Articles 2025

Terrorism or mental disorder? Manipulating the Narratives 

Mass Shooting in Sweden

 

Azar Majedi

 

On Tuesday 4th of February 10 people were killed and several others injured in a mass shooting at an adult education centre in the city of Örebro, Sweden. A significant number of students are immigrants who attend the school to learn Swedish or various professions. The police quickly ruled out what they described as “ideological” motive. 

“Officers said he had no links to gangs and is thought to have acted “Without any ideological motive.”

“They also do not believe the attack was motivated by terrorists.”*

Some reports stated that he suffered from mental disorder. The official and broadcast narrative is that he was a loaner with mental health issues, as it’s usually the case with white non-Moslem mass shooters! This is at best ignoring and at worst a deliberate covering up of the real motive behind such murderous attack. 

 

Firstly, there is a video of the attacker chanting: “Leave Europe!” This slogan is enough to call the motive at least racist. Furthermore, you don’t have to be a psychiatrist to understand that anyone who takes a gun and shoots into a crowd, regardless of their proclaimed motivation, must suffer from a mental illness or disorder. The mental illness explanation is a deliberate sidetrack from the real issue. Why would this “psychopath” attack a group of refugees and immigrants from the Middle East who are associated with Islam? The deep-rooted racism and hatred of refugees, Muslims, Arabs, blacks, and Africans is the narrative that has dominated the brain of this psychopath and has been promoted in the society by the ruling class.

 

Creating division, hatred and hostility in society is a classic and well-known method of the bourgeoisie. In times of crisis, this method becomes more widespread and intense. And this is the situation we are now facing in the world and in the West. The rapid growth of fascism in the West is astonishing. Right-wing and even officially fascist parties are coming to power in Europe. Repression and censorship are rampant. Poverty and deprivation have spread enormously. Governments openly and brazenly speak of the forced migration of hundreds of thousands of refugees to the slave camps they have erected in Africa. The pretence of "humanitarianism" and respect for democracy has been completely abandoned.

It is in these circumstances that we are witnessing the rise of violent attacks on groups of people. This painful and frightening event raises two questions once again: 1- the root of the growth of such events and 2- why are the police, the government and the media treating these crimes differently?

 

The rise of fascism, the deepening of hatred and hostility

 

Whenever racist and right-wing propaganda rises, so do blind, hate-based crimes and racist incitement against refugees and immigrants, especially from the Middle East, Africa and Muslim background, has spread rapidly throughout Europe, including Sweden. In recent years, Swedish society has shifted sharply to the right. It joined NATO last year and is considered one of the active forces inciting NATO's war with Russia. The government is currently in the hands of a right-wing-fascist coalition.

 

Such attacks and crimes happen in a negative and hateful environment. With the aid of media and by creating fear and hatred in society, creating artificial confrontations between different sectors based on race, religion and nationality the ruling class resort to spreading false narratives. Provocative and hostile propaganda against refugees and immigrants and against Muslims has been growing in Sweden and Europe for years. Demonization of Muslim people, especially Muslim men, Africans and Arabs has reached disgusting dimensions.

 

One way to counter this atmosphere is to question and expose this propaganda. For example, during the racist-fascist riots in England, we witnessed widespread demonstrations against racism and in support of refugees. The project of forcibly sending refugees to Rwanda was initiated and pursued by Britain. However, numerous attempts by the government to implement it were unsuccessful due to large demonstrations and pickets. Now Germany has decided to benefit from the facilities for the detention of refugees in Rwanda. Sensitivity and awareness of this issue are of great importance. One way to counter the rise of fascism is through exposing their lies and objectives and by organising protests and actions. Active defence of human rights of refugees must become an important issue in our struggle against fascism, censorship and state’s suppressive measures. The Western world now treats refugees like slaves. This is a disgrace to humanity. Fascism is investing in this. It must be reversed.

 

Muslim and non-Muslim attacker

 

Whenever the aggressor is Muslim or of Muslim descent, it is immediately and without any investigation labelled a terrorist operation and a terrorist attacker. This is what the police say, what the media reports, and what the people describe. If the attacker is black, or the attack happens inside the ghettos where most refugees live, the crime will be describe as “gang” crime. If he is non-Muslim and white, they call it a crime committed by a loaner who suffers from mental disorder. There is no need to go into great detail. Let's just look at a few recent events.

 

In the latest case (in Sweden) the police declared that the attack was individual and not related to terrorism or gangs. How did the police, who declared that they are still investigating and do not know the reasons and motives, come to such a decisive conclusion so quickly that they have eliminated terrorism and gangs and called the motive purely personal? Let us recall that in recent months there have been two individual attacks on groups of people in Germany. In the first case, a young man from Afghanistan was identified as the perpetrator of the incident. Immediately, everyone from the media to the authorities, including the Iranian left, called this person a terrorist and the operation a terrorist one. No one has yet conducted any investigation into the motives of this person and his connection to an Islamic terrorist group. The cry of Islamic terrorism was unabashedly raised and a call for a war against Islamic terrorism and against Muslims was issued.

 

A few months later, a similar action was carried out in Germany, this time by an immigrant from Saudi Arabia. The cry of terrorism was not raised, but silenced. Why? This person was a well-known Ex-Muslim and, by his own admission, hated Muslims. In a short time, terrorism was renamed "psychosis" and pages were written about his mental problems and that he was not a true Ex- Muslim.

 

Every year, there are few hundred mass-shootings in America. (Last year there were 488 cases.) Hundreds of people are killed. They are usually categorised as “Psychosis", "trauma" and “PTSD” related crimes, and soon forgotten by the media and government officials. 

If trauma and PTSD are supposed to be the root and reason for so many crimes committed by "white people," which is very likely to be the case, why is a similar action not considered "psychosis" or trauma by an Afghan, Iraqi, Syrian, Libyan, Palestinian, and Sudanese whose entire lives have been imbued with the deepest and the most painful traumas due to the bombs and crimes of the United States, Israel, and NATO? Targeted racism, creating prejudice, and open discrimination against certain people are the answers to this question.

 

Categorising criminal offenses in this manner is highly discriminatory and biased. When the police, officials or media categorise an attacker who is Moslem as a terrorist, they deprive the offender of any possibility of impartial justice. They issue a verdict before trial by branding the attacker as a terrorist. Moreover, this method intensifies and provokes racist and blind violence by creating a false fear against a section of the population.

 

The dominant narrative of Islam has blinded the eyes to such an extent that any logic, fairness, impartiality and indiscriminate justice, have been set aside. The word Islam and Muslim immediately sounds the alarm of terrorism in the traumatised brains of anti-Islamists. Over the past thirty years, American imperialism in its war of destruction against Middle East, calling it “The New World Order” has created and promoted a false narrative: “the clash of civilisations”, The West against Islam. By doing so, it has demonised millions of people simply because they believe in a certain religion or belong to a society in which that religion is dominant. Over the past thirty years, a dark and demonic image of these people has been transmitted to the world. It is true that Islamic terrorist groups have committed brutal crimes, but these groups are created by America, Israel and the West. Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Hamas all three emerged from the CIA, Mossad and MI6. The Islamic Republic was imposed on the Iranian people's revolution through a regime change by the West. Just as the former leader of ISIS-Al-Qaeda has now become the President of Syria with a change of decor.

 

We must try to expose and reject the dominant false and provocative narratives. We are in a dangerous situation. Each of these events, large and small, is a warning of a dark and bleak future; these alarms must be taken seriously. The effort to build a solid barrier against fascism and right-wing reaction that is attacking society from all sides must become a priority for leftist and communist forces, as well as progressive and freedom-loving movements.

 

*BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgp43j4l92o