The Sweden Democrats' white paper has been published. In it, it is stated that there is a clear National Socialist heritage with anti-Semitic expressions and racial ideological ideas among the party's founders.
It's not really anything new in the book, but it wasn't the ambition either. It's an objective presentation of the party's dark history. There is no analysis, such an analysis could have provided guidance on why the SD made the choice they did (when they initiated the change process), says Christer Mattsson, who is the head of the Segerstedt Institute at the University of Gothenburg.
No skeletons
Mattsson, who, among other things, researches radicalization processes in individuals and groups in right-wing extremist and National Socialist environments, has read the over 800-page book. And according to him, there are no skeletons left in the SD closet.
When I got the book, I had a list of themes and events that I wondered about. I could check off everything, so I can say that I don't know of anything like that that could be hidden there.
What's interesting is what you do with the heritage now.
In his speech in Almedalen, party leader Jimmie Åkesson apologized to Sweden's Jews for the SD's history.
The party emerged from the national movement. With that, they brought with them a social nationalist heritage, anti-Semitism, racial ideology, for example. The heritage comes with individuals, but the individuals are not the problem, the problem is that it was possible for individuals to operate in the party and that they were allowed to do so, says Mattsson.
Collective guilt
When the white paper was published, party leader Mattias Karlsson - who joined the SD in 1999, four years after the change process towards becoming a culturally nationalist conservative popular movement had begun - said that he does not have any personal guilt.
Few in the SD today were active during the precarious years. But it plays a lesser role. It's not possible to individualize the guilt or heritage. It's not a matter of the individual being responsible. If you sit in the leadership of an organization that has this heritage, you bear the collective guilt. I think everyone would feel a sense of security if they said "yes, we have this heritage and it's a guilt, and for that guilt, we want to ask for forgiveness", says Christer Mattsson.
