The Populist Divide in Far-Right Political Discourse in Sweden: Anti-Immigration Claims in the Swedish Socially Conservative Online Newspaper Samtiden from 2016 to 2022
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Aim and Contributions
3. Background
4. Theory
5. The Populist Divide
5.1. Anti-Elitism
5.2. People-Centrism
6. Method
7. Material
8. Analysis
8.1. Anti-Elitism
8.1.1. Political Elite
[T]he national community is necessary for a welfare state that can provide basic security, especially for those who do not have their own resources as backup. Without nationalism, no tax revenue to the state. Without nationalism, no democracy where everyone has an equal voice.
8.1.2. Cultural Elite
In Sweden, we see the same arrogant denial of natural restrictions in the migration policy pursued for decades. The ruling parties (from M to V)7 have deliberately allowed hundreds of thousands of people from foreign civilisations to come to Sweden—without having a plan for housing, schools, healthcare, social care, or a police force that can handle people from significantly more violent cultures.
8.1.3. Moral Elite
8.1.4. Media Elite
8.1.5. EU Elite
8.1.6. Economic Elite
8.2. People-Centrism
8.2.1. The United People
The national process of dissolution that had resulted from the left-liberal immigration and refugee policy, which was also the explicit intention when the decision was made in the Riksdag in 1975 to transform Sweden into “a multilingual and multicultural society”, must be reconsidered. The previously culturally rooted national unity in Sweden is destroyed, which has already had very severe consequences.[62]
Other parties (but the SD, my emphasis) advocate multiculturalism, in reality, an effective way to tear society apart if the experiment is pushed too far. Unfortunately, community and trust risk eroding even within the people in the majority society.
The parties that neglect this issue deny the importance of culture, language, values and national identity/.../It is not that those who arrive in Sweden dump their values from their home country at the Swedish border. The many problems we have in Sweden today, such as honour oppression, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, segregation, parallel societies, etc., show that many immigrants bring their values to Sweden, which affects society.
Only if the West regains its national feeling and again shows that it is proud of what our civilisation has created—and in fact: almost everything that humanity today benefits from was discovered, developed, and created in the West—can we meet the challenges of the destructive forces of totalitarian countries.
8.2.2. Our People
Humility is a virtue. Team spirit and collective endeavour have served our small nation well. We do not exalt ourselves in self-sufficiency. We try to agree and reach a consensus before confrontation and conflict.[66]
On 1 May, traditional messages from the labour movement are brought to life. But they have no bearing on current politics, where they instead raise identity politics, “racialisation”, and radical feminism instead of defending the working people’s conditions. In Sweden, Per Albin Hansson built the people’s home, a conservative political idea that was merged with social-political reformism. Social democracy abandoned the class struggle for consensus, and abandoned internationalism for a national perspective.[67]
8.2.3. The Common People
This society may “function” in its own way, but it is clearly something different from what most people had imagined or hoped for ten years ago, with female genital mutilation, honour suppression, self-appointed moral police, and an abysmal misunderstanding between large social groups. Moreover, in many places, increasing rates of serious crime.
9. Conclusions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
1 | What Ignazi labelled as the “silent counter-revolution”, which he associated with the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen and la nouvelle droite (the new right) in France in the early 1970s. Bale and Kaltwasser provide further elaboration on the silent counter-revolution and the various manifestations of both reactions and counter-reactions to this in different countries [4]. |
2 | The advent of the fourth wave follows from the eruption of three crises from which the far-right parties, electorally, have profited [3] (p. 20). These are, according to Mudde, the terrorist attacks of September 2001, the Great Recession of 2008, and the reception refugee crisis of 2015. |
3 | Similar studies have shown a similar development in Romania and Hungary, where appeals of national identity merge with chauvinistic welfare appeals [8]. (See in particular chapter 4 by Radu Cinpoes and Ov Cristian Norocel in this book). |
4 | See further Brubaker and Cooper [30] for an elaboration of this distinction in relation to the concept of “identity” in social science. |
5 | For a critical discussion on so-called populist ideational attitudes in populist communication, see further [33]. |
6 | The views on national identity are not strictly limited to editorials or chronicles, but can also appear in other sections as well, as for instance in the genre of news articles (see the analysis). All the quotes in the analysis have been translated from Swedish to English by the author. |
7 | M stand for Moderaterna (the governing mainstream right party), while V (Vänsterpartiet) stands for the left party. |
8 | |
9 | This is interesting in its own right; however, I refrain from drawing too strong of a conclusion based on this rather limited sample and can thus reveal more about the selection of articles; thus, it does not necessarily correspond to the totality of voices in the far-right political environment during the selected time frame. |
10 | One such key figure in Swedish history writing is Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson, a nobleman and miner in the province of Dalarna who mobilised peasants and mineworkers in his home area, which spread throughout the country. The rebellion has been seen as a Swedish awakening, a symbol of claims for national sovereignty [10] (p. 63). |
11 | People´s Home has, historically, been used by the Social Democratic Party to realizing and administrating social reforms, what we today associate with the building of the universal welfare state [73]. |
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Hellström, A. The Populist Divide in Far-Right Political Discourse in Sweden: Anti-Immigration Claims in the Swedish Socially Conservative Online Newspaper Samtiden from 2016 to 2022. Societies 2023, 13, 108. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13050108
Hellström A. The Populist Divide in Far-Right Political Discourse in Sweden: Anti-Immigration Claims in the Swedish Socially Conservative Online Newspaper Samtiden from 2016 to 2022. Societies. 2023; 13(5):108. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13050108
Chicago/Turabian StyleHellström, Anders. 2023. "The Populist Divide in Far-Right Political Discourse in Sweden: Anti-Immigration Claims in the Swedish Socially Conservative Online Newspaper Samtiden from 2016 to 2022" Societies 13, no. 5: 108. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13050108
APA StyleHellström, A. (2023). The Populist Divide in Far-Right Political Discourse in Sweden: Anti-Immigration Claims in the Swedish Socially Conservative Online Newspaper Samtiden from 2016 to 2022. Societies, 13(5), 108. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc13050108