There is an expression in Swedish, “to be let into the warmth” – meaning to be welcomed into the fold. In a country shaped by long, dark winters, the image speaks for itself.
A decade ago, the Sweden Democrats (SD), a far-right anti-immigration party with roots in Sweden’s neo-Nazi movement, were firmly shut out in the cold.
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end of list But after the 2018 general election, a political deadlock prompted right-wing parties to rethink their alliances – and their principles.
Today, SD is Sweden’s second-largest party, providing the parliamentary support that keeps the current government in power. It is a party once shunned by every major political force, now far into the warmth.
From skinheads to suits
SD were founded in the 1980s by Nazi sympathisers and born out of the far-right, skinhead movement “Keep Sweden Swedish”.
Its first auditor, Gustaf Ekstrom, was a veteran of the armed combat branch of the SS, a key organisation of Nazi Germany, and other executive members had belonged to violent far-right movements .
After the 1990s, SD attempted to “clean up their act” in order to escape being seen as neo-Nazis, Morgan Finnsio, a Swedish researcher who studies far-right movements at the Expo Foundation, told Al Jazeera.
Members and supporters of the far-right SD react to the results of the exit polls at their party election centre on September 9, 2018 [Michael Campanella/Getty] One example he gave is their 2003 adoption of the idea of “open Swedishness”, meaning that Swedish identity is not biologically exclusive and that assimilation is – theoretically – possible, explained Finnsio.
In the period from 2014 until 2020, SD made further cosmetic changes and gestures towards moderation, rebranding themselves as a “conservative” party, he said.
SD’s leadership expelled the party’s youth wing for “extremism”, threw out some members, albeit inconsistently, and discouraged the sharing of far-right alternative media content, Finnsio said.
It also dropped its demand to leave the European Union and its opposition to NATO membership.
Daphne Halikiopoulou, chair in comparative politics at the University of York in England, told Al Jazeera that SD has trodden the same path as several other European hard far-right political parties, gradually altering their rhetoric and repackaging themselves as borderline far-right.
The party, she said, has “cleansed itself of its extremist elements” and rebranded itself with an innocent-looking flower as its logo, rather than a Viking.
Political inroads
In September 2010, SD crossed the 4 percent threshold and entered parliament for the first time, winning 20 seats.
Having spent years forming a narrative linking immigration to crime, terrorism and national security, the 2015 refugee crisis handed the SD the moment they had been waiting for.
That year, an estimated 1.3 million asylum seekers arrived in Europe. In Sweden alone, 163,000 arrived – the highest annual figure in the country’s history and the largest per capita intake in the EU.
According to Sweden’s annual SOM survey, immigration became the single most important issue for 53 percent of Swedish voters almost overnight.
Protesters carry signs against the SD party during a demonstration against anti-immigration politics in Stockholm, October 4, 2010 [Bob Strong/Reuters] By the 2018 election, SD had capitalised, winning 17.5 percent of the vote and 62 seats – making them the third largest party.
It was at this point that SD, which had largely been treated as a “pariah party”, began to be welcomed into the political mainstream, Zina al-Dewany, a political commentator and editorial writer for the media outlet Aftonbladet, told Al Jazeera.
In a series of symbolic moments, one party after another changed its stance between 2018 and 2022, al-Dewany said.
This began with the Christian Democrats (KD) in July 2019 when its leader, Ebba Busch, met SD leader Jimmie Akesson for a face-to-face meal, a moment which became known as “the meatball lunch”.
The Moderate Party was next to reach out, with its head Ulf Kristersson – now Sweden’s prime minister – opting for a traditional Swedish fika, a Swedish coffee break with cinnamon buns and small talk – with Akesson in his office.
The seemingly banal setting carried political weight, signalling a breakdown of the cordon sanitaire and a broken promise that Kristersson had made to prominent psychologist, author and Holocaust survivor Hedi Fried in 2018 that he would never cooperate with the SD, which has a history of anti-Semitism.
The Tido agreement
Then, in October 2022, the liberals opened the door to the SD, and four right-wing party leaders secluded themselves inside the historic Tido Castle.
There they signed a lan…
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