wanted to blame anyone, blame me. When Friberg was told that he would not be invited, he went ballistic, gave them an ultimatum to reverse their decision by 22:00 hours, and threatened to sabotage the event if they did not. At that point, any possible doubt about excluding Friberg vanished.
Now, to put this in perspective, Kevin MacDonald and I flew half-way around the globe to help the Scandza Forum get off to a good start by speaking there. Guillaume Durocher flew in from the continent. Jonas de Geer flew in from the UK. And Daniel Friberg was threatening to sabotage the event because he was not invited. Now, at this point, every decent, right-thinking White Nationalist has everything he needs to know to conclude that Daniel Friberg is a piece of shit who should be flushed from this movement forever, simply because he puts his own petty personal ego issues before the greater good of the movement.
Friberg’s sabotage consisted in making up a story about me that is a complete inversion of the truth. He threw a fit, not me. He issued an ultimatum, not me. Then he put this story out there to various movement people (I heard about it from Kevin MacDonald and Seventh Son, but I am sure they are not the only ones), posing as an aggrieved victim of Greg Johnson and asking them to intervene on his behalf. Of course, the request to intercede was entirely bogus. It was just an attempt to defame me with the added obscenity of pretending to be a victim. Beyond that, Friberg doxed the organizers of the Scandza Forum to antifa, which is further reason to completely shun Friberg and anyone who sanctions his behavior. Finally, Friberg threatened to organize another event at the same time, and tried to get people to cancel and demand refunds. When only one person did that, and the Forum was a resounding success — with more than 100 people in attendance — he organized a rival dinner after the Forum was over. This was a topic of great mirth to many people present.
If you did not attend the Scandza Forum, or if you are angry at me based on a completely false story, you are being manipulated by Daniel Friberg. You missed a great event because of a lying piece of shit. Take your anger and direct it at him.
Daniel Friberg, European Editor of AltRight.com, and Richard Spencer, American Editor of AltRight.com, write:
For obvious reasons, an anonymous person can never lead anything, let alone an identitarian movement for the future of European peoples. Instead of humbly accepting this fact, Greg Johnson builds up a toxic resentment towards those who outshine him, who are willing to take risks and be public figures.
In a thread on the TRS Forum, Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents Publishing leveled a number of serious charges against Daniel Friberg, one of our Founders and Editors—without offering any evidence. Furthermore, Greg urged the entire Alt-Right movement to “shun” or “expel” Daniel and Arktos Media based on these unsupported—and sometimes illogical and contradictory—accusations.
The controversy centers around the Scandza forum, which held a recent conference at which Greg was a speaker and guest. Before the conference began, Greg issued a request that Daniel should not be allowed to attend (effectively, “it’s either him or me”). Greg’s actions have been confirmed by multiple people on the Altright.com Board who’ve spoken with the conference organizers and others. Bringing this level of divisiveness to Swedish nationalism is bad enough, but Greg made matters worse when, after receiving criticism, he brazenly lied about what occurred, claiming that the conference organizers, and not him, disinvited Daniel, and that, in fact, he urged them not to take these actions. Apparently, Greg has little compunction over throwing his hosts and sponsors under the bus.
More potentially damaging than Greg’s petty lies are his claims that Daniel Friberg,
- Doxxed the organizers of The Scandza Forum to the Antifa, apparently in revenge for being disinvited;
- Was an “embezzler” of funds from his own company, Arktos;
- Destroyed “an endless list of people both personally and financially.”
Greg must either present evidence supporting these allegations or retract them and apologize. Who are the people on this “endless list”? What evidence exist that a man who’s been a leader in Swedish nationalism for 20 years is actually a collaborator with antifa? If Daniel has been so destructive to Arktos, why is the company so productive?
We won’t hold our breath . . . The fact is, no evidence for Greg’s accusations exist; and if any did, Greg would have obviously already published it.
Secondly, it must be made clear that this behavior from Greg is nothing new. In recent years, he has attacked the following individuals, making unfounded accusations, sometimes demanding denunciations, or just randomly kvetching:
- Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer;
- Hunter Wallace of The Occidental Dissent;
- Richard Spencer of NPI and Radix;
- Matt Parrot and Matthew Heimbach of The Traditionalist Workers Party.
The repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks on Daniel, along with the people above, stem from Greg’s wish to be THE leader and guru of the Alternative Right (or nationalist opposition or whichever term you prefer). The problem with this ambition is that Greg is afraid to show his face publicly, or perhaps has some reason to hide his identity, and imposes a complete ban on photos at every conference at which he speaks. Moreover, his generic name makes it difficult to do a proper background check on him.
For obvious reasons, such a person can never lead anything, let alone an identitarian movement for the future of European peoples. Instead of humbly accepting this fact, he builds up a toxic resentment towards those who outshine him, who are willing to take risks and be public figures: Andrew Anglin, for running the most popular website among nationalists; Richard Spencer, for becoming the icon of the international Alt-Right and getting the most media attention; Matt Parrot and Matthew Heimbach, for managing to build a real organization, instead of merely hosting small meet-ups; Daniel Friberg, for succeeding where Greg failed, building a successful publishing house, Arktos, hosting the biggest Alt-Right conferences in Northern Europe, as well as co-founding AltRight.com with Spencer and others, etc.
Greg’s disruptive behavior is bound to continue. Until now, Daniel and Richard’s strategy has been to ignore Greg and resist playing his game.
Daniel Friberg writes May 29:
In Response to the Fake News Revenge Article in The Atlantic
The article by Carol contains so many malicious errors, outright lies and misconceptions that it needs to be addressed, which I will attempt to do below:
1) I’ve always been clear that I am neither a permanent resident in Hungary nor affiliated with any Hungarian political parties or groups: not even Jobbik, as Carol claims. If anything, I would say that the Hungarians seem to be doing a good job at handling their interior and exterior politics themselves, and I have no wish to engage in Hungarian politics whatsoever. I certainly live part time in Budapest, just as I live part time in Sweden, Poland and Germany, but I don’t identify myself as being part of any ”alt-right expat community,” even if any such thing existed. Furthermore, I have zero interest in party politics but work solely as an author and publisher, focused on spreading traditionalist ideas to Western Europe and the U.S. rather than central and eastern Europe, both of which are healthier.
2) I’ve never been involved in any “neo-Nazi” scene or “group” in Sweden whatsoever. On the contrary, I have called myself a nationalist, a conservative, and an identitarian, meaning one who emphasizes the importance of national and cultural identity. I have often been criticized by the more radical elements in the Swedish scene for this; indeed, I’ve been called everything from a “Zionist” to a “Secret Service agent.” This is a well-known fact in Sweden, well documented online, and something that should have been fact checked.
3) It is true that I created a forum called Nordisk.nu in Sweden (meaning “Nordic.nu”), with the tagline “a portal for Nordic identity, culture and tradition,” with not 22,000 but rather 27,000 members. The vast majority of members were people interested in Nordic culture and identity, traditionalists or regular nationalists, and certainly not ”neo-Nazis” as Carol claims.
4) Regarding her worst accusation, which serves to portray me as some sort of criminal, anti-social element, I’ve been convicted three times in my entire 39-year old life, of which two are misdemeanours:
Once in 1995 for possessing a tear gas spray that is legal in most European countries.
Once in January 1996, at the age of 18, for possessing two firearms I was storing at my family home for a friend, rendering me three months in a low-security prison.
The third and final time in 2010 for a misdemeanour: specifically, for taking back something a thief stole from me. I did not serve any prison time for this and was given a minor fine.
