On the 31. maí 2025, a fascist demonstration against asylum seekers, refugees and migrants was happening in center Reykjavík. As an antifascist block, No Borders, IWW Ísland, Réttur barna á flótta, Samstöðutjaldið, Andóf – Mannréttindi yfir pólitík, and many more comrades gathered in a nearby square and spoke up against racism and hatred.
Several speeches were made calling for the working class and all society at large to stay united against fascists. We are publishing them here:
We haven’t gathered here to fight or provoke. It pains me to see people that have more in common with me than with the organizers of the anti immigrant protest go against their own. Do you think that immigrants are not the same as you? Because they have a different religion or skin color or culture? Maybe because you think they come just to get money from your government? Then please, listen to what I have to say.
They want us to believe that people flee their homes for no reason. Western corporations plunder the Global South, fueling wars, climate destruction, and poverty, then act shocked when people flee the devastation they caused. We don’t condemn someone for escaping a burning building, so why condemn those escaping economic and political fires lit by our governments?
The organizers scream about immigrants while the rich (including them) laugh all the way to the bank. They want workers fighting each other: native vs. foreigner, citizen vs. refugee… So we don’t unite against the real thieves: the bosses who slash wages, the landlords that speculate with housing making it a luxury, the cuts in public services so they can say that the public system doesn’t work and they can privatize them… Xenophobia is a weapon of distraction. If we’re busy hating each other, we won’t demand living wages, healthcare, or housing or prosecution of crimes that affect us more like tax evasion, or political corruption. Why don’t we use this energy to prosecute those people when we see they blatantly stole taxpayers money on the news?
They want us unprotected so they can still bring immigrants but with the ability to kick us out whenever they want to maintain worse working conditions so they can get richer with cheaper labour. In the end, who is doing most of the lowest paid and unwanted jobs?
Notice how they never rage against wealthy immigrants? It is only the poor, the displaced, and racialized people. Their hatred is selective because it was never about „law and order.“ It’s about who they see as human, it is a matter of dehumanization. Their bigotry exposes their priorities: protect the powerful, punish the oppressed. In the end, what day do you think it is more similar to yours? The one of an immigrant worker or the one of a rich landlord who organizes an anti immigration protest? Maybe an Icelandic CEO? Or a politician like Bjarni Ben?
They claim immigrants are dangerous, that they do most of the crimes. Ok, let’s assume that is true. If we applied their own fear-mongering logic, we should ban men from public spaces. After all, most violent crimes, immigrant or not, are committed by men. But they don’t propose that, do they? Because their outrage isn’t about safety, it’s about racist scapegoating. Generalizing is only wrong when it affects them.
They use the same old tricks: dehumanizing a group, spreading panic, and demanding „order“ through repression. We’ve seen this before in Nazi Germany, I see that all the time in my own country, Spain, that is rooted in fascism and unfortunately normalized. I don’t want that to happen here in Iceland too. We can see that in every regime that rose to power by blaming minorities instead of oligarchs. Fascism doesn’t arrive with an honest manifesto it slithers in on lies, fueled by fear and rage. If we let them take civil rights now, we will open the doors for them to do that again, and next time it could directly affect you.
So today, we say: no to fascism. No to their lies. We stand for solidarity, for class struggle that unites workers of all origins. We fight for a world where no one is forced to flee their home, where humans are not illegal.
-Juan
I am an immigrant worker here in Iceland. And I am scared to speak up today. Right wing populism and fascism are on the rise globally, and Iceland is no exception. The tragedies that we see happening in the US are starting to happen here too, on our doorsteps.
In a country that prides itself for its peacefulness and equality, we see increasing hate against migrants, breaches of human rights, unthinkable deportations, and shameless fascist rhetoric -all while this government stands by, doing nothing.
On the surface, these hate-groups claim to be rational, just expressing an opinion, just wanting what’s good for Iceland, emboldened by official voices sitting in parliament. They claim to only want security for them and their children. They pretend that resources are few, and badly spent on us, new comers. They hide behind the concept of legal migrants VS illegal migrants, claiming that sure, some of us are ok, some of us are safe.
For now. Don’t be fooled, this is what fascists do.
This is a classic technique of fascists. They appropriate workers’ struggles, workers’ anger and frustration. They are giving us the illusion that finally our daily struggles are getting spoken about. This is why some migrants even support them. They divide and conquer by scapegoating the most vulnerable among us, immigrants, refugees with precarious statuses, claiming that they are the reason for our problems. They are manufacturing tensions between us, workers, wanting us to believe that only a few of us, the “good foreigners” deserve a place here, and are safe here.
Again. For now. Don’t be fooled, this is what fascists do.
Wait for them to redefine who is legal and illegal, who is a “good foreigner” and who is not. Wait for them to ask for citizenship to be removed not only from serious criminals, but from troublemakers, when they will be the ones deciding who is a troublemaker. Wait for them to find their next target, maybe someone who even supported them at the beginning. Wait for them to ask for people with different opinions, for people who dare to disagree, to be criminalised and deported.
Do we want to live in constant fear of losing more rights, losing more dignity, losing more people? Do we want to be second class citizens? Do we want our children to act as “the good foreigner” for all their lives?
Because this is what fascists want.
The reality is that these fascists became rich through our immigrant labor, a labor of care and services. The reality is that now, they want to keep the benefits from our labor to themselves. Why are their leaders rich and their supporters struggling? They do this too to the Icelandic working class, promising social mobility and prosperity if they work hard enough and turn against their fellow workers, especially against the ones with a different skin color, a different language, or a different religion.
Mentioning real issues that are close to our daily life does not mean they are bringing right answers. The current issues that we are experiencing as a society does not come from refugees. It comes from decisions on how to allocate and share resources, it comes from the fact wealth is kept in the hands of the few.
The real ones to be blamed here are the people in power and their capitalist friends who are way too happy that us, working hard and scratching the bottom for a decent life, are fighting each other instead of fighting them, instead of asking for solutions that will bring dignity and safety for everyone.
Supporting those fascists today means helping the rich stay rich. Supporting those fascists means keeping us struggling for prosperity and dignity, forever. They need our labor but they don’t want our prosperity. They fool their supporters, they fool fellow workers. They want us to be scared and divided. They want to control our movements, our bodies, our beliefs, our freedom, our conditions of life, all that so a few of them can stay rich.
Today we, workers, condemn the rising fascists here who think that hate, cruelty, and racism are the only alternative to the failure of our governments. We condemn them for trying to convince the working class that they care for them. We condemn this government who enables them.
They say that they want security, but only for the few. We are asking for safety for all. They say that they want their children to be safe. But their violence is the real threat to all children.
To all workers in Iceland, and especially other migrant workers who think they are safe right now, please, do not fall for this fascist trap. If you let them take over, none of us will be safe. Talk to your friends, talk to your families, talk to your co-workers. Ask the people you voted for to bring real solutions. We all have a responsibility to stand against violence, against fascists, like the ones showing up today.
An injury to one is an injury to all. Workers need to stand in solidarity. Workers won’t be divided by fascists. Iceland, you are better than this. Do not let the fascists take over!
-Marion
When I was a vice member of parliament, I was called in, and this person was there too at the time, and they were speaking the exact same rhetoric as they were before, using the same opportunism to stoke people’s fears with misinformation for the sole purpose of enriching themselves and their career. He’s speaking over there right now. This was in 2007.
As I mentioned earlier, this has come up every few years. These folks try to organize, try to do something, and then we show up, people of all walks of life, people who made this country their home, and we outnumber them. Three to one, four to one, five to one, six to one.
Every single time. Every single time. And yes, they will come back again.
I have every confidence that they will try to do so again. They’ll organize every single time. We need to put the thought out of our minds that we can eliminate hate and bigotry and prejudice once and for all.
It’s unfortunately the case that there’s always going to be bigots in any community that you live in. But what we can do, what we must do, and what we have been doing every single time is organizing, coming together, outnumbering them, and not giving them a chance to organize and build up a movement for themselves. We do this over and over and over again.
Let them scurry in the shadows. Let them talk amongst themselves in whispers about what type of community they would like to see. As long as we keep coming together like this, like you beautiful people are now doing, as long as we keep coming together, they will never, ever be able to build the type of society that they want to build up.
And it warms my heart as an immigrant, as a trans person, and as a citizen of this great country, to see all of you come together right now and stand up to hate!
-Andie Sophia
Thank you all for coming. I’m here representing Queer Rage, Hinsegin Heift.
A Rage against injustice. Against hate, oppression and marginalization.
And we stand in solidarity today enraged at the hatred and violence being directed at another vulnerable group. Today it is refugees. But echoing what people have been saying here today and others for decades, which can not be repeated often enough. Today is fundamentally only in part about refugees. Today is about what is happening everywhere.
This hatred rising quickly in the west against refugees is at the same time rising against Trans people, against queer people, against Palestinians against Jewish and Muslim people, against autistic people, and… this list can and will literally be endless. Against any other marginalized group that the local or international capital class deems the next target best suited for dividing the working class.
Class war. That is what we are dealing with.
Class war. As the rate of profit declines the imperial west has to turn inward to look for new subjects to exploit. And do not be confused, this imperial west includes the Icelandic government. The Icelandic government is a capitalist government, and a government that implicitly or openly perpetuate hatred and violence against so many groups of people.
We are ALL the current or next target for these campaigns of hate. No matter who you are, you can be the target of the next hate. A hate with the only goal of perpetuating more hate and more divide for the capitalists to profit off
A protest with the following demands:
It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter what they write or say.
They know the actual text and words don’t matter, and WE know it doesn’t matter. They can write 5 demands, or 10 demands or 3000.
The point of vomiting whatever incoherent “demands” they have is to make people waste their time debating them or pointing out hypocrisy.
But both sides know what the real point of their demonstration is. It’s violence. The point of politics to these fascists is always just violence, there’s no end point, no destination. Just violence.
I’d like to end with a call to action.
Turn left. Radicalize yourself, Radicalize your friends, your family.
Turn left, and never stop going further. There is no middle anymore, there’s no “left enough” and a middle ground with fascism.
Turn left, and show solidarity in action with all oppressed and marginalized groups and people’s.
In the words of Audre Lorde: If only some of us are free, none of us are.
–Oddur
Here are more speeches from No Borders Iceland:
Bloodsucking leeches. Animals. Dogs. Criminals and rapists.
We should group up and push them out of town. Is it time for a gun license renewal?
I want violence. I want to fight. Who is with me?
Showing up as they march for Palestine and beating them up is the only thing they understand.
Human rights? That’s a Jewish ideology. And we have the right to stand up to it, so we don’t get exterminated by the Great Reset.
Let me be clear.
These are not the words of German National Socialists during their campaign to purify the Aryan Reich.
No. These are the words found in an Icelandic Facebook group.
A group organizing a protest right now against people who seek refuge in this country.
Even though refugees make up less than 1% of Icelandic society and even though we allocate less than 1% of government spendings, their demands target the most vulnerable in society as scapegoats for all social problems.
Demands organized by a man named Sigfús Aðalsteinsson
A man who makes his money as a landlord, selling real estate.
A man who leeches off the very same people he is now trying to lead in hate.
This is not a snapshot from history. This is not hyperbole.
This is an undercurrent imported to Iceland through social media owned by American oligarchs.
Oligarchs who no longer use dog whistles to communicate their white supremacist stance.
Oligarchs who openly fund genocide as they throw up a Sieg Heil while the American president they paid for is inaugurated.
They have now exported their propaganda across the western world.
And today, it arrives in Iceland.
One of their speakers, a young man. A former pop star who built his following of young boys on the internet by livestreaming his sponsored gambling sessions.
Yesterday, he shared a video of a British white nationalist priest who was demanding that “far-left extremists” be deported along with all foreigners to get rid of the communists.
He captioned it, “Let’s deport these no-borders idiots all together.”
A representative for the Police in Reykjavik said in an interview about the hate speech in this group that both groups are fighting violence. In the facebook group of the organizers they state that the Police sides with them on their cause.
I promise you, this is not Nazi Germany.
This is Iceland.
This is Iceland, right now, right here in front of us.
We cannot treat this as immaturity. These are not just teenage incels.
We need to treat this for what it is. A growing threat.
No more than ever we need to show unity, strength and resistance.
–Pétur
Í dag stöndum við sameinuð gegn rasisma, hatri og ofbeldi.
Fólk á flótta eru manneskjur með rödd, líf og rétt til ferðafrelsis og öryggis.
Engin manneskja er ólögleg.
Á síðustu árum hef ég átt þann heiður að mynda fjölmörg ómetanleg vinatengsl við fólk á flótta. Hvert og eitt þeirra með sína sögu og með ólíkar aðstæður í sínu heimalandi. Öll eiga þau sameiginlegt að hafa neyðst til að yfirgefa heimili sitt, hvort sem að það sé vegna ofsókna, stríðs, ógnarstjórnar eða þjóðarmorðs.
Að yfirgefa heimili sitt, án vonar um að geta snúið nokkurn tímann aftur er einhver hræðilegasta tilhugsun sem ég get ímyndað mér. Að yfirgefa æskuslóðir, vini, fjölskyldu og annað sem að þú tengir við það að „vera heima”.
Það er einmitt þess vegna sem mér svíður inn að beini þegar ég verð vitni af þeim raunum sem fólk á flótta gengur í gegnum þegar það leitar að öryggi og eðilegu lífi í fjarlægum löndum. Það er með öllu óásættanlegt að fólk skuli líða fordóma, hatur og ofbeldi fyrir það eitt að þurfa að flýja heimili sín.
Yfirvöld hafa vísvitandi ýtt undir hatursorðæðu í garð flóttafólks. Það er auðvelt að níðast á þeim sem upplifa enga samstöðu í samfélaginu.
Í stað þess að virða réttindi fólks og taka opnum örmum á móti þeim sem leita verndar, er ríkisstjórn Kristrúnar Frostadóttur að feta sömu spor og forverar hennar – með áformum um fangabúðir þar sem lögreglu verður heimilað að færa börn í varðhald.
Þolendur mansals eru enn geymdir í gæsluvarðhaldi á Hólmsheiði eins og vara sem bíður þess að vera flutt úr landi, heimilislausu flóttafólki vísað úr neyðarskýlum og á götuna. Börn eru vakin um miðjar nætur, rænt af sjúkrahúsum af vopnuðum lambúsettuklæddum sérsveitarmönnum, þau sótt inn á klósett í skólum af lögreglu og send úr landi án þess að gefast tækifæri til þess að kveðja ástvini sína.
Tilraunir yfirvalda við að teikna upp þá mynd að flóttafólk sé samfélagsleg ógn hefur gert það að verkum að nú hafa verið mynduð íslensk fasistasamtök, þau samtök bera nafnið “Ísland þvert á flótta.”
Við búum við þann grimma veruleika að uppgangur fasisma er hafinn og það er undir okkur komið að stöðva hann.
Við munum halda áfram að berjast þar til að landamæri verða að engu og yfirvaldið fellur um eigin græðgi.
Fyrir öll þau sem berjast gegn kúgun, hér og annars staðar!
Fyrir öll þau sem trúa því að engin manneskja sé ólögleg!
Fyrir öll þau sem vita að barátta gegn rasisma í dag, er barátta gegn rasisma fyrri tíma og komandi tíma!
Ekki fleiri brottvísanir!
Ferða- og búsetufrelsi fyrir öll!
Lifi barátta hinna frjálsu og villtu!
NO BORDERS, NO NATIONS, STOP DEPORTATIONS
–Askur
IWW Ísland, No Borders, and all antifa groups here in Iceland, are committed to fight the fascists!
