"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Peter Imanuelsen is a shadowy European extreme right conspiracist promoted by the likes of Elon Musk
It is humanly impossible to fact-check every post by far right influencers like Elon Musk, Radio Genoa, Eva Vlaardingerbroek, Candace Owens and Peter Imanuelsen (aka Peter Sweden). Their output is too overwhelming, and zero dialogue ensues if the post is shown to be incorrect. At best, the post is deleted, however arguments or an explanation are not forthcoming. The problem is that these influencers do not take any responsibility for their utterances, they are “bullshitters” who are only interested in promoting their political agenda through inciting hatred and disgust. Such powerful emotions render rational discussion impossible and only contribute to a mounting of polarisation and partisanship.
Take Peter Imanuelsen who has some 790,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter). Many of his posts are being pushed by Musk, so it is safe to say he has a lot of influence. Which is remarkable because most of his messages are lies or at best only half-truths. Even his name is fake and his claim to be a Swedish citizen is also contested.
Imanuelsen the so-called Swed was born in Bergen, Norway. He speaks English with a thick Scandinavian accent. As shady as his background is, he nonetheless claims to tell the truth about the crimes of a powerful “globalist” elite in the world. This “independent journalist” bases his activities on what he sees as a conspiracy by the “left-wing” mainstream media against the truth behind the issues surrounding migration.
In an interview with the German far-right magazine Junge Freiheit, he said: “Many people in Sweden don't see the current problems. Over 70 percent of Swedes have great faith in state television. In Sweden there is something called ‘åsiktskorridoren’, which means ‘opinion corridor’. Many media outlets in Sweden don't report on what's going on, which is why many Swedes believe that everything is fine - after all, that's what they read in the newspapers. Nevertheless, more and more people are waking up and starting to see things more clearly.”
The Norwegian Swede clearly feels at home with the neo-Nazis of the Nordiska Motståndrörelsen. He reported on their march in Gothenburg, Sweden in September 2017 and was given a press pass by them. Imanuelsen is close to Tobias Ridderstråle, a key player in Swedish identitarianism and one of the founders and financiers of the international white supremacist publishing house Arktos. Arktos has published extreme right material from the likes of Alain de Benoist, Dominique Venner, Aleksandr Dugin and Julius Evola. Imanuelsen also wrote a few articles for the extreme right magazine Fria Tider.
In the same year, Imanuelsen was exposed by the British anti-racist group Hope not Hate when he was seen in a photo with the British extreme right figure Katie Hopkins during an action by the identitarian movement against migrants in Sicily. Activists of the Identitarian movement had chartered the ship C Star under the slogan “Defend Europe” with the aim of preventing refugees from crossing the Mediterranean. To this end, they wanted to observe and disrupt rescue missions by non-governmental organisations rescuing refugees in distress at sea. The initiators included the co-leader of the Identitarian movement in Austria, Martin Sellner and Lorenzo Fiato from Generazione Identitaria in Italy, close to the Italian neofascists of the League and CasaPound parties. Imanuelsen seems to be extremely well connected to the Identitarian extreme right in Europe and travels regularly cover their topics.
Imanuelsen also went to the annual far-right march on November 11 in Warsaw in 2019. It is a rallying point for all neo-Nazi groups from across Europe. In this march homophobic, antisemitic and anti-Muslim slogans are always shouted. In 2017 the march attracted a mix of radical right-wing politicians from Europe as well as Polish far-right activists. One of the first speakers was Roberto Fiore, leader of the openly fascist Italian political party Forza Nuova. Anti-Muslim sentiment was prevalent throughout the event, with many banners depicting the star and crescent symbol with a red line through it. On November 15, the European parliament called upon Polish authorities to condemn what it called a "xenophobic and fascist march" which had taken place in Warsaw just a few days earlier. But Imanuelsen described it as an admirable form of “patriotism”. He interviewed Stefan Tompson, one of the founders of Visegràd 24, an important disseminator of far right propaganda and fake news.
For Imanuelsen, the European Union, but also the World Health Organization and other international bodies are totalitarian institutions presaging a communist dictatorship. He interviewed Noor Bin Laden in Geneva. The Swiss conspiracist is presented by Imanuelsen on his YouTube channel as an authority on the WHO and the UN. Bin Laden – daughter of the older half-brother of Osama Bin Laden – is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump and has been a guest on the shows of Trump cronies Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. She called the insurrectionists who invaded the Washington Capitol building on January 6, 2021 patriots and “political prisoners”.
“There was no ‘insurrection’ at the Capitol and the President never called for anything but peace, as evidenced by his own words,” Bin Laden wrote. The fact is January 6 was possibly one of the greatest reunions of Patriots in the nation’s history, although the media refuse to show all the love and unity on display.”
Imanuelsen also spreads falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines, climate regulations, feminism and migrant crime. He claims not to be a racist, but prefers not to see people of different colours or faiths in his home country. As an ethno-nationalist, he believes that people should stay in the culture they were born into and that mixing is out of the question.
“Moving the entire population of Africa to Europe is simply not sustainable,” Imanuelsen declared on the Swedish right wing site Fria Tider in August 2017. “Multiculturalism is actually the opposite of diversity. It destroys both the unique culture of Europe and that of Africa. Everyone loses from that. The refugee crisis is a lie. It is in fact a large-scale and organised resettlement of populations from Africa to Europe and it is the European governments that are behind the operation.”
The culprit in this worldview is George Soros, the Jewish billionaire caricatured by many right-wing extremists as the bogeyman and instigator of all the behind-the-scenes misery. It is the continuation of a rancid old antisemitic tradition. Before 2017 Imanuelsen mainly talked openly about Jews. Now he uses the code word “globalists”.
Like other ethno-nationalists, Imanuelsen has a huge problem with history. He has made negationist statements about the Holocaust, and subsequently apologised – only to claim later that he had never made these claims but that “leftist extremists” were trying to blacken him by taking fake screenshots. However, in a response to Hope not Hate's profile of him, he wrote: “I have believed all my life that the Holocaust happened. But during a few months in 2016 I saw how much the mainstream media was lying about everything. During this period I started to question everything including conspiracy theories about the Holocaust. But as I grew older I quickly realised that the Holocaust did indeed happen.The reason that I questioned the Holocaust was never because I was a Nazi, it was because I saw how much the media had lied about everything?” (emphasis added). In fact, he had been spreading antisemitic hate speech for more than two years. And he keeps blaming others.
Imanuelsen’s public profile and declarations paint a murky portrait of a shadowy figure who is deliberately vague about his past and has an extensive network within far-right circles in Europe. His revenue model is to spread fake news and disinformation on topics that appeal to extremist networks in Europe and the United States and around the globe. Unfortunately, he has succeeded in gaining an increasingly large following online. Especially because mega-influencers like Elon Musk boost his messages of hate.
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