"We continue to review and report on the Swedish actors who are driving the campaign"

It has almost been a year since a massive spread of rumors about social services and Sweden took off in Arabic-language social channels and news media.

In what is described as a coordinated influence campaign, Swedish authorities are accused of kidnapping Muslim children and Sweden is described as "a fascist state".

For a long time, disinformation was mainly spread through foreign channels – and this is still the case to a large extent.

But recently, SVT Nyheter was able to tell how the campaign gained new momentum during the autumn via Swedish accounts in social media, including through live broadcasts on Tiktok.

"The rhetoric has become increasingly coarse"

We could give examples of how the rhetoric has become increasingly harsh, with calls for acts of violence, which led to the social services in Gothenburg filing a police report.

There are clear signs of a radicalization of this movement.

"They become active and organized by this misinformation," as Mikael Tofvesson at the Psychological Defense Authority puts it.

Now we continue to review and tell about the Swedish actors who are driving the campaign against social services.

Our reporters have spent a lot of time finding out what is said in the Tiktok broadcasts where the leitmotif is that the Swedish authorities are corrupt and that the social service "kidnaps" children.

"Just as important to tell how disinformation is spread"

It is an important publication, where we interview, among other things, the man who calls himself "Abou Anwar" in social media.

Since he told a father on Tiktok that he should "take back his children or be a martyr" - which could be interpreted as a call to commit acts of terrorism - we wanted to ask him questions.

"Abou Anwar" was, contrary to what he later announced to his followers on social media, very keen to meet SVT's reporter.

But perhaps the questions were tougher than he had imagined.

Someone might think it looks as if SVT is trying to protect the social service from criticism with our reporting.

Isn't it in fact SVT's task to review authorities and expose abuse of power?

Well, of course it is - too.

And we do.

But it is equally important to tell about how disinformation is spread, about calls to violence, about how dark forces work to create polarization and undermine democracy.