Daniel Friberg (born 1978) is a Swedish businessman, publisher, and writer, described as a leading figure of the Swedish neo-fascist movement and global
alt-right
The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a far-right, white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s before increasing in popularity during the mid-2 ...
movements.
He is the CEO and co-founder (in 2010) of
Arktos Media
Arktos Media is a publishing company known for publishing authors of the European New Right, as well as translating European far-right literature into English.
History
Arktos was founded in India in 2009 by Swedish businessman and former acti ...
.
He co-founded the
AltRight Corporation with American
white supremacist
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other Race (human classification), races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any Power (social and polit ...
Richard Spencer in 2017
but severed ties in May 2018.
He is a former CEO of the mining company
Wiking Mineral.
At the head of an international far-right media, literature, and music empire, Friberg is influenced in particular by the '
metapolitical
Metapolitics (sometimes written meta-politics) is metalinguistic talk about politics; a political dialogue about politics itself. In this mode, metapolitics takes on various forms of inquiry, appropriating to itself another way toward the discourse ...
' strategy of the French
Nouvelle Droite
The Nouvelle Droite (; en, "New Right"), sometimes shortened to the initialism ND, is a far-right political movement which emerged in France during the late 1960s. The Nouvelle Droite is at the origin of the wider European New Right (ENR). Vario ...
('New Right'), defined by
Guillaume Faye
Guillaume Faye (; 7 November 1949 – 6 March 2019) was a French journalist, writer, and leading member of the French New Right. Earlier in his career, anti-Zionism permeated his work; later on, criticism of Islam became prominent in his writin ...
as the "social diffusion of ideas and cultural values for the sake of provoking profound, long-term, political transformation." Scholar
Benjamin R. Teitelbaum
Benjamin Raphael Teitelbaum (born January 27, 1983) is an American Ethnography, ethnographer and political commentator. An associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado, Boulder and former Head of Nordic Studies at the same ...
has described Arktos Media as the "uncontested global leader in the publication of English-language Nouvelle Droite literature."
Biography
Early life
Daniel Friberg was born in 1978 in
Gothenburg
Gothenburg (; abbreviated Gbg; sv, Göteborg ) is the second-largest city in Sweden, fifth-largest in the Nordic countries, and capital of the Västra Götaland County. It is situated by the Kattegat, on the west coast of Sweden, and has ...
, from an educated and politically left-leaning family. According to him, he was drawn to right-wing views after witnessing immigrant children targeting whites in his school.
In his teenage years, he became involved with the Swedish
white power skinhead
White power skinheads, also known as racist skinheads and neo-Nazi skinheads, are members of a neo-Nazi, white supremacist and antisemitic offshoot of the skinhead subculture. Many of them are affiliated with white nationalist organizations and ...
culture of the 1990s. In middle school, he handed out leaflets for the nationalist
Sweden Democrats
The Sweden Democrats ( sv , Sverigedemokraterna ; SD ) is a nationalist and right-wing populist political party in Sweden. As of 2022, it is the largest member of Sweden's right-wing governing bloc to which it provides confidence and supply, a ...
party, and soon began printing his own propaganda with a printer laser to post it in his school.
In 1997, aged 19, he founded the agency Alternative Media and the newspaper ''Framtid'' (Future) in order to propagate his nationalist ideas in the Swedish society at large. Friberg spent his entire savings to print 21,000 copies and sent them to every graduating high school student in
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
and
Gothenburg
Gothenburg (; abbreviated Gbg; sv, Göteborg ) is the second-largest city in Sweden, fifth-largest in the Nordic countries, and capital of the Västra Götaland County. It is situated by the Kattegat, on the west coast of Sweden, and has ...
. In 1998, he joined the editorial staff of ''Folktribunen'', the main outlet of the
Swedish Resistance Movement
The Nordic Resistance Movement; Norwegian: nb, Nordiske motstandsbevegelsen, NMB; nn, Nordiske motstandsrørsla NMR; fi, Pohjoismainen Vastarintaliike, PVL; is, Norræna mótstöðuhreyfingin, NMH; da, Den nordiske modstandsbevægelse, ...
, today the largest militant
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
organization in Scandinavia. He eventually left the movement after it was radicalized, and started to distance himself from the
white supremacist
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other Race (human classification), races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any Power (social and polit ...
culture.
Media activities
In 2001, Friberg cofounded Nordic Press (''Nordiska förlaget''), a publishing and music distribution company that primarily sold albums performed by
white power bands, with the aim of providing nationalists a new "education" and "inspiration". His agency, Alternative Media, produced a three-CD project named ''Svensk ungdom'' (Swedish Youth). The first release in the series remains one of the most popular nationalist albums in the Nordic countries today. In parallel, Nordic Press turned into the first major source of anti-immigrant literature in nationalist circles and helped them display a 'semi-academic character'.
From 2004, Friberg became inspired by the
Nouvelle Droite
The Nouvelle Droite (; en, "New Right"), sometimes shortened to the initialism ND, is a far-right political movement which emerged in France during the late 1960s. The Nouvelle Droite is at the origin of the wider European New Right (ENR). Vario ...
(French New Right) literature, especially the works of
Alain de Benoist
Alain de Benoist (; ; born 11 December 1943) – also known as Fabrice Laroche, Robert de Herte, David Barney, and other pen names – is a French journalist and political philosopher, a founding member of the Nouvelle Droite ("New Right"), and ...
and
Guillaume Faye
Guillaume Faye (; 7 November 1949 – 6 March 2019) was a French journalist, writer, and leading member of the French New Right. Earlier in his career, anti-Zionism permeated his work; later on, criticism of Islam became prominent in his writin ...
, "It was this translation of the
Nouvelle Droite
The Nouvelle Droite (; en, "New Right"), sometimes shortened to the initialism ND, is a far-right political movement which emerged in France during the late 1960s. The Nouvelle Droite is at the origin of the wider European New Right (ENR). Vario ...
manifesto that I read (...) online, written in English. (...) Thought it was totally brilliant, and wondered why these ideas weren’t better known." The same year, he cofounded the Nordic League (''Nordiska förbundet''), an organization advocating a ostensibly
metapolitical
Metapolitics (sometimes written meta-politics) is metalinguistic talk about politics; a political dialogue about politics itself. In this mode, metapolitics takes on various forms of inquiry, appropriating to itself another way toward the discourse ...
stance that echoed the ideas of the Nouvelle Droite.
Along with other leaders of the Nordic League, he co-established in July 2006 the Swedish-language blog portal Motpol and, the same year, the far-right online collaborative encyclopedia
Metapedia
Metapedia is an online wiki-based encyclopedia dedicated to fascist, far-right, white nationalist, white supremacist, anti-feminist, Islamophobic, antisemitic, and neo-Nazi points of view.
History
The Swedish Metapedia was founded in 2006 ...
, portrayed as an effort to advance the "
cultural war". He was also closely involved in the creation of the messaging board Nordisk.ru, which attracted some 22,000 Scandinavian nationalists and other far-right users, including the Norwegian far-right mass killer
Anders Breivik
Anders is a male name in Scandinavian languages and Fering North Frisian, an equivalent of the Greek Andreas ("manly") and the English Andrew. It originated from Andres via metathesis.
In Sweden, Anders has been one of the most common names fo ...
.
Arktos Media
Friberg earned an MBA from
Gothenburg University
The University of Gothenburg ( sv, Göteborgs universitet) is a university in Sweden's second largest city, Gothenburg. Founded in 1891, the university is the third-oldest of the current Swedish universities and with 37,000 students and 6000 s ...
in 2006. He worked in finance and management, then served as the CEO of
Wiking Mineral until 2016, a mining company that includes other executives associated with the far-right, most notably
Patrik Brinkmann.
In 2009, Friberg became the sole owner of the Nordic League and decided to cease the activities of the organization while allowing Metapedia and Motpol to continue to operate. In October, he planned with a Danish politician and two Danish collaborators the creation of the publishing house Arktos Media, officially established the following year in 2010. Friberg became the CEO of the company, and American John B. Morgan its chief editor. Arktos Media has translated to English and published various far-right authors such as
Julius Evola
Giulio Cesare Andrea "Julius" Evola (; 19 May 1898 – 11 June 1974) was an Italian philosopher, poet, painter, esotericist, and radical-right ideologue. Evola regarded his values as aristocratic, masculine, traditionalist, heroic, and defiantly ...
,
Alain de Benoist
Alain de Benoist (; ; born 11 December 1943) – also known as Fabrice Laroche, Robert de Herte, David Barney, and other pen names – is a French journalist and political philosopher, a founding member of the Nouvelle Droite ("New Right"), and ...
,
Guillaume Faye
Guillaume Faye (; 7 November 1949 – 6 March 2019) was a French journalist, writer, and leading member of the French New Right. Earlier in his career, anti-Zionism permeated his work; later on, criticism of Islam became prominent in his writin ...
,
Alexandr Dugin, and
Paul Gottfried
Paul Edward Gottfried (born November 21, 1941) is an American paleoconservative political philosopher, historian, and writer. He is a former Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He is editor-in-chief of the paleocons ...
. During the 2010s, it had grown as the largest retailer of radical Right literature in the world according to scholar
Benjamin R. Teitelbaum
Benjamin Raphael Teitelbaum (born January 27, 1983) is an American Ethnography, ethnographer and political commentator. An associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado, Boulder and former Head of Nordic Studies at the same ...
. American white supremacist
Richard Spencer has also credited Arktos with having increased access to
European New Right
The European New Right (ENR) is a far-right movement which originated in France as the Nouvelle Droite in the late 1960s. Its proponents are involved in a global "anti-structural revolt" against modernity and post-modernity, largely in the form of ...
and
Identitarian literature among American white nationalists.
In early 2015, Friberg co-founded the online media outlet RightOn.net, and he published his first book, ''The Real Right Returns'' (''Högern kommer tillbaka''), where he contended that it was the right time for nationalists to enter the public sphere without fear of massive political repression.
In January 2017, he partnered with Spencer and the Swedish white nationalist website
Red Ice
Red Ice is a white supremacist multimedia company led by the married couple Lana Lokteff and Henrik Palmgren. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has described Red Ice as being important in the YouTube alt-right radicalization pipeline, furt ...
to establish the Alt-Right Corporation and the website AltRight.com, seen as a major effort to unite European and U.S.
white identity White identity is the objective or subjective state of perceiving oneself as a white person and as relating to being white. White identity has been researched in data and polling, historically and in social sciences. There are however polarized pos ...
figures. Friberg was a scheduled speaker at the 2017
Unite the Right rally
The Unite the Right rally was a white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, from August 11 to 12, 2017. Marchers included members of the alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, ...
in Virginia, which broke out in violence and lead to the deaths of
one counter-protester and two law enforcement officers. Friberg blamed the violence on
antifa counter-protesters and police.
Views
Friberg's beliefs include
identitarianism
The Identitarian movement or Identitarianism is a pan-European nationalist, far-right political ideology asserting the right of European ethnic groups and white peoples to Western culture and territories claimed to belong exclusively to them ...
, which opposes multiculturalism and migration,
and
ethnopluralism
Ethnopluralism or ethno-pluralism, also known as ethno-differentialism, is a political concept which relies on preserving and mutually respecting separate and bordered ethno-cultural regions. Among the key components are the "right to difference" ( ...
.
His 2015 book, ''The Real Right Returns: A Handbook for the True Opposition'', has been described as Friberg's "manifesto, and a handbook for alt-right activists".
Private life
Since 2014, Friberg has lived in
Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
, Hungary. He is married with two children.
He has spent occasional time in prison for weapons and other offenses between 1995 to 2010.
References
Notes
Bibliography
*
*
External links
Daniel Fribergat
Arktos Media
Arktos Media is a publishing company known for publishing authors of the European New Right, as well as translating European far-right literature into English.
History
Arktos was founded in India in 2009 by Swedish businessman and former acti ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Friberg, Daniel
Living people
21st-century Swedish businesspeople
Alt-right
Alt-right writers
Swedish publishers (people)
University of Gothenburg alumni
1978 births
New Right (Europe)
Neo-fascists