Century Old “White Supremacism” And The Far-Right’s Rise In Sweden: A Credible Challenge To Progressive Values And Policies?

2017 might be called the golden year for far-right movements in European Union countries. Sweden, is set to hold its elections in less than a year. According to 2016's polls, the Sweden Democrats (SD), said to be rooted in the white supremacist movement, has boomed in popularity. The narrative of the Sweden Democrats is much of the same ethnical and nationalist claims put forward by other far-right parties and movements we witness elsewhere. In spite of the fact that they disavow their roots in the white supremacist movement, their main platform remains a goal of zero for asylum-based immigration. It should be noted that white supremacy in Sweden is not a new phenomenon, since one of white supremacy's branches, white nationalism, already had a following in the country. White nationalism, as a branch of white supremacist ideology, argues that the national identity of a country such as Sweden was built for and by white individuals. Sweden has been considered a key center of white nationalism for decades. Meanwhile, the roots of the Swedish white supremacism should be academically searched in the Scandinavian eugenics movement that peaked before the First World War and turned into practice in the 1930s and 1940s. In that period, Sweden was the only country with a national eugenics society. It is quite noteworthy that Sweden used sterilization policies between 1934 and 1976. Many years later, this inhumane practice was condemned by the Swedish government. The Ministry of Health and Social Affairs announced in 1999 that it would pay up to £13,430 to each surviving victim of the 1934-76 sterilization program. It is possible to detect the traces of this grim and unforgotten past in the rising support for the far-right Sweden Democrats. Fixed ideas of the past and obsessions with a purified society now demonstrate itself in xenophobic and immigration-skeptic tendencies of certain part of the Swedish society and voters. EU countries, especially countries like Sweden, should seriously consider whether this is the new European reality. If this is the case, then Europe should prepare itself to re-witness the horrors of the past.