“no nazi is going to march here, it’s not okay.”
You’ve been sitting much too long
There’s a permanent crease in your right and wrong
Stand
There’s a midget standing tall
And a giant beside him about to fall
— Sly Stone, “Stand!”
The image of Tess Asplund protesting a neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) march in Borlänge, Sweden, is powerful in its own right. She spontaneously tried to block the march, with humility and bravery, declaring to the Guardian: “It was an impulse. I was so angry, I just went out into the street. I was thinking: hell no, they can’t march here! I had this adrenaline. No Nazi is going to march here, it’s not okay.”
The image also connects to a striking photographic iconography, not only in Sweden, where it reminded many of Hans Runesson’s tanten med väskan (the lady with the bag) picture from 1985…
but also other famous images, such as “Tank Man,” from the Tiananmen protests of 1989 and taken by Jeff Widener for the Associated Press.
Also the 1968 Black Power salute protest at the Olympics by US sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, photograph taken by John Dominis.
These images serve as reminders of a history of dramatic individual actions that together constitute a collective visual history not only of speaking truth to power, but embodying it as well.