Anyone who follows some of Facebook's and Thread's more lurid discussions has probably noticed the same thing as me. In the past year, the term "ethnic Swedish" has started to be used frequently, if not hysterically often. Always without explaining what you mean. When I ask, I get answers like "all normal people know that" or "the fact that you're asking shows that you're not one". After a while, the principle behind the answers becomes clear: you mark that you belong to those who "know" by not arguing. Then you are one.
"Ethnicity" is one of the vaguest concepts in today's political arena. If you are looking for comprehensive definitions, you will soon get lost. Almost all encyclopedias describe it as feeling at home in a group characterized by a shared history. It's not necessarily about things like religion or language. And if you ask on social media what people mean, you get aggressive answers: "so you mean it doesn't exist?" (Well, I feel Swedish. Especially abroad.)
The terms "ethnicity" and "culture" are used interchangeably in the debate, often to talk about who is not allowed to participate. In an excellent article here in DN (5/9), Elisabeth Åsbrink recalled how the Nazi movement after the war - among other things at the suggestion of the Swedish fascist Per Engdahl - decided to speak of "culture" instead of "race", when the latter concept was considered compromised. But as Åsbrink also pointed out: replace the word "ethnicity" with "race" in today's strange debates and you will see that in such contexts it means the same thing.
When leading Sweden Democrats have spoken out about ethnicity, there has always been a debate. As when Björn Söder claimed that Sami and Jews were not Swedes in his opinion: "you have to distinguish between citizenship and nationality" (DN 14/12 2014). Söder then echoed thoughts from one of SD's spiritual fathers, the deeply conservative Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922). This distinguished between "nation" and "state". A "natural" state was one where the borders of the state and the nation coincided. But the "nation" was something else, something mysterious. When Kjellén was going to speak about the "collective community in the nation", he exclaimed in pure opera arias and became incomprehensible.
Even Mattias Karlsson has previously stated as follows: "Nation and state are different things. When you become a citizen of the Swedish state, it does not mean that you are automatically Swedish" (DN 22/11 2019). "The nation" is for SD the same kind of mystical community of destiny as for Kjellén. And it must not be defined, because then you run the risk of no longer agreeing.
Now it may look as if the party's leadership does not agree with each other about what "Swedishness" is, since Richard Jomshof wrote on his X account: "There is a Swedish people. Sweden is the country of the Swedish people. The Swedish people are Sweden's indigenous population." It draws towards Kjellén and a genetic definition of ethnicity.
Would they really take such a discussion behind the scenes?
The interesting thing is that the same Mattias Karlsson who previously echoed Kjellénsk now objected sharply and rejected the idea that Sweden "only belongs to those Swedes who have the 'right' genes or family background" (AB 27/10). And Åkesson himself was out in Expressen and said that: "Within modern, sociological research, ethnicity is often considered a social construction, where biology is not a factor" (30/10). You have to hear a lot before your ears fall off. Social construction indeed.
Does this mean that SD has changed its stance? Nation and ethnicity are now a social construct? I'm not so sure about that. Would they really take such a discussion behind the scenes? Anyone who has read the party's white paper and followed them over the years also knows that SD is a master of a rhetorical trick: simultaneously saying one thing outwardly and another inwardly. Åkesson is Mr. Clean, others have to do the heavier work, purely ideologically. If we don't soon see clean purges in the party leadership, I think we can consider this ideological "crack" as a pure division of labor.
