An essay in Boston Review on how Sweden’s history of recently having been a racially homogenous country plays a part in the electoral success of the Sweden Democrats

A quite long essay written by me in the US American leftist political and literary magazine Boston Review on how Sweden’s history of recently having been a racially homogenous country plays a part in the electoral success of the Sweden Democrats. 

”In the case of the Swedish election, the Sweden Democrats had perhaps their greatest success by shifting the entire landscape of Swedish politics to the right. They have brought into the mainstream a specific Swedish longing for cultural and racial homogeneity that dates back to the 1900s, forcing other politicians to respond.” 

(…)

In the coming four years, the Sweden Democrats will have more influence over the nation’s governance than ever before. The party will do its utmost to evoke an image of a lost nation, and in turn provide consolation for its mourners. While it is rarely expressed openly, this sentiment seems to be shared by many white Swedes across the political spectrum.”

(…)

”It is paramount that antiracists and leftists formulate, and gain popular support for, a vision powerful enough to counter this and other base tendencies that the Sweden Democrats are expert at stoking. With dwindling support for left-wing parties in the recent election, there is much work to be done. This vision must include real left-wing economic policies, offering to remedy the past three decades of devastating neoliberal deregulation, marketization, and privatization. These austerity measures have created the preconditions for the Sweden Democrats’ massive electoral support. 

The left needs to find an alternative way to respond to widespread feelings of loss caused by the erosion of the welfare state. While the Sweden Democrats promise the stability of the past by conjuring racial nostalgia, the left needs to offer a vision of a strong welfare state that can encompass all people living in Sweden. This will almost certainly necessitate offering a more capacious sense of what it means to be Swedish that does not derive its meaning from race or country of origin.”