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| Friberg |
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Born 1978, Swedish co-founder (along with John Morgan) and CEO of Arktos Media, a publisher 0f extraneously intellectual books of supposed "right-wing" interest (Evola, Spengler, etc), and a relatively key figure in the Alt-Right.
Friberg was a "rich kid" who appears to have been "radicalized" by ethnic bullying, and was for a time a Neo-Nazi Swedish skinhead, before latching onto the more optics-savvy direction of the European "new right." In this period he was convicted and imprisoned for various offenses, including possession of stolen weapons, suggesting possible prep for terrorist attacks (shades of Brevik!).
When I came into contact with him, he seemed a sensible-enough nationalist type, but this wouldn't be hard, as this was the Alt-Right's most "florid" and "garish" phase, when someone of his dull and lugubrious type seemed welcome ballast.
He was part of the Spencer/Jorjani/Palmgren Alt-Right Corporation that unsuccessfully attempted to centralise and gate-keep the Alt-Right in 2017. Using his personality to his advantage, he tried to present himself as a moderating -- or, at least, enervating -- influence. But it appears he had either zero influence or no moderating qualities. [new edit:] Example: when the Alt-Right Corporation was formed, Friberg wanted to bring on board the talented writer Matt Forney who had been working for his "projects" in Hungary like the Right On site and podcast, but Spencer hated Forney and nixed this. Also, despite his supposed moderating qualities, the movement, of which he was supposedly one of the leaders, continued to veer out of control into a blazing dumpster fire of negative toxicity. Indeed, Friberg was present at the shambles of Charlottesville.
Friberg was a "rich kid" who appears to have been "radicalized" by ethnic bullying, and was for a time a Neo-Nazi Swedish skinhead, before latching onto the more optics-savvy direction of the European "new right." In this period he was convicted and imprisoned for various offenses, including possession of stolen weapons, suggesting possible prep for terrorist attacks (shades of Brevik!).
When I came into contact with him, he seemed a sensible-enough nationalist type, but this wouldn't be hard, as this was the Alt-Right's most "florid" and "garish" phase, when someone of his dull and lugubrious type seemed welcome ballast.
He was part of the Spencer/Jorjani/Palmgren Alt-Right Corporation that unsuccessfully attempted to centralise and gate-keep the Alt-Right in 2017. Using his personality to his advantage, he tried to present himself as a moderating -- or, at least, enervating -- influence. But it appears he had either zero influence or no moderating qualities. [new edit:] Example: when the Alt-Right Corporation was formed, Friberg wanted to bring on board the talented writer Matt Forney who had been working for his "projects" in Hungary like the Right On site and podcast, but Spencer hated Forney and nixed this. Also, despite his supposed moderating qualities, the movement, of which he was supposedly one of the leaders, continued to veer out of control into a blazing dumpster fire of negative toxicity. Indeed, Friberg was present at the shambles of Charlottesville.
Friberg with Spencer at Charlottesville
On 3rd August 2018, Friberg split from the already imploded Alt-Right Corporation, issuing a BS press release about it NOT being a "rupture" and instead being all about the, ahem, "great work" going on at Arktos, which "presently demand of us our undivided attention."
Some of that "great work" involved churning out English editions of works by Alexander Dugin ("Putin's philosopher"), and, indeed, with what we know now, the Russian connection seems all the more significant than it did then.
Just the fact that Sweden has always been a frontline target for Russian subversion may be reason enough for it to have been dubbed the most "Alt-Right" country in Europe. Without going into tedious detail, Friberg's pre-Arktos money appears to have come mainly from his association with Wiking Minerals and his boss there, the pro-Putin political funder Patrik Brinkmann. Let's be honest, if you were the FSB and wanted to launder money to various actors and agents in the West, a minerals company would probably be a pretty good intermediary, given Russia's own mineral interests.
Just the fact that Sweden has always been a frontline target for Russian subversion may be reason enough for it to have been dubbed the most "Alt-Right" country in Europe. Without going into tedious detail, Friberg's pre-Arktos money appears to have come mainly from his association with Wiking Minerals and his boss there, the pro-Putin political funder Patrik Brinkmann. Let's be honest, if you were the FSB and wanted to launder money to various actors and agents in the West, a minerals company would probably be a pretty good intermediary, given Russia's own mineral interests.
The fact that Friberg chooses to live in Orban's Hungary adds further fuel to the fire. My uneducated guess is that he has been a partial Russian asset all along, which may also be why he blocked me on Twitter, hoping I wouldn't notice him or what he was up to.
Addendum: A couple of days after we published this, Arktos was deplatformed by book distributor Ingram Content Group, meaning their ability to function as a business would be strongly compromised. This tended to confirm the assumptions and inferences made in this article.
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