On Tuesday afternoon, the VRT news announced a report from the scene of the terrorist act in Brussels. The perpetrator had just been caught and citizens came to lay flowers. Only one interviewee speaks: “a Swedish journalist who left Stockholm after the attack.”
He says that it is sad that Swedes have been attacked because of their origins and that the attack is probably linked to the recent Quran burnings. The federal public prosecutor’s office also put forward that hypothesis as a motive for the terrorist.
“Do you feel less safe as a Swede now?” the journalist asks. “Yes, I think so,” replies Peterson, who proudly posted a photo of the interview on his social media on Wednesday. What is not apparent from the news report is the extreme right-wing background of this Swede. And his role in the Quran burnings in Sweden.
“He is not a journalist, but he abuses that title to get attention for his cause,” said Patrik Hermansson, a Swedish researcher at Hope Not Hate, an organization that monitors the far right.
Radical right activism
21-year-old Christian Peterson is associated as a loose force with Insikt24 and Exakt24, two alternative news sites with a radical right-wing slant, but his activities in Brussels are for his own site and social media.
Around the ages of fifteen and sixteen, not so long ago, Peterson was active in the Nordic Resistance Movement, a Scandinavian neo-Nazi group. To De Morgen, Peterson dismisses this as a youthful sin: “I certainly no longer agree with the anti-Semitism and violence of that group.”
Last year he stood in the elections for the far-right Alternativ for Sverige. In recent months he has caused a storm in Swedish academic circles. Peterson had enrolled at Karlstadt University for the course ‘Interculturality, Race and Whiteness in Sweden’.
He filmed during lessons and wrote so derogatorily about classmates on social media that half of the participants dropped out of the course. Teacher Tobias Hübinette went on sick leave due to Peterson’s attacks and the minister of education announced that he wants to make it easier for universities to suspend students.
Wave of Quran burnings
Peterson also appears to be involved in the start of the wave of Quran burnings, which is causing Sweden to suffer “the greatest security threat since the Second World War”, in the words of Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.
In January, Danish-Swedish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan burned a copy of the Quran right in front of the Turkish embassy. This led to Turkey suspending talks with Sweden on NATO membership.
In 2020, Belgium imposed an entry ban on Rasmus Paludan. Minister of the Interior Annelies Verlinden then called him ‘a preacher of hate’.
Paludan said the idea of the Quran burning came from a Swedish journalist. This fall it turned out that he meant Peterson. Christian Peterson claims that he called Paludan about the Quran burnings on behalf of others, but one of the people he names denies this in the Swedish press.
“It is a shame that this Christian Peterson is allowed to comment on an attack that he himself helped to provoke, and it is problematic that he is legitimized by being on public broadcasting,” says researcher Patrik Hermansson.
Criticism of VRT
On Wednesday, Peterson also shared an interview with Filip Dewinter, who took Peterson through Molenbeek. The Vlaams Belang leader took his chance to portray Brussels as the jihad capital and the Koran as ‘a license to kill’.
Yet we should not expect any Quran burnings from Dewinter now. “I think those Quran burnings are absolutely stupid,” he says. “Anyone involved in burning, tearing up or banning makes things needlessly difficult for us in our criticism of Islam.”
The VRT news service has been criticized in recent days for its reporting on the evening of the attack. No one wants to comment in detail about the report the next day, with Peterson. “It was a coincidental vox pop at the site of the attack where people came to lay flowers,” says Dimitri Verbrugge, Editor-in-Chief VRT NWS Journaal.
