During Tuesday, the compositions of the political committees were hammered out. In the culture committee, Mattias Karlsson (SD) will become the new chairman, and will then succeed the Green Party's Mats Berglund.
Mattias Karlsson has sat on several different committees and was SD's group leader. When he began his political career in the Riksdag, it was in the cultural committee, where he sat as a regular member from 2010–2012.
- It's an area that has always been close to my heart, so I haven't mentally let it go, he says.
Most important to Mattias Karlsson is cultural heritage. Alongside politics, in recent years he has run the cultural association Gimle, which has been described as part of a conservative cultural revolution.
Mattias Karlsson sees himself as culturally conservative, although he admits that you need a breadth of cultural life and that "all culture has great value", including contemporary culture.
In the past, he has made several statements that "Swedish culture has a special position in Sweden" and that cultural policy should "promote the Swedish cultural heritage". He has also come out and defended Sölvesborg's municipal board's proposal to reduce the number of library books in different languages for children.
You say that we should have a breadth of cultural life. Does that breadth also apply to things that you wouldn't call "Swedish culture"?
- It is clear that we must be aware that our history and our culture have been affected by outside influences, not least within Western civilization.
- We also have the national minority issues, where I would like to see an increased investment in, for example, Sami culture. The Jewish group is also a group that has been under severe pressure in various ways.
At the same time, he continues to emphasize that the Swedish cultural heritage must be protected in particular, because according to him it has a unifying effect.
- About a decade ago we had a multicultural year. We have a proposal that we should now instead have a Swedish cultural heritage year, he says.
Mattias Karlsson has also, among other things, criticized the cultural sector for being left-wing, and expressed that the right has not offered any resistance.
Will you now, within the framework of your work, offer more resistance?
- I know that I am described as a culture warrior deluxe. Even though I feel that my posts in cultural politics have been very much about depoliticizing culture and making it more accessible. But in this role, I will above all try to emphasize consensus and a constructive spirit of cooperation.
At the top of the agenda at the moment are the state museums that have difficulty paying their rents.
- It feels a little urgent. We have a number of long-standing cultural heritage institutions, the Mediterranean Museum among others, which have a very difficult situation right now and where the state has been one of the actors who have made the situation worse. I like to see what opportunities there are to do something constructive to change it.
Mattias Karlsson also replaces Alexander Christiansson as the Sweden Democrats' cultural policy spokesperson.
