The first Quran burning event in Sweden was Paid by a party of the extreme right with Russian connections. The burning was in front of the Turkish embassy, to anger Turkey as much as possible, probably exactly to prevent Sweden from entering NATO.
So very obviously the Russians had part in it from the beginning.
Which one? That stupid Dane has been burning Qurans in Sweden since before the war began.
And it's a bit misleading to say paid. It's technically true, but it is a very low amount of money that's needed for a permit. It's 50 € or something like that.
While the Russians might have encouraged it, he would have done it anyways. He just loves attention.
But seriously, if anything fucky is going on rn, my default is that Russia is behind it. Kinda sucks because it's just another conspiracy theory, but it fits too well not to be true most of the time. The coups going on in Niger (and Mali and Burkina Faso before) are the most obvious examples. Less obvious is the disinformation campaign in Germany (and probably all over europe) against progressive policies atm.
I think it’s less about being against progressive policies and more about creating societal friction by supporting controversial figures and helping politicians that are pro-russia. The conservative/ alt right politics fit Russia, but more importantly those parties are often less critical of Russia (they don’t mind their anti human rights / free press autocratic tendencies as much) while also being underrated in the polls. Populistic anti-migration parties often aren’t taken seriously and rarely included in coalitions, but get a surprising amount of votes which can still be fairly useful to influence those countries.
It’s pretty easy to believably say that the Swedish government supports Quran burning when they keep issuing permits for it.
If you wanna get a little background, they keep letting this Rasmussen guy burn em as a demonstration. What is he demonstrating? Why his legitimate ethnio-nationalist political beliefs which hold that there is no place in Sweden for Muslims. If that makes you wanna vote for him, he’s got his own political party (far right, naturally).
An easy parallel is calling the government that issues the kkk a permit to march in robes racist.
It would be real simple for the swedish government to put an end to this kind of talk, they’d just have to stop issuing protest permits and police escorts to people burning Qurans.
If you don’t want your enemies to be able to say you condone hate speech, stop condoning it.
I'm sorry, but your parallel shows how you've got this wrong.
It's ok to demonstrate against Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and even countries like Russia, China, or USA.
It is NOT ok to demonstrate against Muslims, Jews, bhuddists, or Russians, Chinese, or Americans.
The KKK marching in white robes are classed as hate speech, because they hate a group of people.
Burning the Qur'an is not hate speech because it shows a hatred for Islam, not Muslims.
If we start to ban stuff like this we're heading towards a slippery slope we don't want to go down.
HOWEVER, I believe you could see it more as hate speech when it's obviously directed at, for example, Turkish people when you burn it outside their embassy. And that's what this discussion should be about, because it's a whole different thing burning the Qur'an at "plattan" in central Stockholm compared to outside a countries' embassy. I haven't paid much attention to Rasmussen either, but if his intent is "Muslims are bad" instead of "limit amount of refugees", I believe that can be classified as hate speech as well.
It’s cool, I can burn the Quran, I don’t hate Muslims, I just hate Islam, the religion and history of all Muslims. Where am I gonna burn the Quran you ask? Why, in front of a mosque, in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood or in front of the embassy of a Muslim nation. Don’t worry though, I’m doing it to show that I hate Islam, not Muslims. Pay no attention to my extensive history of speaking in racial epithets toward muslim people, my association with far right anti Muslim groups or my political party that explicitly opposes allowing muslims to live in the country. Now please provide me a police escort so I’m not torn limb from limb in the process. Why no, I certainly did not intend to incite, what ever could have given you that idea?
This is like saying people should be able to burn crosses because theyre doing it to show that they hate Christianity (or in the case of a kkk offshoot that really existed: that it’s part of their Christian worship service). No one is out here burning crosses for any reason other than to signal hate. No one is burning Qurans for any reason other than to signal hate.
We can easily prove this by looking for someone burning a Quran who isn’t aligned with a far right party that has anti Muslim ideology, hasn’t spoken out against muslims and isn’t funded by groups that are.
There of course are none, because everyone burning Qurans is doing it as a form of hate speech.
You don’t, but if you want the cops to be there to protect you from the crowd you enraged by telling them for weeks that you’re gonna burn a Quran you gotta file for that permit.