THOUSANDS of anti-fascists lined streets in Stockholm city centre on Saturday to protest against a rally by the Nordic Resistance Movement.

Demonstrators were joined by Holocaust survivors, including Hedi Fried, a popular psychologist and refugee to Sweden who survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps.

Social Democrat Prime Minister Stefan Lofven joined the demonstrators, telling them that “democracy always has the right to protect itself against forces ready to use violence to destroy it.”

The Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), founded in 1997, is widely considered to be the most violent neonazi organisation in Sweden. Its policies are openly racist and anti-semitic, and the organisation describes itself as fighting for an ethnically pure Sweden and a “National Socialist state.”

Though supporters of the group are a small minority of Swedish society, the group has been emboldened by the rise of alt-right social media.

In next month’s general election, the NRM will be standing 24 candidates, a first for the group. However, it is widely expected that they will not meet the vote threshold of 4 per cent in order to gain representation in parliament.

Furthermore, one of these parliamentary candidates is under police investigation for displaying a banner depicting Adolf Hitler on the anniversary of the nazi leader’s birth.