The Far Right Has Gained Unprecedented Popularity In

SCANDINAVIAN TRAVELER | CHARTS | NATIONALISM

RISE OF THE FAR

TheRIGHT far right has gained unprecedented popularity in Scandinavia shattering our self-image as a liberal and tolerant society. How did we get here?

By Per Svensson Illustration by Johan Askegård

1926 Nov 16, 1930 Sweden’s Fascist Denmark’s National Combat Organization Socialist Workers’ Party founded founded

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Björn Söder, Sweden Democrat and second deputy speaker of the Swedish parliament Tomas Oneborg / Svd / TT / Svd Oneborg Tomas by Photo

jörn Söder, secretary of the For a Dane, the Even so, Söder now holds one of Sweden’s most Sweden Democrats, attended constant political prestigious offices. He is one of four speakers who the opening of the Swedish preside over the Swedish parliament, thanks to his parliament in late September in correct ness party’s success in the elections last fall. The Sweden a red waistcoat and black hat. ex pected of Democrats won 13 percent of the vote, sending the He wasn’t the only one in folk other 87 percent into a state of shock. Swedes may seem Police break up a neo-Nazi attack on an dress. Magdalena Andersson Who would have thought it of a party with incomprehensible anti-Nazi demonstration in a Stockholm (Social Democratic Party), Åsa neo-Nazi and racist skinhead roots – a party that suburb in October this year. More than 500 Romson (Green Party), and Ros- until fairly recently celebrated each mandate won in people had taken to the streets to protest sana Dina marca (Left Party) also wore traditional small rural communities in local elections? against fascist graffiti in the neighborhood costumes to make a subtle point: the Sweden Demo- crats don’t get to define what is Swedish. BThe day before, when the newly elected MPs had gathered to elect the parliamentary speakers, the dissociation was much clearer. Dinamarca wore a Sven-Olov Lindholm, T-shirt that said “SD=racists.” Jan 15, 1933 a founding father Söder was elected second deputy speaker – a role Sven-Olov Lindholm of Swedish national forms Sweden’s National conventionally given to the third-largest party in socialism, speaks Socialist Workers’ Party the Swedish parliament, now the Sweden Demo- at Östermalms torg (later renamed Swedish in Stockholm on crats. This time, though, the other parties’ MPs Socialist Unity) Photo by Pressens bild March 9, 1947 repeatedly abstained from voting – a highly unusual

demonstration. / TT Hampus Andersson by Photo

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Björn Söder, Sweden Democrat and second deputy speaker of the Swedish parliament Tomas Oneborg / Svd / TT / Svd Oneborg Tomas by Photo

demonstration. / TT Hampus Andersson by Photo

Feb 6, 1988 Adolf Hitler and his deputy, Mogens Glistrup at a Sweden Pia Kjærgaard at the Danish Martin Bormann, with Norway’s national congress Democrats parliament in Christiansborg Vidkun Quisling Oct 18, 1974 founded. Sept 15, 1991 Anders Lange One of its The Swedish dies. His successor, August 1979 leaders, Anders anti- immigrant Oct 6, 1995 May 13, 1933 1972 Carl Ivar Hagen, Keep Sweden Swedish Klarström, party New Pia Kjærgaard Vidkun Quisling, former Oct 24, 1945 Mogens Glistrup founds turns the Anders founded. Merges with was an active Demo cracy leaves the Progress Norwegian secretary of Quisling sentenced the populist Danish Lange Party into the the Progress Party and member of the wins 7% of the Party and founds defense, founds Nasjonal to death for, among Progress Party and gets Norwegian Progress changes name to the Nordic Reich vote and seats in the Danish People’s

Samling TT by Photo other things, treason 16% of the vote in 1973 Photo by Leif Nyholm/Scanpix Denmark Party Sweden Party Party parliament Photo by Morten Juhl/FLT-PICA Party

How to explain that the Progress Party is in gov- manage to become a dominant force, despite favor- ernment in Norway, that the Danish People’s Party able conditions. Finland had just come through a is, according to many analysts, changing the political brutal civil war, bordered Stalin’s Soviet Union, and climate in Denmark, that the Finns Party (previously fought on Germany’s side in the Continuation War the True Finns Party) won 12 percent of the vote in of 1941-44. the EU elections in May this year, and that only the During the 1930s, the Patriotic People’s Movement Founded in 1915, the National Youth

Tor Richardsen / Scanpix Richardsen Tor by Photo left-wing Social Democrats and the conservative grew out of the anticommunist Lapua Movement, League of Sweden Moderates are bigger than the Sweden Democrats with the typical fascist penchant for uniforms. In the changed its name in Sweden? In this fall’s parliamentary elections, not 1936 election, the party won over eight percent of the to the National only did the Sweden Democrats do well in tradition- vote and enjoyed a ministerial post during the war League of Sweden ally poor districts, but they also started to break into years. It never held power, however. in 1934 affluent areas such as Fridhem in Malmö, a wealthy Despite the lack of electoral success, fascism and seaside enclave of stately upper-class villas. That’s Nazism did influence Nordic society during the where Zlatan Ibrahimovic has his house. interwar period. Influence measured by election results is not the same as the power to influence the rown shirts and swastikas – the Nazism social climate. that we recognize from the 1930s – have In the 1930s, fascist ideas were widely discussed, never gone down well with the Nordic and often accepted, in social circles that could countries. Not even in the years when influence which questions were asked and which Hitler ruled Germany and much of Eu- answers were given in political debates – namely by rope. The Nazis loved the notion of “Nordic.” It was academics, intellectuals, and students. Bfrom this region that they believed they would find In Finland, several young writers and authors the most Germanic Germans. But the feeling was were part of the unofficially named “Black Guard.” not unreservedly mutual. In Norway, the country’s greatest poet, Knut Swedish pro-Nazi factions had their best election Hamsun, was an articulate pro-Nazi. While in in 1936 when they got about 50,000 votes – under Denmark the youth faction of the Conservative two percent of the electorate. This included more People’s Party formed a nationalist action league than 30,000 votes for the National League of in 1933 with a uniform comprising green shirts and Sweden. The NLS had previously been called the riding boots. National Youth League of Sweden and was linked to And what about Sweden? The chairman of the the right-wing General Electoral League (now the National League of Sweden, Elmo Lindholm, was a Moderates). lecturer in Latin which is not as strange as it sounds The picture was similar in neighboring countries. for a fascist leader at that time. In Denmark, Captain Cay Lembcke went from being head of the scout movement to leading the pro-Nazi ressed in student caps and carrying Danish National Socialist Workers’ Party. It was too torches, between 400 and 500 students German to be a credible Danish nationalist party and marched through central Stockholm remained a marginal party even after Lembcke was on February 6, 1939. It was just a few Carl Ivar Hagen, leader of succeeded by Frits Clausen, a doctor from Southern months after Kristallnacht, the night Norway’s Progress Party

Jutland. The Danish Nazis got just two percent of the of broken glass, and the students were protesting Scanpix by Photo vote in 1939. Dagainst an idea proposed by some Swedish doctors In Norway in 1933, having served as defense to give a dozen Jewish German doctors the right to Twenty years ago, who would have guessed that The Scandinavian minister in the agrarian government of Peter Kol- live and work in Sweden. “Stop the import of Jews,” In other words, the Nazi student organization. populist parties with a xenophobic agenda would debate on stad, Vidkun Quisling formed the fascist-leaning was written on one banner and “Sweden for the In the weeks that followed, the Medical Students’ be the political winners in the Nordic welfare Nasjonal Samling. Like its Danish counterpart, the Swedes” on another. Association in Stockholm and the student unions of states of the early 21st century, countries that nation alism often party got a lukewarm response from voters. The At a public meeting in connection with the torch- Uppsala and Lund held meetings on the same topic. prided themselves on being of a slightly higher becomes inflamed Danish and Norwegian Nazis’ real political break- lit procession, representatives of the student unions Everywhere, anti-refugee resolutions were passed moral standing – a little more peaceful, a little through came when the German occupiers gave for aspiring dentists, pharmacists, and doctors by considerable majorities. The Swedish Nazis were more democratic, a little more decent, a little more them the chance to become traitors to their country. spoke out. The rally was organized by the Swedish overjoyed. open-minded and tolerant than anyone else? Not even in Finland did an outright Nazi party National Socialist Student Union. On February 25, 1939, a report from the student

Samling TT by Photo other things, treason 16% of the vote in 1973 Photo by Leif Nyholm/Scanpix Denmark Party Sweden Party Party parliament Photo by Morten Juhl/FLT-PICA Party

76 DECEMBER 2014 | SCANDINAVIAN TRAVELER SCANDINAVIAN TRAVELER | DECEMBER 2014 77 SCANDINAVIAN TRAVELER | CHARTS | NATIONALISM INTERNATIONAL PILOT EDUCATION IN NORWAY! Bax Lindhardt/Scanpix Denmark Lindhardt/Scanpix Bax by Photo

AIR TRAFFIC INCREASES PILOT DEMAND SCANDINAVIA’S LARGEST Air traffic increases every month, and the The education is conducted at Flash point: Supporters of neo-Nazi party the National Socialist Movement of Denmark clash with left-wing protesters at a Racism Free City demo large airline companies are Scandinavia’s largest and most modern in Christiansborg Palace Square, Copenhagen, on May 10. Police made several arrests continuously launching new routes. flight school at Torp Airport Sandefjord.

This, combined with a high rate of The education at Pilot Flight School There were three enemies: Marxism (which PILOT DEMAND IN The Norwegian expected retirements among pilots, will qualifies for pilot jobs at airlines such as included social democracy), liberalism/big busi- Progress create a high demand for new pilots in the EUROPE 98,700 SAS and Norwegian. Party held 2001 ness, and the Jews, who were considered to be coming years Danish Peo ple’s May 7, 2005 behind both Marxism and capitalism. These “forces The education is international, with its general *Estimated from Boeing meeting in Party becomes Jimmie Åkesson of evil” fueled their sinister games with the help of students from many countries. Gardermoen in the third-biggest becomes leader of the democracy, a concept rewritten as “dumbocracy” in The school has state of the art facilities, 2007 Photo by Knut Falch/TT party in Denmark Sweden Democrats Swedish Nazi circles. aircraft and a new Boeing 737 This worldview attracted a not inconsiderable simulator. number of students in the 1930s who, after the war, union meeting in Uppsala headed the front page of went on to take up important positions in Swedish the Swedish paper Den Svenske Folksocialisten (“The society: high school teachers, doctors, senior civil Swedish People Socialist”): “Uppsala students safe- servants, politicians, judges, priests, and editors. guard the nation’s borders/Firm protest against the That may also be one reason why there was never import of refugees.” any profound soul-searching in Sweden after World The newspaper was the organ of the so-called War II. Top modern school and facilities Lindholm Movement or National Socialist Workers’ Party. Its leader was a noncommissioned army offi- he Holocaust is the great watershed cer called Sven-Olov Lindholm. In 1938, his party moment in modern European history. New Boeing 737 simulator changed its name to the Swedish Socialist Unity, In its wake, Nazism could only survive and replaced the swastika with a blue and yellow publicly as mold on the walls of the Visit pilot.no for more information symbol, the so-called “Vasa sheaf.” basement of politics, a pathetic cult of Despite modest election results, Lindholm’s party unrepentant old men and intoxicated young rebels. had the wind in its sails in the 1930s and saw itself TIn this respect, the difference between the Nordic as the young vanguard of new Europe. countries is small. Those who saluted Nazism posed Fascism reigned supreme in two of Europe’s lead- no threat to society. ing cultural nations – Italy and Germany – and was Yet in one important aspect they differ consid- the worldview on the rise in a number of countries. erably. While Sweden allowed the modern social The fascists saw themselves as warriors of destiny, structure to become the major – and only – source in which one’s nation, one’s people, and the future of national pride after the war, labeling historical of one’s “race” was at stake. romance and patriotic pomp as suspicious and

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SCANDINAVIAN TRAVELER | CHARTS | NATIONALISM

Media spotlight: Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the their part, Norwegians may feel that Swedes who Sweden Democrats, is quizzed constantly highlight mass murderer Anders Behring by the press on election night Breivik’s former membership of the Progress Party aren’t slandering just the party, but to some extent Norway as a nation. Nordic quarrels can be explained by parties’ different evolutions. The Sweden Democrats have grown out of Keep Sweden Swedish, a racist organization that emerged in the 1980s. The Finns Party can be said to have its roots in old-fashioned peas- ant populism and the 1970s Rural Party. And Pia Kjærsgaard, the woman behind the Danish People’s Party, was nurtured politically by the marzipan- loving, tax-hating populist Mogens Glistrup and his Progress Party of the early 1970s. The architect of the Norwegian Progress Party, Anders Lange, shamelessly named it the Anders Lange Party. A few years after his death in 1974, the party was taken over by Carl Ivar Hagen and became the Progress Party. Both Glistrup and Lange’s parties were traditional protest parties in that they wanted to cause trouble for a welfare state that many in the 1970s thought had grown too big, too bold, and too self- sufficient. It wasn’t until the 1990s that a Swedish equivalent, the New Democracy, was founded. By then, discontent with the political establishment had been mixed with a sizable dose of xenophobia increasingly directed at Muslim groups. It is this witches’ brew that the populist and

Lars Pehrson / SvD / TT / SvD Pehrson Lars by Photo far-right parties of Europe are now successfully plying their voters with. It is no longer the fear of an excessively strong welfare state, but a nostalgic Sept 19, 2010 Oct 16, 2013 Sept 14, 2014 longing for the omnipotent nation state of old, that The Sweden In Norway, the Conservatives The Sweden these parties are exploiting. Democrats win 6% and Progress Party form a Democrats become Consequently, regardless of their inherent differ- of the vote and minor ity government. Siv Jen- Sweden’s third- ences and nuances, the parties are pushing an ideol- seats in parliament sen made secretary of finance biggest party ogy more similar to that of the 1930s than the 1970s. This is true of the Danish People’s Party and the Finns Party, and it’s especially true of the Sweden Democrats. The society they want to re-establish is completely different to the one we live in. dangerous phenomena, countries that had been Nordic “We simply don’t want the divided, segregated, occu pied or directly involved in the war had a dif- quarrels can be soulless society that the socialist-liberal establish- ferent relationship to nationalism. There, national ment has created for us,” Jimmie Åkesson, leader symbols were charged with positive energy in the explained by of the Sweden Democrats, writes at the end of his struggle for freedom and independence. parties’ different political memoir Satis Polito. That’s why the Scandinavian debate on national- evolutions His far-right counterparts throughout Europe are ism often becomes so inflamed. all certainly nodding in agreement. Today’s brand For a Swede, it is bizarre to see Danes waving of extreme nationalism may take different forms, small paper flags in the arrivals hall at Kastrup but its enemies are the same: the EU, the liberal airport, and then there’s the Danish political debate media, and globalized society. and its fixation on “foreigners.” Perhaps because nationalism is so natural in For a Dane, the constant political correctness homo geneous Scandinavia we haven’t paid atten- expected of Swedes – to the extent that other parties tion to it, and that’s why it’s easier than we could refuse to speak to the Sweden Democrats – may have ever imagined to convince large sections of the seem incomprehensible. population that all threats are external. Many Swedes in the meantime may find it strange In a world of change, there are those that pretend that the Progress Party resumed a central role in that the clock can be turned back and that society Norwegian political life so quickly, and seem ingly can once again be the safe and harmonious family it easily, after the massacre on Utøya. While, for never was.

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