The Sweden paradox: US far-right fantasies of a dystopian utopia

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses how Sweden has come to be imagined and represented on the websites of US far right organisations since the start of the so-called ‘migration crisis’ of 2015. It focused specifically on when Sweden is discussed by the US far right and in relation to what events, and what values and associations are attributed to Sweden. The analysis showed that news events were not reported on by US far-right organisations as they took place in Sweden but instead appropriated and accentuated when they could be used to make certain points directed at the audiences of these organisations. Furthermore, the findings showed that the texts tended to focus on scaremongering about Muslim immigrants and Islam in ways that highly resembled those of the European far right. The paper discusses how such framing helps the international far right form a coherent narrative and all-applicable template for the problems of Muslims facing the Western world. Finally, the analysis showed how Sweden is positioned in a complex juxtaposition: as something both good and bad; superior while also inferior; a great nationalist role model but also a warning example, and how Swedish whiteness plays a central role in these depictions.

KEYWORDS:

• Sweden
• digital far right
• United States
• Islamophobia
• whiteness

Introduction

Following the so-called ‘immigration crisis’ of 2015, and with former president Trump’s infamous ‘Last Night in Sweden’ comments two years later, far-right interest into Swedish immigration policies peaked (Ericson, 2018; J. Y. Robinson & Enli, 2022; Thorleifsson, 2019), not the least in far-right settings in the United States (e.g. Colliver et al., 2018; Titley, 2019). This paper aims to explore how Sweden came to be imagined and represented by the US far right during this period and its aftermath, but also importantly, how and why Sweden matters to far-right efforts in the United States.

Sweden has often been thought of as an exceedingly modern, equal, and safe welfare state; one which has successfully adapted to the social and corporate circumstances of globalisation (Ericson, 2018; Schierup & Ålund, 2011), which takes social and environmental responsibility (Swedish Institute, 2021), and whose secular population has great trust in its authorities (Andersson & Hilson, 2009). However, recent framings by the international far right are increasingly found to depict a Sweden in spiralling decline – a country suffering immensely from the crime, violence, and economic hardship brought on by far too lenient immigration policies (Titley, 2019).

Previous research suggests that far-right networks in the United States may be particularly active in the creation of these dystopic constructions of Sweden (Colliver et al., 2018; Merrill, 2020). It remains unclear, however, why the national politics of such a small northern European nation, with a population of a mere 10 million, is of relevance to US far-right efforts. While Sweden remains a safe country, not the least in comparison to the United States (Thorleifsson, 2019), in the current post-truth, fake news political landscape, this is of little relevance to some. Thus, international far-right efforts to create panic and disinformation about the societal and cultural effects of immigration in Sweden might – no matter their lack of anchoring to reality – still serve to score the far-right argumentative points.

This paper addresses a gap in the literature by systematically and longitudinally analysing the contemporary image of Sweden as it is represented by the US far right. To do this, it explores what is written about Sweden on the official sites and blogs of US far-right organisations between 2015 and 2022, asking: (RQ1) When is Sweden discussed by the US far right and in relation to what events? (RQ2) What values and associations are attributed to Sweden?

The paper begins by providing a short and broad overview of the targets, appeals, and goals of the contemporary far right in the United States, their uses of the internet and the continued significance of organisational websites and blogs. Thereafter, it goes on to outline previous research on international far-right imaginaries of Sweden, and especially its contemporary portrayals as a dystopia. After this, the data and sampling are presented, including the paper’s focus on a number of far-right organisational websites, including VDARE, National Vanguard, and American Renaissance. In the analysis, two main themes are discussed in response to the research questions: ‘Using Sweden to prove the same old Islamophobic points’ and ‘The juxtaposition of Sweden’. The paper ends with a discussion on how Sweden matters to the US far right.

Theoretical framing: targets, appeals, and goals of the US far right

Many marginalised and oppressed groups and communities have been the target of racist and far-right efforts in the United States, and as noted by Holt et al., (2022) this has inconsistently included both foreign-born persons and more generally racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, including Black, Latinx, and Asian people, Muslims and Jews. Their animosity also extends to other homogenously imagined groups, mainly LGBTQI + persons, women and feminists, and liberal media and politics (Stern, 2019).

It should however be noted that these are not solely far-rightist tropes. The United States has an extensive history of systemic racism, colonialism, and oppression dating back many centuries (Ott & Dickinson, 2019). While contemporary racism often takes ‘new’, ‘cultural’, ‘colourblind’ or ‘post-racial’ forms (Bonilla-Silva, 2015, 2022; Sniderman et al., 1991), the displacement of indigenous peoples has continuous consequences in the absence of large-scale land restorations (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014; Farrell et al., 2021). So does the incessant racial profiling and police brutality which remain very real threats to Black persons (Chaney & Robertson, 2015; Jones, 2017; Smiley & Fakunle, 2016), and the police raids, detentions, and deportations as part of the ‘war on immigrants’ facing Latinx persons residing in the US today (W. I. Robinson & Barrera, 2012, p. 19), to name only a few examples. Still, the perhaps most prominent difference between the far right and the racism, oppression and discrimination which exists within mainstream politics and general society is the notion of white supremacy (Blee & Yates, 2015).

The far right sees white people as biologically and culturally superior to others. Historical as well as contemporary expressions of white supremacy emphasise the acute threat of extinction supposedly facing white people (Blee & Yates, 2015; Kaati et al., 2021). In the US, far rightist alarmism stresses that within the coming decades, white people will no longer constitute the majority population in the country (Stern, 2019). This notion is closely interrelated to the feeling that as minority rights are expanded and as more (non-white supremacist) people are able to lead better lives, something is taken from white people. For instance, as noted by Robinson and Barrera (2012, p. 18), the US white working class which has,

historically enjoyed caste privilege within racially and ethnically segmented labour markets, has experienced, under capitalist globalisation, downward mobility, flexibilisation and heightened insecurity.

An important selling point for white supremacy is therefore an undertaking to reverse this negative development of lessened status for white people (W. I. Robinson, 2019). Consequently, this involves (re)imagining a retrotopian place and time where white people are not victims of globalisation and multi-culturalism; or as it has been famously put to ‘Make America Great Again’ (Stern, 2019; see also Elgenius & Rydgren, 2019). In fact, some argue that former president Trump has served as an important catalyst for the normalisation of white supremacy in the United States (Berlet, 2019; Herman & Muldoon, 2019; Mudde, 2019). For instance, because once far-rightist ideas are expressed by political elites like Trump, regular people are more likely to express their existing prejudices as well (Newman et al., 2021).

Furthermore, US news media has on multiple occasions reported on problematic connections between Trump and his White House staff, and far-right organisations like VDARE and American Renaissance (e.g. Rogers & DeParle, 2019; Rupar, 2019). Through Trump, the US far right has been able to place many of their issues and perspectives on the public agenda (Mudde, 2019; Ott & Dickinson, 2019; Speakman, 2021). In turn, that which was previously considered far-right extremist – like seeking to undermine the rights of marginalised and oppressed groups and promoting white supremacist ideals of race – is progressively taking the shape of acceptable political ideas.

As far-right efforts in the US have continued to gain political salience, attempts to create panic around Sweden can have considerable impact not only on Sweden’s public image but also more importantly, representations of Sweden could work as a tool in the mainstreaming of white supremacy.

The internet and the US far right

The US far right is not one coherent effort. Rather, it is a heterogenous ecosystem of movements, groups, and organisations ranging in political conviction from Neo-Nazism and white Supremacy, to Christian identity and Anti-governmentalism (SPLC, 2022). At present, there are 373 active far-right groups¹ in the USA according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC, 2021), and for many of these, the internet has long been a vital source of communication and community-building.

US far right organisations were early to capitalise on the scalable, cheap, and efficient tools for organising that came with the commercial internet. In fact, not only were they among the first to maintain websites, but they have also been continuously innovative in furthering their political agendas through the internet (Daniels, 2009, 2018).

In the last decade or so, the far right in the US and beyond has come to widen their digital efforts through growing social media presences (Åkerlund, 2020; Ben-David & Matamoros Fernández, 2016; Ekman, 2014), and more recently also through far-right ‘alternative’ outlets for social media (Jasser et al., 2021; Munn, 2021) and ‘news’ propagation (Haanshuus & Ihlebæk, 2021; K. Holt et al., 2019; Mayerhöffer & Heft, 2021). These efforts have consequently also captured much of the attention of recent research efforts exploring the digital far right.

Despite the many new, interactive opportunities of Web 2.0, organisational websites remain important outlets for far-right organisations (Baele et al., 2020). For instance, the websites of American Renaissance, VDARE and National Vanguard generate a massive 1.6 million, 831,000 and 309,000 monthly visitors, respectively. Of these visitors, many are reoccurring readers but as many as between 100,000–300,000 are unique visitors to each of these sites.²

Maintaining active, well-read websites is valuable to far-right organisations because they constitute protected spaces in which the organisations themselves can set the rules for what ideas can be presented, and how these are communicated. Many of these organisations have expanded their sites to include a variety of content and formats over time (Baele et al., 2020), and in the same manner as alternative news sites, these outlets’ appearances and marketing have grown increasingly professional. This works to drape the information presented on these sites in a cloak of legitimacy, even though they do not adhere to the ethical and editorial standards of legacy news media (Bennett & Livingston, 2018; Figenschou & Ihlebæk, 2019; see also Schroeder, 2019). This matters because far-right organisations are thus, through their undistracted, unmoderated and unmediated digital efforts, able to reimagine what is true and real for a potentially great audience (see also Daniels 2009).

Previous research: far-right imaginaries of Sweden

Sweden was for a long time considered a ‘political exception’ in twenty-first century Europe as the country did not have any electorally successful far-right party (Dahlström & Esaiasson, 2013). In the last decade, however, Sweden has seen a spike in far-right political sentiment and now, the country’s second largest party in parliament is the far rightist Sweden Democrats. As their influence has grown, so has the public and political focus on the issue of immigration.

Alongside Sweden Democrat efforts to (re)define Swedish politics, there are also external forces seeking to reframe the image of Sweden. Initial findings on the Swedish 2018 general election show that these have not been coincidental, but rather the result of focused efforts and collaborations of international – mainly US and European – and Swedish far-right groups (Colliver et al., 2018). The focus on Sweden by international far-right forces, while not new, has according to previous research intensified after 2015, thought to be at least in part due to Sweden’s asylum reception during this time (Ericson, 2018; Thorleifsson, 2019; Titley, 2019).

While the popularly termed ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 resulted in a significant influx of asylum seekers to Europe more generally, Sweden, with its modest population took in over 160,000 refugees in 2015 – more people per capita than any other country in Europe (Einhorn et al., 2021). Sweden’s openness was nevertheless soon replaced with closed borders and strict immigration policies. This sudden shift not only challenged Sweden’s self-perception of tolerance but also created cause for international debate about Sweden’s supposed naivety and increasingly harsh anti-immigration stance (Ericson, 2018).

The 2015 refugee crisis was followed by alarmist reporting on Sweden from far-right sources. While there remains limited research focusing on Sweden from international far-right perspectives, the extant literature that does exist depicts Sweden as a nation in despair due to the effects of immigration (Colliver et al., 2018; Ericson, 2018). Central to these narratives in previous research of European perceptions are, as identified throughout the Western world since 9/11 (Allen, 2010; Awan & Zempi, 2017; Ekman, 2015; Sheridan, 2006), Islamophobic beliefs wherein Muslims are supposedly trying to eradicate all that is Swedish and seeking to become the majority population (Thorleifsson, 2019).

Furthermore, several studies show how news items on Sweden which could be angled in favour of far-right talking points get inflated, especially as they gain the attention of far-right commentators (J. Y. Robinson & Enli, 2022). Former president Trump’s Last Night in Sweden remarks in 2017 – where he wrongfully announced a terror attack had taken place in Sweden the previous day and connecting this to lax immigration policies – is perhaps the most publicly well-known example of a negative spotlight being shone on Swedish immigration and causing an international surge in negative reports on Sweden (Cassinger et al., 2018; Colliver et al., 2018; Titley, 2019). Beyond this, drawing on US talking points on election fraud, social media users have been shown to conspire about the Swedish 2018 election supposedly having been rigged (Colliver et al., 2018; J. Y. Robinson & Enli, 2022). Extant literature studying European far-right politicians’ views of Sweden, furthermore, note attempts to recontextualise and exacerbate issues. Most notably, through the reimagination of socio-economically vulnerable areas in Sweden into no-go zones; a label which signals how these places have been lost to the authority of criminal gangs and thus no longer constitute part of Swedish society (Thorleifsson, 2019).

Naturally, many of the ideals often associated with Sweden – globalism, environmentalism, social responsibility, and high governmental trust – are often seen by the far right as contributing to the present problematic societal situation. Specifically, European far-right voices blame the Swedish political establishment for the current dystopic reality, as they are thought to have, in Thorleifson’s (2019, p. 532) words ‘sacrificed the purity and innocence of Sweden on the altar of multiculturalism and an ideology of antiracism’. Likewise, in English-speaking parts of Twitter, discussions have also emphasised supposed efforts by mainstream media and politics to silence the Sweden Democrats and anyone else who uncovers the truth of the current state of the country (J. Y. Robinson & Enli, 2022).

Research efforts so far provide important insight into international imaginaries of Sweden more generally, however not systematically into US imaginaries specifically. Furthermore, most research efforts so far have relied on snapshots in time and focus more on news reactivity by the far right than explorations of how far right imaginaries are formed. By focusing on the far-rights own articulations of Sweden over time, this paper provides an important perspective into when, how, and why the US far right chooses to bring up Sweden, and in turn the potential consequences and outcomes these choices could have.

Data and sampling

Beyond the 373 active far-right groups in the US at the time of writing, there are countless others – influencers, bloggers, alternative news sites, social media and alternative social media accounts – that promote far right ideology and could thus potentially contribute to shaping the international far-right imaginary of Sweden. However, given the ever-changing and complex nature of this far-right ecosystem, where ideological characteristics can be unclear and might shift, and for the purpose of accessibility and searchability, sampling was done using the predefined ideological labels supplied in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) list of Designated Hate Groups.

Of the 55 groups on SPLC’s list, 37 groups were selected for their far-right characteristics, and 25 of these, in turn, had active websites. Of the 25 groups that had websites, searches were carried out on these for the keywords Sweden and Swedish from 2015 (the year of the ‘refugee crisis’) to February 2022, at the time of data collection. This resulted in almost 1300 hits. However, many of these were only brief mentions wherein Sweden was for instance listed among a number of other countries, e.g. ‘I have been visited by TV crews from Germany (three times), Japan (twice), France, England, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark (twice), Norway, Italy, Qatar, Brazil, and Canada’ (American Border Patrol, nd). Many articles also appeared to be mere copies of articles from other legacy and alternative media outlets. While such reiterations of course contribute to forming and cementing certain views of Sweden, the data collection focused specifically on outlets and texts which were original to the far-right sources themselves or which listed an editor as responsible for the text.

In the end, 318 entries totalling 544,134 words, from ten sites – although primarily from VDARE and National Vanguard (see Table 1) – were collected.

Table 1. Overview of dataset by far-right group.

Group	SPLC categorisation	Sampled texts	Monthly visits^4
VDARE	White Nationalist	151	831,800
National Vanguard	Neo-Nazi	131	309,900
American Renaissance	White Nationalist	9	1,600,000
Center for Immigration Studies	Anti-immigrant	7	141,400
Center for Security Policy	Anti-Muslim	6	38,600
The Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC)	White Nationalist	5	3500
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)	Anti-immigrant	4	130,100
The Social Contract Press	White Nationalist	2	2600
Rise Above Movement	White Nationalist	1	2200

First, descriptive statistics through means of computational methods and manual readings were used to count occurrences of texts and words throughout the dataset. Specifically, all article publication dates were aggregated to determine when articles on Sweden were posted; whether articles posted within a specific timespan focused on the same issues, as well as how publication dates corresponded to major public events in Sweden over time.

Furthermore, each of the 318 texts was read multiple times, and concurrently, the linguistic contexts in which the Sweden and Swedish keywords were used, as well as the social and political meanings ascribed to Sweden by the sites were noted down. Practically, this meant that each of the 318 texts got assigned one or more short note describing their content as it pertained to Sweden. In the proceeding step, all notes were grouped into reoccurring textual themes. Specifically, the themes, the dystopic present; the refugee crisis; immigrant violence and crime; anti-establishment, and reverse racism form the basis of the first analytical section, while Sweden/Swedes as superior; national suicide; fighting back; and Sweden as a representation of something bigger form the second analytical section.

Using Sweden to prove the same old Islamophobic points

VDARE and National Vanguard websites constituted the overwhelming majority of sources in the dataset, almost 90 percent of the texts stem from these sites. That the other 37 explored sites are not nearly as focused on Sweden seems to be a combination of accessibility and searchability on the sites, a much lower rate of in-house production and editing of content, as well as a lack of focus on international news events, including those from Sweden.

In terms of when Sweden is mentioned, the overview of posting in Figure 1 shows that Sweden is of continued interest throughout the seven-year sample period, with a few peaks of increased attention at particular points in time. These, however, are rarely triggered by specific events that gain sustained reporting over these months. For instance, in November 2019, none of the eight articles discussed the same topics, events, or news. As seen in Table 2, there are seldom more than two reoccurrences of the same news event on the sites, with exception for the ‘Last Night in Sweden’ incident in February 2017.

Figure 1. Monthly count of texts about Sweden on the US far-right sites.

Table 2. Re-occurring topics in texts over the most active months.

Month	Total texts	Topic and (number of reoccurrences)
March, 2015	8	Gang-related shooting (2)
August, 2015	9	Stabbings at IKEA (2)
January, 2016	13	Cover-up of sexual assaults (3); Border controls (2)
February, 2017	18	‘Last night in Sweden’ (8)
November, 2019	8	No reoccurring events
May, 2020	8	17yo murdered by boyfriend (2)

Rather than being triggered to any large extent by the events which have gained massive public attention within Sweden, such as the school shooter who killed four people in October of 2015, the Stockholm terror attack in April of 2017 where five people died, the devastating forest fires in the summer of 2018, or for that matter, the general election in September that same year. Instead, the analysis shows that texts tend to be of a somewhat general nature and using news events to prove certain points and further specific far-right arguments. Thematically, the occurrences of Sweden in the texts focus extensively, in support of previous research, on the supposed dystopic state of Sweden (Thorleifsson, 2019).

Many texts portray Sweden as a sort of war zone in which failed immigration policies have resulted in no-go zones and a lack of safety, especially for women. In fact, Sweden is referred to as a rape capital in no less than sixteen different texts, for instance here using the extreme right think tank Gatestone Institute as reference:

[Sweden] is now known as the rape capital of the world. Since loosening migration standards, rape has increased 1,472 percent while other violent crime rates have increased by approximately 300 percent, according to the Gatestone Institute. (FAIR, 2016b)

An all too familiar Islamophobic narrative unfolds wherein immigrants are equated to Muslims and where seemingly all of society’s problems can be attributed to a Muslim ‘invasion’. This is evident through reporting on specific crime, mainly sexual assaults, terrorism, and the activities of criminal gangs.

Beyond posing a direct threat to Swedish people, (Muslim) immigrants are conceptualised as a general threat to Swedish welfare:

The increase of foreign-born children in Swedish schools has played a part in the country’s overall decline in educational achievement and test scores in recent years, officials report. (VDARE, 2016)

The Swedish welfare state is eroding, largely due to the fact that the people in the ‘people’s home’ are no longer the same. Taxes are still high, but public services such as free health care, free elderly care, and pensions are subjects to serious cuts due to the burden imposed by immigrants. (American Renaissance, 2018)

These narratives are in turn connected antagonistically to a pervading blame of the Swedish political establishment, with exception for the Sweden Democrats. Specifically, this opposition tends to focus on supposed cover-ups, censorships, and impositions on free speech, but also on the political establishment’s treachery of its population and its preference for immigrants, and in turn reverse discrimination of its (imaginary) legitimate people (see also Åkerlund, 2021):

the media and government officials routinely cover up the crimes of migrants, who flout the laws and create no-go zones for police and fire crews. Ignoring the issue of migrant crime or consciously burying it – be it gay-bashing, child molesting or raping women – for fear of being labeled as intolerant, has done nothing to stem the rash of rapes (FAIR, 2016a)

The Swedish government is importing masses of non-Whites into the country with the intention of biologically destroying the native population. It oppresses Swedes, defaming, publicly humiliating, jailing, and impoverishing them because of their speech, and forbidding them from participating in political dialogue or playing a role in social change, even organizing and funding racial violence against them. (National Vanguard, 2017)

These reports focus little on providing accounts of important Swedish news events as they happen in Sweden. Instead, news stories are cherry-picked to fit the specific narrative being portrayed to inflate a sense of panic. For instance, VDARE (2018) claims that ‘according to Swedish statistics, 92 percent of rapes are perpetrated by migrants’. Not only are there no ‘Swedish statistics’ claiming that 92 percent of rapes in Sweden are perpetrated by immigrants, but more than this, information seems to travel like a game of telephone between sources of information, changing shape along the way. In this example, VDARE links to JihadWatch, which in turn references the Swedish far right site Avpixlat (now Samnytt) as its source. The original article is an investigation made by an individual Sweden Democrat who has selected specific types and degrees of severity of rape, and from this drawn the conclusion that certain forms of rape are represented to 92 percent by immigrants. What is left out in both the JihadWatch and VDARE uses of this statistic is that this is the work of a private individual, which has neither been reviewed, replicated nor confirmed by any official authorities in Sweden.

While Sweden is the specific national context being discussed in these texts, oftentimes, it seems as though ‘Sweden’ could just as easily have been substituted for ‘France’, ‘Germany’ or some other Western European country. The excerpts throughout this section illustrate how US far-right forces reiterate a pre-made template with the same far-right tropes as has been identified so many times before (e.g. Åkerlund, 2021; Hameleers & Schmuck, 2017; Merrill & Åkerlund, 2018; Pettersson & Sakki, 2017; Sakki & Pettersson, 2016). By reusing this template, the far-right blogs reverberate and strengthen an all-applicable frame for describing the (decline of the) Western world. In turn, this framing could function to lower the threshold for international networking and collaboration among the far right, seeing as they perceive themselves to experience the same adversaries and challenges despite their specific national contexts.

This experience is further enforced through the reiteration of certain powerful stories. Most notably, the reporting and imagery of a bloody-faced, white, blond, Swedish woman who had been violently assaulted reappears as many as nine times throughout the sample period: once in 2015, twice in 2016, 2017 and 2019, and then once again in 2020 and 2021, respectively. This, despite the fact, that the assault had occurred all the way back in 2004. Furthermore, this is not any random image but one that has been spread in transnational far-right circles before (Horsti, 2017). In line with how it was identified by Horsti (2017), it is also here used to signal the threat of (Muslim) immigrants’ sexual violence, a white Sweden in decline, and a longing for an earlier, safer and socially cohesive national past.

The juxtaposition of Sweden

True Aryans and suicidal fools

If the general features, problems, and goals of far-right narratives remain consistent in transnational articulations of far-right discourse then what is the importance of Sweden specifically, for the US far right? Well, what emerges through the analysis, beyond the well-established far-right tropes identified so far, is a multifaceted and sometimes contradictory image of Sweden.

Firstly, echoing old images of Sweden, Swedish descent is held to a higher standard than other whites – including those native to the US, and even neighbouring Nordic country Finland (Kjellman, 2013):

A broad cross-section of White Americans on the right were glad to see the impudent diversity-mongers of Team USA take a bath. And what was this Swedish team? Why it was chock full of young, healthy, wholesome White women. Not a bit of purple hair in the lot. And no kneeling for Negroes. In their race-souls White people know who is “us” – and who is the enemy. (National Vanguard, 2021a)

Some anthropologists have argued that Finns are about half Mongoloid and half European; the Nazis considered only the Swedish-speakers white. (American Renaissance, 2020)

Relatedly, the texts make out, with varying levels of explicitness, how Swedes harbour the tools for nation-building success:

… the proportion of entrepreneurs in a society varies with culture: Sweden’s progress-prone culture produces proportionally many more entrepreneurs than does Argentina’s progress-resistant culture, not to mention the world of Islam, or Haiti (The Social Contract Press, 2015)

Though rarely noticed, Americans of Scandinavian ancestry – particularly Swedish – are considerably wealthier (on average) than your average American. Their rates of poverty are much lower as well. And just like in their ancestral nations, Scandinavians build large governmental social safety nets and well-funded public schools wherever they go. (VDARE, 2018)

Here, Swedes are associated to capitalist ideals. When compared, Swedes are ‘considerably wealthier, ‘progress-prone’, and Sweden ‘produces proportionally many more entrepreneurs’. Neo-liberalist ideals are appropriated to connect productivity and success in the capitalist system to Swedishness. This arguments has also often served the purpose of legitimising racism by connecting issues like poverty, welfare dependency and low-paying jobs to inherent differences between whites and non-whites (Davidson & Saull, 2017). Interestingly, these capitalist ideals get mixed up with more traditional international images of Sweden as socialist with advanced ‘governmental social safety nets and well-funded public schools’. Usually, these are not values held to great esteem by the far right. However, here the connection between socialist and capitalist ideals evokes Swedish mid-century marketing efforts in the US wherein Sweden argued that ‘navigating between capitalism and socialism guaranteed the Swedes both freedom and welfare’ (Marklund, 2017, p. 273).

However, even though Sweden and Swedes are described in such admirable terms, there is another competing and less flattering view of the country and its ‘people’ as well. According to the sampled texts the far right also imagine Sweden as naïve and in denial about the perils of immigration:

Is it a coincidence that the Swedes are the most ethnomasochistic of all white nations, happily throwing their borders open to millions of Third Worlders, surrendering their neat, orderly cities to riotous Muslim mobs, denying they even have a culture of their own? (VDARE, 2017b)

Swedes are killing their own culture and history with their suicidal social-welfare programs (National Vanguard, 2018b)

The self-destructiveness thought to be held by Swedes is hard to miss. Not only is Sweden ‘ethnomasochistic’ [sic.] it is even considered ‘suicidal’ in its asylum policies. The use of terms like these do not signal an incompetence to do what is best for Sweden, but instead a longing to destroy Sweden, a sort of ‘pathological altruism’ (Stern, 2019), to annihilate their ‘culture and history’ but also their status as a ‘white nation’. Contradictory now, Sweden’s social welfare is no longer held in positive esteem, but it is instead thought of as an encumbrance that makes Sweden vulnerable to being exploited by immigrants (Ericson, 2018).

In some texts, the contradictory views of the country become especially clear, as praise comes with instant rebukes of Sweden’s (and Swedes’) inability to do what is best for them for the benefit of (varying degrading descriptions of) immigrants:

Irritatingly enough, Swedish people are exceptionally good-looking, and that really annoys me. They took this very perfect population, and they brought in 170,000 migrants […] I hear stories all the time of Swedes that want to get out of Sweden because it is too violent. And what really bugs me is the media will not be honest about it. They talk about these migrants, they talk about them as the ‘new Swedes.’ Well, guess what? You can’t take Mohammed, stick a blonde wig on him and turn him into a Swede. It doesn’t work like that (National Vanguard, 2018b)

Geneticists will tell you that if you want to get a picture of what ancient Aryans were like, go to Sweden. The odd thing is that even given their noble physical inheritance the Swedes are the most cucked people on the planet. For some Swedish men it’s a sign of “moral superiority” to see their White women gang-raped by hordes of rampaging Africans. Odd, isn’t it? (National Vanguard, 2021b)

Swedes are described as an ‘exceptionally good-looking’, and ‘very perfect population’ with ‘noble physical inheritance’. Yet, Swedes are also described as ‘the most cucked people on the planet’. The genetic superiority thought to be possessed by Swedes – ‘a picture of what ancient Aryans were like’ – positions them as an unreachable ideal for white supremacists. Simultaneously, Swedes are betraying this noble, white heritage and seemingly white people in general, by not cherishing and honouring their privileged position of whiteness (Titley, 2019).

A role model and a cautionary tale

In the midst of this treachery, Sweden is, in yet another contradictory way positioned as a role model. Despite Swedes supposed foolishness, there are simultaneously expressions of admiration towards a very narrow selection of the Swedish population, namely the country’s supposedly prosperous nationalist movement. In fact, the Swedish neo-Nazi organisation Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) and associated alternative media site Nordfront³ are mentioned in as many as 45 out of the 318 texts. In part, this attention might be due to the fact that NRM and Nordfront provide accessible, seemingly credible, and professional-looking websites. As noted by the The Council of Conservative Citizens (2019) in their promotion of the sites to their readers:

Their flagship Swedish-language station, [URL], is well-organized and a pleasure to read. Twelve to fifteen feature news articles are served up in a two-column format. It also contains excellent descriptions of their Senior Leaders and Editors, plus their ideology and promotional items. Using standard available internet browser language translators, the [URL] site converts seamlessly into English and is easily comprehended. A newer “Nordic Resistance Movement” internet site, [URL], is presented entirely in English and is openly promoted by their Leadership as an outreach mechanism for Aryan Comrades from elsewhere in the White World. I enjoin American patriots who may be unfamiliar with NORDFRONT to examine their “Welcome Aboard” page with greetings and information provided by the NORDFRONT Leader, Simon Lindberg

Beyond accessibility, NRM is seen as sources of inspiration to US far-right efforts:

These guys talk (maintain Web sites, have radio programs, etc.), but don’t just talk. They’re also activists engaged in real-world organizational action. It’s about time! (National Vanguard, 2016)

The Nordic Resistance Movement really took it to the next level with their latest stunt. This was an incredible action. It hit right in the feels … they’ve got the Nordic fuckin’ Resistance at their back. That’s a powerful message. Best of all, it teaches the kids that banding together with your fellow Whites is natural and the only way to reassert dominance at school and in the neighborhood. We need to start doing similar actions. Generation Z is ready for us. They’re ready for our message. (The Council of Conservative Citizens, 2017)

… the fact that the NRM is attracting everyday people is incredible, and gives me real hope for the future. The Overton window isn’t so much being pushed as it is being smashed, set on fire, and dragged firmly to the right way. And this is just the beginning. The NRM also encourages healthy diets and good exercise, as well as discouraging harmful behaviours such as smoking or drinking in excess, and forbids the use of drugs (The Council of Conservative Citizens, 2019)

The inspiration drawn from the NRM is twofold. Firstly, it is described as a successful example of mainstreaming white supremacist ideas. While NRM has in fact remained marginal in terms of memberships and attendance at public street actions (Finnsiö et al., 2021), the organisation is described here as exceedingly influential in Swedish politics and possessing an ability to attract sympathisers also outside of fringe extremist circles. This, in turn, is identified as cause for hope, as something that ‘we’ – US white supremacists – could use to reverse the decline of white people and ‘reassert dominance’. Secondly, NRM is seen as an organisation which is successfully able to build and maintain a white supremacist community that relies on ‘natural’ ways of adhering both to fellow whites, but also draws on idealistic anti-modern longings for a way of health and life that was purer and closer to nature (Ekman, 2015; Forchtner & Kølvraa, 2017; Szenes, 2021).

Despite that the Overton window is supposedly both being ‘smashed’ and ‘set on fire’ by NRM and Nordfront, there is yet another parallel understanding of Sweden and its situation, mainly, that it should serve as a warning example. The idea behind this line of argumentation is that if Sweden, which has all the tools to succeed is doing so poorly, then other countries should do well to consider Sweden a warning example of the consequences immigration will inevitably have for their nations if they act as Sweden has (Thorleifsson, 2019). In doing so, the far right organisations explored here try to position the developments in the country into terms that are translatable also beyond Sweden (Titley, 2019):

… the genocide of Whites is imperative to our rulers – and because his act of raping a White girl is secretly applauded by them (National Vanguard, 2019).

But if the anti-Whites in power are deliberately trying to make it so your children grow up to be a minority, is that not a genocidal policy? It’s White Genocide, because they want to get rid of us. (National Vanguard, 2015)

Sweden is nearing the point of no return: even the UN has suggested that Sweden will become a third world country by 2030, as it will be unable to keep up with its peers. Let it be a lesson to the rest of us (National Vanguard, 2018a)

But the question for most VDARE.com readers is what can be done to stop this happening here? Sweden’s problem stems from the county’s suicidal Asylum program. America should terminate the import of 3rd World “refugees” (VDARE, 2017a)

First-World voters should learn from this too. The Left, ultimately, has a death wish for the West. When they say they’ll be tough on immigration, it’s just to get your vote. Never let them fool you again (VDARE, 2019)

To support this sharp claim, the sites focus heavily on the opposition between the threat of an elite them – ‘our rulers’, ‘the anti-Whites in power’, ‘the Left’ – who is actively seeking to cause harm to a white us. Drawing on the far-rightist concept of ‘white genocide’, the harm being signalled here is one that concerns whiteness itself, threatening what is sometimes thought of as a ‘transnational White racial homeland’ (Deem, 2019, p. 3196; see also Kaati et al., 2021; Stern, 2019). Words like ‘America’, ‘Western nations’, ‘the West’ and the ‘First World’ are in this context code for this white homeland. It is consequently implied that nations fitting this wide, yet exclusionary category, are more alike than they are different. Thus, the alleged mistakes of Sweden as it pertains to immigration can be applied to understand and reverse the same developments elsewhere.

How does Sweden matter for the US far right?

This paper aimed to analyse how Sweden is represented on the official sites and blogs of US far-right organisations between 2015 and 2022. It focused specifically on when Sweden is discussed by the US far right and in relation to what events, and what values and associations are attributed to Sweden.

First, the study points out that while Sweden is of interest throughout different parts of the sampling period, Sweden does not constitute a constant source of news value to the US far-right. More concretely, news events were not reported on by US far-right organisations as they took place in Sweden, but were instead appropriated and accentuated when and how they could be used to make certain points directed to the (mostly) US audiences of these organisations. In extreme cases, this meant drawing from decades old examples of news stories to make points about the present-day situation (see also Horsti, 2017).

While previous research has shown how the far right cherry picks specific (parts of) news stories to present events in certain ways (Haller & Holt, 2019; Merrill & Åkerlund, 2018), these findings show that such efforts can be more far-reaching and calculated than what has often previously been identified. The continuous efforts to report on events in this manner works to form ‘opposing versions of daily reality’ (Bennett & Livingston, 2018, p. 125). This approach to events is situated within a broader trend of post-truth politics where it matters less to what degree something is true, and more of how it resonates with already held beliefs (Giusti & Piras, 2020). Thus, by not self-regulating any constraints in terms of timeliness, the US far right takes the liberty to reiterate powerful stories that can assist in forming compelling and effective arguments, no matter if they in anyway reflect a current situation, event or societal pattern.

Secondly, the focus when discussing Sweden tends to be scaremongering about Muslim immigrants and Islam. The expression of Islamophobic tropes is not in itself anything new. In fact, the use of these by the US far right identified in the sample largely echoes the tropes which have been identified within and across national settings in Europe (Hafez, 2014; Horsti, 2017; Merrill & Åkerlund, 2018; Sakki & Pettersson, 2016). Even though the US has a unique composition of, and history in relation to, immigrants, and ethnic, and religious minorities, not the least compared to a European country like Sweden – for instance comparably fewer asylum seekers from Muslim countries, and around one eight the number of Muslim residents as Sweden (Budiman, 2020; Finnsiö, 2019; Mohamed, 2021; Statistics Sweden, 2022) – this is not evident in how Muslims are portrayed by the US far right.

Through the reiteration of an Islamophobic far-right trope that spans across national contexts, the international far right form a coherent narrative and all-applicable template for the problems of Muslims facing the Western world. More than this, previous research of European contexts have shown how uniting over a common enemy, like scapegoating immigrants, helps in ‘cementing an imagined ethno-nationalist bond of solidarity that connects far-right activists and populist right political audiences across languages and national contexts’ (Doerr, 2017a, p. 18, 2017b). Thus, it might be so that for the contemporary far right, Muslims constitute such an important target that it trumps all potential differences otherwise thought to exists between Western nations (Anonymous Author), as noted by Froio and Ganesh (2019, p. 531) ‘Islamophobia seems to be the transnational glue of the far right, bringing together extremely heterogeneous organizations operating in different political systems’.

Finally, beyond the well-established far-right tropes centring on Islamophobic depictions of Muslims, what emerges through the analysis of US far-right imaginaries of Sweden is multifaceted and contradictory. Sweden is positioned in a complex juxtaposition: as something both good and bad; superior while also in a sense inferior; a great nationalist role model but also a warning example. Swedish whiteness plays a central role in these depictions. Sweden and Swedes are causing harm to whiteness itself by not cherishing its white legacy, traditions, competence, and demographic composition. More than this, Sweden is portrayed as actively seeking to destroy its privileged status as a ‘white nation’.

Even though whiteness is important in differentiating ‘us’ from ‘them’ in white supremacist imaginaries in general (Blee & Yates, 2015; Stern, 2019), Sweden is portrayed as though it holds a particular relation to whiteness. This notion appears closely related to longstanding eugenic ideas about ‘the Swede’ as purer and whiter than any other people, and therefore in every way racially superior (Hübinette & Lundström, 2014; Kjellman, 2013, 2014).

By associating with this, the US far right can capitalise on Sweden’s privileged whiteness to raise the status of whiteness in the US. Despite significant historical, societal, and cultural differences between Sweden and the United States – not the least in terms of issues like migration, colonialism, welfare, government, and constitution – the US far right leaves out any details that might indicate that such differences exist. With this, the US far right tries to portray an alternative reality wherein, as how Sweden signifies a pure and white past (Björkman & Widmalm, 2010; Elgenius & Rydgren, 2017; Horsti, 2017), there was a time before multiculturalism in the US (see also Stern, 2019).

For the US far right, Sweden serves as the perfect representation of unquestionable whiteness. Its imminent doom due to multiculturalism and globalism beckons the doom of whiteness also in the US and rest of the Western world. Thus, these representations of Sweden serve as a powerful and potentially dangerous fiction for white supremacist to unite behind and mobilise around, against the supposedly acute threat facing ‘the white race’.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Samuel Merrill and to the reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council under Grant number 2021-01609.

Notes

1 Those categorised as either Anti-Immigrant Anti-Muslim; Antisemitism; Christian Identity; Ku Klux Klan; Neo-Confederate; Neo-Nazi; Neo-Völkisch; Racist Skinhead; White Nationalist

2 According to statistics for November 2022 from https://www.semrush.com/

3 The Nordic Resistance Movement claims that Nordfront became ‘even more independent’ from March 26th, 2020 and onwards (Nordic Resistance Movement, 2022).

4 Data for November 2022, according to https://www.semrush.com/