FLASHBACK - 20 years on the barricades of Freedom of Speech! [1983-2003]

February 25th, 1983

In February 1983 Jan Axelsson published the fanzine ”Dead or Alive” in the Swedish town Norrköping. His aim was to create his own forum, in which he could write about different kinds of music and culture. From having been a fairly punk-oriented fanzine, ”Dead or Alive” developed into a multifaceted underground-fanzine. At about the same time as ”Dead or Alive” was published, he also started Sweden’s first skinhead magazine, ”Skins Magazine”, in 1983. Jan Axelsson was 14 years old at the time.

While working with yet another magazine project, ”Mania”, Axelsson gradually integrated the name ”Flashback”. The emphasis on punk and heavy metal shifted to include more articles on experimental culture, drugs, weird phenomena in society, interesting people and many, many other things. Axelsson was also working at several newspaper offices in Norrköping and learnt about how to run a magazine publishing business. He wanted to create an even wider forum than those he’d previously published. He started strategising a magazine that would contain a lot more than just different kinds of music.

During the years 1986 and 1987 Axelsson also broadcast pirate radio. His show ”Metal Heaven” played tracks off bootlegs and live recordings with well known artists. He got ahold of these recordings through another sideline business – buying and selling bootlegs through the company Metal Tapes. In 1987 the UK magazine ”Kerrang!” wrote about the plans for a magazine called ”Flashback”. Another six years were to pass before this eventually happened.

Under the umbrella of ”Flashback Television” Axelsson also produced and hosted the TV-show ”Freak Out” between 1990 and 1992. He produced some twenty shows about subcultures, tattooing, Satanism and many other controversial subjects. Through this, he came into contact with a large quantity of people who actively encouraged him in his pursuit of manifesting what he’d been preparing for several years – ”Flashback Magazine”.

February 25, 1993

Ten years after the publication of the first issue of ”Dead or Alive”, the first issue of ”Flashback” was published in February 1993, in a small edition of just 300 copies. The reaction was fast and all copies were sold off more or less immediately.

Encouraged by this, he worked on with the same concept – presenting weird culture, weird people, weird events and manifestations in a wild mix. And often with an unashamed and provocative attitude to spice things up further. Issue number two, published in 1994 in an edition of 1000 copies, was a great success among customers and reviewers alike.

”Flashback” was, at this stage, a magazine that focussed on subculture, recent developments within technology, culture and lifestyles. Through extensive address lists and reviews sections in the magazine, networking and communicating was encouraged for both producers and consumers. Indepth articles about people and happenings totally unknown in Sweden were published and created new interest and reactions in the readers. Nothing similar existed in Sweden at the time. The question is whether or not something similar exists today even. Flashback’s attitude of openness, tolerance and, not forgetting, constructive provocation remains unmatched.

In 1995, the third issue was published. It contained more pages and was issued in 1200 copies. At this point general media in Sweden and abroad started expressing interest for Flashback. Especially noted was a piece in the magazine in which names, addresses, and phone numbers of sentenced rapists in Stockholm 1990-1991 were published.

By publishing the material, Flashback wanted to provoke to create a discussion. He certainly succeeded with his aim! He wanted to make a case for the fact that all the information was/is readliy and easily available to anyone through the relevant regional court. He also wanted to provoke by claiming his right to publish this and other controversial material. An emotional debate in Sweden’s mediaworld ensued.

Some of the rapists turned to the police and claimed they had suffered and been threatened in different ways because of the publishing. The Swedish Chancellor of Justice terminated the case, as did the Swedish Pressombudsman. After much debating back and forth and many heated debates in various columns in the press, Jan Axelsson was sentenced by Svea Hovrätt (The Svea Court of Appeal) to pay 50.000 Crowns to the plaintiffs for their suffering.

The total cost including interest rates ended at almost 100.000 Crowns (nearly $10 000). This cost was quickly balanced by The Flashback Defense Fund, a fund created by enthusiastic Flashback readers and supporters of Freedom of Speech. The donated sums varied from one Crown to 10.000 Crowns.

The wellknown TV show host and moralist Siewert Öholm threatened to sue the National Swedish Broadcasting Corporation (Sveriges Television) if they would go ahead and produce and broadcast a piece about the fact that Flashback had published documents from a court case in which he was charged with rape. Famous attorney Henning Sjöström condemned Flashback on nationwide channel TV 4.

June 25th, 1995

In June 1995, Flashback launched their own webspace, Flashback.se. On this site, a digital development of the printed magazine, archives with articles, interviews and thousands of links to other interesting websites were presented. Flashback’s slogan, ”Information wants to be free”, had been used to present the philosophy behind the endeavour. Now, with the website, the philosphy was put into serious practice, 24 hours a day.

On the very same day as the site was launched, he also founded an electronic newsletter, Flashback News Agency (FNA). The first issue was sent out by e-mail to an enthusiastic crowd of 20 people. At the time of this writing (February 2003), there are now over 115.000 subscribers, making FNA Sweden’s biggest newsletter.

The response to Flashback’s presence on the Internet was very positive and Flashback as a general operation grew rapidly. The year after, in February 1996, Axelsson took things one step further and created a web hotel. The idea was to offer space to individuals, organisations and others who, for a variety of reasons, had encountered problems in finding someone to host their sites. Flashback explained that the Swedish law and general netiquette (in regard to spam for instance) applied and that those responsible for the sites would have to obey. Questions regarding morality, politics, religion and similar, personal points of view were not addressed. Addressing issues like this would constitute a breach of the Flashback pathos – ”Information wants to be free”. Flashback’s web hotel very quickly grew into a think tank, a flowering soil and a meeting point for a multitude of opinions and views that gathered impressions and left expressions.

American news giant CNN mentioned the website in 1996 in connection with the hacking of the CIA website. When surfing to the CIA site you were suddenly met by a list of links, among which could be found www.flashback.se. The hackers had tried to pay their respect to Flashback as a phenomenon. Those guilty were never caught but were happily interviewed in the printed edition of Flashback, issue number 4/5 (1997).

This issue came in an edition of 5.000 copies that were quickly sold off. The number of subscribers to the magazine also rose in numbers. The companies that distributed the magazine, as well as many private persons and companies who couldn’t secure copies, wondered why more copies weren’t printed. The reason was a simple one: No one, not even those working with Flashback, had anticipated such a great and positive response! Today all issues of Flashback can be found at staggering prices among collectors, from 500 up to 2000 Crowns. The magazine is also mentioned in the Swedish National Encyclopedia as one of Sweden’s foremost undeground voices.

June 25th, 1997

Two years after the launch of the website, Flashback now started to act as an Internet Service Provider. Where Flashback previously had been able to offer webspace, now the time was ripe for launching modem pools all over Sweden and a complete connection to the Internet. Flashback was the first ISP in Europe to offer free dialup access, something that was given quite some attention in international media. The same year this service was also offered to customers in Norway, with modem pools in Oslo, the Norwegian capital. The police were interviewed in Norwegian media and they expressed deep concern about Flashback’s establishment in their pious country.

In August of 1997 Flashback Software released the software ”PNR Validator”, a script that manufactures Swedish social security numbers (”personnummer”). Later on in the year Flashback Software issued a couple of original fonts for desktop publishing use.

In June of 1998 Flashback Records released the CD ”Uffe was a Nazi”. The CD features recordings with Ulf Ekberg (of Ace of Base-fame) and his skinhead friends, singing racist and Nazi lyrics to ferocious punk music. The CD was played in many places. Israeli radio station Jerusalem Radio played several songs and the lyrics were translated into Hebrew. Johnny Rotten (of Sex Pistols-fame) made fun of Ekberg on his show ”Rotten Television”, displaying the CD in his hand. All didn’t share this gleeful approach owards the record, which was debated in many different spheres of society. Online auction giant E-Bay banned sales of the CD during the spring of 2001.

The turbulence surrounding Jan Axelsson and Flashback led to an interest from the authorities’ side - not wholly unexpected. Information soon leaked that the Swedish Security Police, Säpo, had followed Axelsson several times in 1998 and that they had tried to map all of Flashback’s activities. Flashback replied by posting the secret documents about their shadowing operations on the website.

The same year, 1998, Flashback Förlag was founded. The first product from this book publishing venture was a 2000-page summing up of the first 100 issues of the FNA newsletter. Seven kilos of archive material for those who hadn’t been around since the early days. But it was still on the Internet that Flashback kept growing and growing.

During all of the stormy existence of Flashback’s webhotel the swedish Police found no evidence that any of the sites broke the Swedish law. Leading Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, however, reported (incidentally in the section ”Law & Order”) that linking to Flashback’s site was a criminal act.

To further increase freedom of speech and to encourage a constructive exchange of opinions Flashback created conference services and mailing lists where Flashback users/customers could freely and without any kind of censorship ventilate thoughts, feelings and ideas. There was also an uninhibited access to Usenet (access to other conferences), electronic bulletin boards and informational archives around the world. This was an allround service that no other ISP but Flashback could offer at the time. SIFO Interactive, the national research organisation, announced that Flashback.se was one of Sweden’s 30 most visited sites in 1998.

So much freedom in one place was undoubtedly a controversial thing. The server at Svenska Vägverket (The Swedish Road Association) didn’t allow their employees to surf to Flashback.se. The Singapore Broadcasting Authority stopped (and are still stopping) all Singapore Internet users to enter Flashback’s site. The Church of Scientology’s own dialup software also makes it impossible for users to enter Flashback.se. Their own slogan ”Make up your own mind!” should be noted...

It should not be denied that certain pages at the Flashback webhotel had extreme contents. Representatives of various political extremes made their voices heard in ways they found appropriate. Certain individuals who felt hurt or harrassed by these expressions reported them to the police. The police, however, found no point in continuing after having done some initial research inside the Flashback web hotel. One of the people who reported Flashback to the police was a regional politician in Karlskrona, Björn Fries. Another was his lawyer friend Lennarth Eriksson. Fries claimed he’d been negatively exposed on the website of the Nationalsocialistisk Front organisation. Therefore, he and Eriksson decided to ”stop” Flashback at all costs.

They initiated their own research and pushed the case onwards to the extent that Flashback’s connection to the Internet was eventually shut down in November 2000. For Eriksson, this meant being in touch with all Internet Service Providers in Sweden, their Swedish joint interest organisation and their multinational partners/owners - the actual deliverers of Internet bandwidth. A private campaign designed to smear Flashback was enforced during regular working hours at Karlskrona Kommun (County) and the work of the two men was paid for by unknowing taxpayers’ money. Flashback’s time as a truly unique ”freedom server” was now gone, as Flashback couldn’t manage to persuade any ISP to deliver the needed bandwidth and related services. During 231 days Flashback’s presence on the web was gone, except for the continuous monthly issuing of the FNA Newsletter from different servers around the world.

The Swedish organisation Konkurrensverket (The Swedish Competition Authority) decided not to look into the case in March 2001. Justitieombudsmannen (The Parliamentary Ombudsman) also refused to deal with the case.

Foreign media paid great attention to the whole affair. IT- as well as general newspapers in Scandinavia, Europe and the US commented on the the developments that so clearly decimated the freedom of speech in a medium that was supposedly created to expand freedom of speech. And this in a country that claims to represent freedom of speech and freedom of the press possibly more than any other country in the world. ”No freedom of speech in Sweden...” was the headline of American Newsforge. In Holland, the chairman of the board of the organisation for developing the Dutch Constitution participated in a lively debate about ”Flashback vs MCI Worldcom”.

In February 2001 Jan Axelsson was awarded the Swedish Mensa Award for his ”undiluted and ferocious fighting for freedom of speech despite heavy protests from authorities, media and the public opinion.” Other candidates that year were Nobel Prize winner Arvid Carlsson, Neurophysiologist Germund Hesslow and the inventor Håkan Lans.

Through the years, Axelsson has also been a popular lecturer and debater in various media environments. In 1997 he was invited by the Finnish Club of Publicists to a seminar together with the editor in chief of Finnish newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet and the legendary newspaperman Carl-Adam Nycop. He has also been invited by the Swedish Club of Publicists and has lectured at the University schools of journalism in Stockholm and Gothenburg. Despite the fact that Swedish members of Parliament aren’t allowed to visit Flashback.se (the site is blocked by a filter because it’s said to contain ”unsuitable material”), Axelsson was invited in 1998 to speak in a Parliament session on an initiative from the swedish Government.

On the 24th of may 2001 Flashback was finally back online, without the status of an ISP but certainly with a well equipped new site packed with material, news and interviews many other media had chosen to disregard or simply didn’t know about. Despite the fact that it had been down for seven and a half months, interest for the site was now bigger than ever.

As an extension of this, Flashback created a new site, Popmart.se. This was a site where private individuals could advertise for free to buy, sell or trade things. The site grew very quickly up until the autumn of 2002. Some Swedish media giants (Viasat, ComHem and Senda) had then decided to sue the site. The reason was that they had found illegal cable TV decoders/descarmblers for sale at the site. Flashback’s lawyer explained how thorough the site’s filtering system was but to no avail... At the time of this writing (February 2003), the lawsuit is still around. In December 2002 Marknadsdomstolen (The Swedish Market Court) forced Flashback to close down its Internet Conference System. One of the suing parties, Viasat, ironically uses the well-known Flashback motto ”Information wants to be free!” as a slogan for one of their TV channels, TV 3!

In the month of June 2002 another piece of news was presented by Axelsson: the Flashback Hotline, a hotline for Flashback’s readers where they can ventilate their opinions about any- and everything over the phone. And in November 2002, Flashback once again became an Internet Service Provider. The webhotel offer was gone, but anyone can now get a free account via the Flashback website. The users receive their login-information within seconds and can be totally anonymous if they so desire.

February 25th, 2003

On February 25th 2003 Flashback celebrated its 20th birthday. The path from the early fanzine days of cut and paste aesthetics to an internationally established media company (in 67 countries!) has naturally been a long and troublesome one. But it’s also been a path of conquests and many triumphs in a loud and very ”un-Swedish” fight against bullying and repressive tendencies in the media sphere of Swedish society. Flashback’s fast-paced embracing of new technological and communicative developments (GSM-phone services, free Internet, webhotels, IRC, usenet, mailinglists, conference forums, site forwards, FNA for Palm Pilot, office hotels and other services around the world and so on... A very long and extensive list of pioneering adaptions of the latest developments.) has created an international respect as well as steady foundations for the continued expansion.

Coming up next from Flashback is a focus on the international expansion. The newsletter FNA was published in English and German already in 1996 and continues to this day. The site in English, Flashback.net, will be thoroughly developed during 2003. Work with the new issue of the printed magazine continues. This issue will, among many other things, contain lots of information about the, to say the least, scandalous revelations about the people and companies who vainly tried to stop Flashback as an organ for freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The reason why they won’t succeed is a very simple one (to many terrifyingly simple!): Information wants to be free!

Twenty years have now passed. Twenty years of constant development and continuous controversy. Twenty years of arduous digging and figthing. Twenty years of exciting happenings, conflicts and entertaining presentations... If anyone would think the coming twenty years will contain less of all of the above, that person is very mistaken!

Flashback, Stockholm, February 2003