The lesson we must learn from the far-right’s successes in Sweden
Jimmie Åkesson’s career shows what can be achieved with persistence. The Sweden Democrats – a far-right party with roots in neo-Nazism – got 1.4 percent when he took over as leader in 2005. Last week they got 20 percent, making Akkeson the kingmaker of a coalition of liberals, Christian Democrats, the “Moderates” and his own party, who will take power in a country that was once the icon of social liberalism.
How a “cleansed” party of ethno-nationalists moves from the fringes to the position of powerbroker should by now be no mystery. Åkesson has simply followed the recipe set by Marine Le Pen in France, the Finns Party in Finland, Vox in Spain and Italy’s Brethren – whose leader Giorgia Meloni looks set to pull off a similar feat.
The ingredients are: a modernized far-right ideology; a conservative mainstream drawn to this new way of thinking and unable to defend its own; media and technology companies determined to sanitize fascism for profit; and a society whose liberalism is proving fragile in the face of non-white immigration.
Before we panic, we should note that Magdalena Andersson, leader of the Social Democrats and Sweden’s first female prime minister, actually increased her own party’s vote by two points, to 30%. And the right-wing bloc’s victory was narrow – leaving it with just a three-seat majority.
So Åkesson’s party, which will not have ministers in the government but will strike out, can be held back if the Swedish left and center wake up to the danger.
But Swedish politics is now polarized. The Social Democrats, the Greens and the left-wing parties won massively in the cities and rural areas of the north. The right/extreme right block made progress in rural south-east Sweden which – like our own Red Wall – is solidly working class and was once solidly left.
Åkesson’s party combines technically sanitized far-right politics with provocative language and behavior typical of close-to-fascist populists. In 2020, Åkesson arrived at the border between Greece and Turkey with flyers telling Syrian refugees “Sweden is full. Don’t come to us!”
Sensitive to its roots in the white supremacist right, the party ostensibly adopted a “zero tolerance for racism” approach. But on election night itself, Rebecka Fallenkvist, one of the party’s TV influencers, couldn’t resist making a pun on the Swedish version of “Sieg Heil” – which she said was done to “induce over-interpretation” before later claiming she was just drunk . (the phrase sounds like “victory weekend” pronounced backwards).
Other countries have seen mainstream liberalism and conservatism throw a cordon on the populist and extreme right. In neighboring Finland, for example, the rise of Finns to over 20% forced the Social Democratic, Green, Centre, Left and Swedish-speaking parties to form a centre-coalition. This made it impossible for the Conservatives to form any form of government with the far right and removed the temptation to do so. Åkesson’s chance came when the Swedish Moderates, who had disavowed a coalition with the extreme right, flipped into a de facto electoral alliance with them.
And the driving force? The ability of the right and extreme right, together with the tabloid media and social media, to successfully connect violent crime and immigration in the popular imagination.
At a time when Swedes are worried about the rising cost of living and the threat of Russian aggression, the election campaign saw all these issues sidelined in favor of the right’s central narrative – that non-white Muslim migrants leave a trail of violent crime. over hitherto peaceful Swedish societies. This includes an increased number of rapes, the creation of “segregated neighborhoods” that make integration impossible and at a cost that reduces Swedish-born access to welfare benefits. Consequently, the right to asylum must end and foreign-born criminals deported.
The election campaign proved with absolute clarity what we already know from Italy, Spain and the UK. Presented with such arguments, the moral fiber of mainstream conservatism routinely crumbles. The parties of the centre-right simply adopted the racialised logic of the far-right and told the electorate that they would deal with the problem technocratically, using less extreme language.
Instead of holding back the far right, this approach propelled them to pole position.
The Greens, the Social Democrats and the Left, meanwhile – rooted as they are in the progressive, young, urban demographic – could not allow themselves to carry the conversation effectively. In addition, each of the progressive parties has its own obsession: the left with opposition to NATO membership, the Greens with opposition to nuclear power, the Social Democrats themselves cherish the legacy of the covid-19 pandemic, where they took an anti-lockdown stance
What do we learn from this? The rise of Åkesson’s party confirms that – with the support of media companies for whom social antagonism equals profit – around 20% of the population in most European countries are prepared to vote for parties that advocate proto-civil war against their immigrant minorities. They are almost always in areas that were once industrialized; almost always from the least educated part of society; and impervious either to reason or concessions.
The question has not become “how do we stop men like Akesson from getting 20%?”, but how do we immunize the next 30% of traditional center voters against the ideology and their leaders from electoral cooperation? From Trump’s Republican Party to Spain’s Partido Popular, to our own Tories, the answer turns out to be: with difficulty.
Because the unknown fact of modern conservatism is its ideological hollowness. In many countries, center-right parties became mere avatars for deregulation and financial capital. When it comes to issues that “the market” cannot solve, they have no philosophical hinterland, no belief system other than the nationalism, soft racism and nostalgia that once kept hard racists within their voting blocs, but now no longer do.
Åkesson’s party, with its neo-Nazi fringes and its ugly rhetoric in social media, is a classic example of what Hannah Arendt called “the temporary alliance of the elite and the mob”. The only way such alliances were ever forged in the 20th century was through an alliance between the center and the left, in defense of democracy and social justice.
You have to lock arms and block the far right’s path to national office so consistently that their supporters give up, or in despair turn back to the extremes where law enforcement – like in the US – can do their work. And, without giving an inch to the mythology of “immigrant violence”, you must give the police powers to fight crime.
Sweden’s Left Party and the Green Party both lost seats in this election, in part likely due to the Social Democratic Party cannibalizing their votes. It shows once again that where social democracy can be a learning organism – learning above all from the failures of the neoliberal era – it remains the only effective bulwark against the increasing threats to democracy and tolerance.