[ad_1]
It has attracted some public attention that the Swedish democrat Mattias Karlsson before the elections in the United States came out and sided with Donald Trump. He was the one who could best unite the country with “a cohesive patriotism.” It may seem strange that a representative of a party that claims to be democratic supports a president who has been undermining the basic features of a liberal democracy and who even before the elections made it clear that he would only accept the electoral result if he won.
We believe that Mattias Karlsson’s attitude is not surprising. What unites SD and Trump is nationalism. This nationalism delves into the ideological heritage of the SD that dates back to opponents of democracy during the interwar period. It is a legacy that can threaten the position of liberal democracy in Sweden.
Mattias Karlsson is a Swedish Democrat and heads the Oikos think tank.
Photo: Alexander Mahmoud
In their early 2019 program, the party exemplifies what they mean by social conservatism that they join in by mentioning British politician Benjamin Disraeli and Swede Teodor Holmberg. On Holmberg, Mattias Karlsson (Expressen 5/12 2019) says that he tried to “unite democracy, conservatism and patriotism with a social conscience” and that he spoke in favor of women’s rights.
Read more. Sven-Eric Liedman: Sunday’s interview with Mattias Karlsson is a complete failure
We have examined how the newspaper Sveriges väl represented the democratic advance in Sweden between 1918 and 1921. The magazine was started in 1906 by Teodor Holmberg and he was a diligent writer on the magazine during these years. Our research shows that Mattias Karlsson is wrong when he says that Teodor Holmberg was a Democrat.
We find in the newspaper a deep resentment against democratic aspirations around 1920 and an equally deep penchant, if not rapture, for authoritarian social rule with elements of apocalypse. The suffrage reform is called a “constitutional coup” that grants “the negligent taxpayer the same civil rights as his own.” The significant power of the king under the 1809 constitution is defended and parliamentarism is dismissed. The constitutional ideal of the newspaper is sought in the German Empire before the First World War. Party politics, the backbone of a representative democracy, is bad. Instead, class collaboration is advocated.
Women’s suffrage is defended by Teodor Holmberg. However, this does not mean political equality for women. Femininity means that they have other tasks in society than men. Your political task is to choose wise men to run the country.
Teodor Holmberg, national conservative ideologue and author.
Photo: Wikimedia commons
Sweden’s well does not have much plenty for the political development of the time during the year of the advance of democracy. “Everything falls around us,” exclaims Teodor Holmberg. The rhetoric is strongly emotionally charged and this applies especially when the concept of homeland is touched upon. To the nation belong the living and the dead and not yet born in a common destiny. The language of rebirth and apocalyptic imagery are mixed in the pages of the newspaper, as well as battle metaphors such as “life or death, victory or perdition,” a purely fascist rhetoric.
This apocalyptic rhetoric is also that of the Swedish Democrats: “We are in an existential struggle for the survival of our culture and our nation. There are only two elections, victory or death ”, exclaimed Mattias Karlsson after the 2018 Swedish elections (SVT news 9/12 2018). The vision of the nation is what clearly unites the current SD with its ideological inspiration Teodor Holmberg. For the sake of Sweden, it was the support of a common nation that would unite the country. The same thoughts are found in the early SD program.
It is this nationalism that unites SD with the fascist tradition of thought.
It is precisely these notions who is behind Mattias Karlsson’s support for Donald Trump. That is completely logical. It is this nationalism that unites SD with the tradition of fascist thought. It was Teodor Holmberg’s vision of the nation as a unifying force that made him speak warmly of Hitler in 1934 as “able to weld the Germans into one town, full of radiant enthusiasm for new ideals.”
However, every nationalist project depends on the creation of others, those who are not allowed to belong. For the sake of Sweden, it was socialism, both social democrats and communists, the great threat. In Mattias Karlsson’s world, there are immigrants and identity politicians.
It is strange to see that Mattias Karlsson does not realize that nationalism in his design is one of the most important political identity projects in history, a project that has often had devastating consequences, especially for democracy.
The article is based on “National Democrats, Democracy and the Cultural Struggle. On the ideological models to follow of the Swedish democrats ”, People, meaning and resistance. Book of a friend of Professor Mats Greiff (eds. Stefan Nyzell and Susan Lindholm), Malmö 2020.
