Counter-Currents
Arktos CEO Daniel Friberg (left) with Swedish antifa leader Mathias Wåg (center)
377 words
Daniel Friberg, the owner of Arktos, is threatening Counter-Currents with legal action over two articles about him from 2017:
- Greg Johnson, “Reply to Daniel Friberg.”
- John Morgan, “The Truth About Daniel Friberg.”
If you want to understand the background, please read the articles themselves.
Given how chronically underfunded our movement is, and given how unjustly race-conscious whites are treated by system courts, threatening other movement figures with litigation seems like a form of treason akin to doxing.
Of course maybe Friberg doesn’t feel that he is in the same movement with me. But then why should he care about these two articles?
I am frankly baffled by such threats. These articles are more than six years old. They are now mere historical footnotes. Moreover, by some indications, more than half of our readers today have come to us since 2018. Why dig up ancient history and expose it to a vastly larger audience?
There is nothing false in these articles. I am confident that I would win any fair hearing. But a legal battle would still cost time, energy, and money. However, since I am one of the few full-time movement people, these are not really my resources. They are the movement’s resources, and I have to use them sparingly. I can think of many better ways to spend them. Friberg, however, seems to have other priorities. Or maybe he has money to burn.
Although it pains me, I am going to spend some of your money to consult with lawyers about my rights and remedies. But, for now, I am going to take these articles down in 48 hours. So enjoy these bits of movement history while you still can. (Of course, I could always bring them back.)
As always, thank you for your loyal readership and support.
Greg Johnson
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15 comments
I have read both Greg Johnson’s and John Morgan’s 2017 articles on the Friberg situation. They have a strong ring of truth to me. I say this as a neutral party, who, as an anonymous commenter with no ‘skin’ in the Arktos/Friberg/Scandza controversies, has no need to ingratiate myself with anyone.
This is a sad matter all round. No one serious likes this kind of movement drama. The case against Friberg’s accounts of events seems strong already, but what clinches it is the very fact of his now threatening CC with legal action for a couple of mere articles, 6 years old. That screams “DOUCHEBAG!” (Maybe Jim Goad should update his recent piece on “douchebags” with a specific case analysis of l’affaire Friberg.) I agree unreservedly with Greg that threatening intra-movement litigation, especially for something nebulous like defamation, is indeed in the same moral class as intra-movement doxxing.
I still like Arktos, but this behavior makes me much less likely to want to purchase from them. It’s kind of sad, even if I assume commercially correct, that CC is leaving book publishing.
Best of luck in getting beyond this juvenile peevishness.
Incidentally, I forgot to note that many of the embedded links in Greg’s 2017 “Reply to Daniel Friberg” lead to “Page Not Found” or “this site cannot be reached”. Is Friberg covering his tracks?
Oh dear. When I see stuff like this, it makes me wonder what side they’re on. Anyway, if this was six years ago, then it’s most likely past the statute of limitations.
This sordid tale was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read. Who knew the Alt-right could turn into Keeping up with the Kardashians?
I think it should have been obvious what sort of person this Friberg creature was when he engaged in partying at all hours during the work week soon after the venture was begun. Who does that? People with normal jobs can’t behave like that, let alone those who are supposedly on a crusade.
Not a good look.
To put this into context dissident figures are notorious for slinging mountains of mud at each other, especially in some sectors such as AF. Somewhere in those mountains of mud someone probably actually did defame/libel another person.
But this is the first I have ever heard of someone suing for it. This is probably because actual malice is necessary for defamation of a public figure from what I understand, and that’s basically impossible to prove. Second, pardon my language but litigating is just a b**** move. Its like a mafia capo filing a police report because of a minor scuffle. If Friberg had truth on his side and self respect he would have simply used his own free speech to shoot back.
This lawsuit puts Friberg lower than even the d list e-celebs of AF.
A blast from the past. I saw this dispute in real time, so now I feel old….
In answer to your question Greg, I bet Friberg is fishing for a) money, and b) attention.
“Of course maybe Friberg doesn’t feel that he is in the same movement with me. But then why should he care about these two articles?”
A very good question. I’m not a lawyer, but I believe it has been long established, at least in Anglo-American law, that you can’t damage someone’s good reputation, if he doesn’t have a good reputation to be damaged. Juries forced to consider such cases have been known to award derisory damages, such a 10 cents or a shilling.
For example, in a case in Michigan, a prisoner serving a life sentence for murder sued a magazine publisher and others alleging that an article falsely stated that the prisoner had admitted guilt. The Court reasoned that, even if the statement as to his admission of guilt were untrue, it could not damage his reputation anymore than his current life sentence, except, possibly among his criminal associates in prison. Mattheis v. Hoyt, 136 F. Supp. 119 (W.D. Mich. 1955).
Since being “a leading publisher of alt-Right materials” is the worse possible thing to be in the eyes of today’s media, making him effectively libel-proof (like Hitler or bin Laden or Epstein), it surely follows that he is not, in fact, an “alt-Right” publisher.
Further evidence of this is the fact that Arktos books are sold without protest on Amazon. A glance at his catalog there leads one to think he must be promoting “Prometheism” now; as in “pro-ME-theism.”
I have always wondered about certain figures in the movement, such as Friberg. The fact you mentioned about selling his books without problem in amazon is just another in a long list.
Maybe he’s controlled opposition?
Is the opinion of a former speed skater really so important? Of course he is a good athlete, but the political opinions of athletes, musicians or cinema actors do not really matter. Garry Kasparov, for example, is a great chess-player, but what he talks about politics is BS.
I don’t know what state’s law would apply if he did decide to make good on his threat, but a brief google search on statutes of limitation for defamation shows that the longest one that any state has is three years. If that’s accurate, he’s, well, SOL.
I think that sucker punch by that Antifa operative upon Richard Spencer did more damage than anybody will ever know. It was as if it knocked Spencer out of WN entirely and turned him into a liberal, almost like a Harry Potter metaphor where Harry absorbed some of Voldemort’s power. It took even less pushback for these other former associates to defect to neoliberalism.
I have no idea who Frieberg is, nor do I have time to look up these posts to see what the fuss is about, but I am furious that another group that I gather is White Nationalist also, is wasting their time and money over what sounds like a schoolground cat fight. Really! We both has SO MANY real enemies that threaten our small groups, but which also threaten the entire White race, or those of us who claim European heritage. Why are you not focusing solely on how to save our hides from the likes of our Middle Eastern adversaries who vastly outnumber us, and our homegrown political idiots that think we are planning the resurrection of the Third Reich. That should always be our main objective.
Let Frieberg vent his venom on Twitter or some such other juvenile platform.
Most unfortunately, big egos and pointless personality clashes have been all too common since the beginning. Even Commander Rockwell himself documented that as early as the 1950s. I fondly remember being purged by a pack of armchair Caesars around 1990 or so, leaving me burnt out for ages. This has to end, since we have no more time for goofing around – if we ever did.
With what publications or organizations were you involved? My impression is that purgings have gotten more common as WN has grown via the extended reach afforded by the internet. I don’t recall doxxings back in the 80s. I even wrote a few pieces for Instauration, but who knew? If money was offered (I don’t recall), I refused it (I’ve never accepted any payments for the very few scribblings I’ve published). Did you write at all in those long ago days?
Back then, I had some skinhead friends. The ones I ran with were good folks.
I also fell in with an established circle of friends, about a decade older than I am. It’s this little tribe I ended up being at odds with in the end. There were some who were cool with me. One of them actually did something monumental for the cause, but then he moved. There were also some armchair Caesars who didn’t care for a new kid full of enthusiasm. (I suppose I could’ve been described as a wignat back then. But so what?) I’ll spare you the full details about their quirks.
The main problem is that those ones gossiped about other members like a sewing circle. I didn’t care for all that backbiting. I don’t want to know who allegedly is lying about military experience. I don’t want to know who’s allegedly a fag. (How about “don’t ask, don’t tell” instead and respect people’s reasonable privacy if you see something?) Then there was a guy I got along with, but he broke confidentiality with me about a family matter, not the sort of thing I cared to see go on the grapevine.
One of the armchair Caesars, bless his heart, described me as “everything wrong with the Movement.” When his comment got around to me, my immediate thought was – What Movement? The only movement going on is jaws moving. Anyway, I have no idea what any of them are up to now. They’ve had since the 1970s to get something organized, so I’m, like, totally expecting them to begin a Risorgimento any day now and save our society.
Thus began my long journey into the wilderness. Earlier I’d briefly contributed to a very obscure samizdat zine. In the following years, I set up a web page, which never got all that popular, and eventually the hosting company got eaten in a buyout. I should’ve done more, but it wasn’t until 2016 that I got into writing in a big way.
This got long. Anyway, the tl;dr takeaway here is that if the scene seems pretty bitchy now, it always has been, but even so, we’d better knock it off.
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