Over Easter weekend, Quran burnings organized by Danish far-right provocateur Rasmus Paludan led to several days of rioting in Sweden. The serial stunts were staged in neighborhoods well known for their diverse communities with large Muslim populations, whom they deliberately sought to offend. Counterprotesters reacted by throwing stones at Paludan and burning police cars.

Videos of the torched vehicles — and reports of three counterprotesters being shot — took over news cycles and social media feeds over subsequent days. The language of a “warzone” became ubiquitous, with one police officer interviewed saying of the rioters, “These are terrorists, not counterprotesters.”

Such scenes have become sadly familiar in the Nordic countries in the five years since Paludan first formed his political party, Stram Kurs (Hard Line), in Denmark. He has consistently failed to gain political office in that country, and today seems on track to fail in Sweden, too; the Easter weekend provocations were an attempt to drum up support for his new party Stram Kurs Sweden, which has just 170 followers on Facebook. Yet, while it seems that Paludan will continue to flop electorally, what really matters is what the riots and the Islamophobia that triggered them have to say about Sweden.