‘It is about vulnerable guys’: violent far-right groups in Sweden recruit boys as young as 10

Validated by Trump, Musk and the manosphere, far-right extremists pull in boys online and use bodybuilding and fight clubs to further their white supremacist agenda

Driving through western Sweden, through pine forests dotted with elk warning signs, Lars Stiernelöf says he has noticed a worrying new trend among young boys. Since the inauguration of Donald Trump in January, after which the US president’s top adviser and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, gave two fascist-style salutes, there has been a rise in children using the Nazi salute in schools in Värmland.

“They don’t do it as a type of homage to Hitler – they do it because Musk did it,” says the sociologist, who works to counter violent extremism in the county where the Swedish Nazi party was founded 100 years ago. There is, he adds, “a lot of attention around Musk’s salute”, which some boys see as “a bit cool”.