The general attitude seen in the investigated Swedish regional newspapers was predominantly hostile towards eastern European Jewish migrants, in particular peddling Jews.
Of the more than 200 published texts about Jews in Sweden, some 10 articles have a favourable or neutral stance. These include, among others, stories about five Russian Jewish girls that run the risk of being sent back to Russia, a Jewish watchmaker likely wrongly convicted of arson, and Filip Zadig, the first Jew accepted for veterinary training.
The news coverage on the repression and persecution of the Jews in Russia must also be understood in a context in which Russia was considered to be a potential enemy.⁶¹ The oppression and violence against Jews in tsarist Russia was unanimously condemned; the newspapers wrote favourably about the international aid that was organised in order to support the emigration of Russian Jews to the West.
But when Jews from the Russian Empire headed for Sweden, the tone changed. This ambivalence is commented on in a report from the UK, published in the newspaper Kalmar:
In no country has there been more lively indignation regarding the pogroms and the massacres in Russia and Poland than in England, and the press of the radical and socialist Labour Party has expressed warm sympathy for the persecuted and a fiery indignation towards the oppressors and executioners. […] But now when these persecuted Jews […] seek refuge in the UK, then there is a different tone! There is no question that the English radicals love their brothers, but only on the condition that they stay in their country and, above all, if they board in Odessa, Varna or the Baltic ports, that they don’t disembark in London or Liverpool.⁶²
My period of investigation coincides with the emergence of a strong Swedish nationalism. In the framing of the Jews as a threat to Sweden, national ideals were strongly related to perceptions of culture and social cohesion.
In the investigated newspapers’ reporting, the Jewish migrants represent the different and the out of place. A quote from the newspaper Kalmar illustrates this: ‘These people are really Hebrews, and as the name suggests, they are strangers everywhere and have no native country other than in their own coffers.’⁶³