Shut Down NATO!

Join the resistance

Demonstration against the NATO summit in Helsinborg, May 2026 (date TBA)

In May 2026, during week 21, the Swedish government will host an informal meeting of NATO Ministers of Foreign Affairs in the city of Helsingborg. This is an invitation to join the resistance. Together, we will shut down NATO‘s meeting.

This is the first time a NATO summit is held on Swedish ground, marking the country’s official entry to an organization which is responsible for decades of untold death, violent acts against humanity, and wars fought to protect western business interests and resource supply routes. During the meeting, there will be over 2000 individuals – delegates, officials, security experts, and journalists – accompanied by an army of police, secret service and the military protecting NATO’s ministers and world rulers. The selection of Helsingborg is not random: the city lies on the Öresund strait, one of the world’s busiest waterways and the entrance to the Baltic Sea. The strategic site of the city links the Nordics to the rest of the European continent, making it the ideal symbol for introducing Sweden to the North Atlantic alliance.

The timing of the meeting is also special. Once again in capitalist history, bosses and political ‘leaders’ prepare us and our societies for war. These war preparations are based on centuries of accumulated experiences in constructing, managing, and sieging wars. The NATO countries have rich experience in preparing a war economy and managing the disaster and the death toll of a war. Because a war, either military, trade, or in any kind of form, anticipates societies that are ready to participate in the warfares. The war plans of NATO and the Swedish state would never materialize without western societies accepting and participating in them. And this is what the Helsingborg meeting is all about – another critical summit for preparing us for and enrolling us in a potential war.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) constitutes a US-led military alliance central to expansionist wars and occupations that have caused the deaths and displacement of millions worldwide. NATO’s expansionist strategy intensifies conflicts and interstate rivalries while advancing western geopolitical interests at the expense of global peace – whether in its proxy involvement in Ukraine, in the U.S. wars against Venezuela and Iran, or the genocide in Palestine. NATO is focusing on the distribution of geopolitical interest spheres and power claims and on the co-ordination of world-wide exploitation through a heavily weaponized apparatus having nuclear weapons on the top of its offense.

The NATO summit in Helsingborg is not a meeting representing the people residing in NATO countries; but rather an assembly of bourgeois governments, violent states, the military-industrial complex and a warring military block that aims for global exploitation. This summit will allow for negotiations and preparations for new military conflicts – leading to more death, destruction and displacement.

On May 18, 2022, the Swedish state applied for a membership to NATO. Almost two years after, on March 7, 2024, Sweden was accepted by all member states and joined the military alliance. The long-lasting so-called Swedish neutrality and pretentious non-alignment as well as the Swedish ‘democracy criterion’ for granting arms-export licenses were all forgotten by the Swedish state in order to be ‘protected’ by the NATO alliance. One of the big winners of Sweden’s accession to NATO was of course the Swedish weapon industry. This industry, which makes money from people’s suffering, is economically only getting stronger and stronger by states’ conflicts and with the accession of Sweden to NATO in the form of an increased military budget of 5% of GDP (a request by the US). The Swedish state’s hunger for NATO membership brought an increased military budget, leading to more money in the coffers off the arms industry, which in turn means more weapons and ultimately more human suffering. People are dying while the profits of the arms industry skyrocket.

When the representatives of NATO show their ugly faces in Helsingborg, we will be confronting them with our actions of diverse and coulorful resistance and our idea of world solidarity. We plan to be in Helsingborg to disturb the plans of some of the planet’s oppressors. Repression won’t be able to prevent this if we are many and if we are unpredictable.

This is an invitation to our comrades, companions and friends from all over the world: come to Helsinborg in May 2026 and join the resistance against NATO! The autonomous and anti-authoritarian left has confronted the rulers in many fights: we have strength in numbers, and so long as we are many and unpredictable – no amount of repression can stop us. We invite you all to join us in the streets of Helsingborg! Shut down NATO! Another world is possible!