As we look ahead to midterm elections, where election deniers are on the ballot in 27 states, it’s still mind-blowing to consider how we got here in just a few years. And the answer, most bluntly, is a rise in right-wing nationalism.
After lying dormant for some time, the contours of this new and arguably ascendant movement are by now well-known. There are many characteristics, most of which are deeply troubling if you’re a fan of democracy, including but not limited to:
A preference for national, religious and ethnic purity; an antipathy for migrants and immigrants; an open hostility to the press and a desire to punish critics; and an apologist or even approving approach to authoritarianism.
While all of that easily describes the right-wing nationalism stoked and nurtured by Donald Trump here in America, it also describes a stunning surge of authoritarianism in other countries, most notably Brazil and Hungary, where leaders Jair Bolsonaro and Viktor Orban, respectively, have puppeted Trump’s strong-arm nationalism to considerable success.
Elsewhere, from Boris Johnson and now Liz Truss in the United Kingdom to Marine Le Pen in France, right-wing nationalism is getting a bigger audience, not a smaller one.
This is disturbing enough. Whether in Latin America or Europe, an embrace of nationalism, and in some cases fascism, recalls some truly horrific moments in world history.
But what if I told you right-wing nationalism was also winning in some less expected places — say, Sweden?
Yes, the same Sweden that American liberals and progressives have long called an egalitarian utopia.
The same Sweden that consistently ranks among the happiest, the freest, the most liberal, friendliest to immigrants, freest for journalists, the least racist and safest for LGBTQ travel countries in the world.
Last week, this same Sweden held general elections to elect the 349 members of the Riksdag, or legislature. The right-wing Sweden Democrats won a net gain of 11 new seats, for a total of 73, surpassing the moderates to make it the second-most popular party in the country behind the left-wing Social Democrats.
This was shocking for many Swedes and election watchers, according to Elisabeth Asbrink, author of “Made in Sweden: 25 Ideas That Created a Country.” The success of the Sweden Democrats, she writes in The New York Times this week, “marks the end of Swedish exceptionalism, the idea that the country stood out both morally and materially.”
As she describes it, the party’s origins date back to 1988 and a neo-Nazi group called BSS, or Keep Sweden Swedish. The far-right movement has “profited from the country’s growing inequalities, fostering an obsession with crime and an antipathy to migrants.”
She notes how the party’s chief of staff in the Swedish Parliament declared that critical journalists should be “punished” and were to be considered “enemies of the nation.”
The country’s defense minister called the party a security risk, due to its neo-Nazi ties.
Earlier this year, the party’s leader, Jimmie Akesson, refused to choose between President Joe Biden and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
This all sounds very familiar to us: It echoes the climate we’ve been living in here in the U.S. for the past six years during the rise of Trump.
It was once easy to think of this new political populist era as a uniquely American response to uniquely American problems. Trump was, after all, a uniquely American invention, and he was both benefiting from and leaning into uniquely American divisions and grievances.
But clearly we aren’t as special as we thought. A rise in populism in India and Pakistan, as well as Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, France and now even Sweden is proving the movement is global, and so is its appeal.
To call it merely nostalgia is to divorce it from the racial, ethnic and sexual anxieties that inform right-wing nationalism and make up many of its punitive policies. But a desire to return to some long-gone way of life is a common thread across international borders.
“Back to red cottages and apple trees, to law and order, to women being women and men being men,” as Asbrink describes it in Sweden.
The reaction to this voting block sounds familiar, too: “Individuals leaning toward the Sweden Democrats … have felt stigmatized … This has not only fed the party’s self-image as a martyr but also nurtured even more loyalty among its supporters,” Asbrink writes.
Perhaps it’s some consolation to know the U.S. isn’t the only democracy in jeopardy — that we aren’t uniquely susceptible to these dark impulses, that this isn’t one of those “only in America” problems.
But that doesn’t change the fact that none of this is good. The rise in right-wing nationalism is corrosive and chilling, and the more it spreads, the worse it is for the world.
S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.
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