National-socialism - Made in Sweden?
Photo by Mert Kahveci via Unsplash
The term national-socialism is historically connected to developments in Germany during 1920-1945 with the totalitarian rule of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP).
One interesting aspect is that national-socialism was used in Sweden already before it became a part of organised political activism and movement. Already before the 1920s, conservative politician and political science professor Rudolf Kjellen started using the term. He described his ideology as “nationalsocialism” meaning national-socialism in Swedish, around ten years before NSDAP was shaped and Hitler started using it.
During the 1930s, Kjellen becomes one of the leading role models and ideological inspirations for anti-democrats and nazis in Sweden and Germany. With nationalsocialism, Kjeleen was aspiring for a society that he called “folkhem” meaning “people’s home”. The original meaning of “folkhem” was developed during the end of the 19th century. Poor people should have access to literature and social information by vising folkhem houses.
In this vision, Kjellen promoted ideas of dictatorship, radical nationalism and anti-liberalism by stating that “the nation, not the indiviudal, is the history’s hero”. Also, he promoted aspects as “racial hygiene”, restrictions on trade and government control of the market, cultural homogeneity and assimilation of minorities. In general, Kjellen proposed what later came to be manifested as Nazi Germany under Hitler and Fascist Italy under Mussolini. In 1921 when women received voting rights in Sweden, Kjellen stated comments such “it was a mistake to leave Sweden to feminism”.
At the same time, the term folkhem and its usage in the political debate in Sweden is historically mainly connected to the Social Democratic Party after their leader Per-Albin Hansson started using it during the 1930s. Hansson used the term in a sense that the nation should be as a family where “in the good home, equality, care, cooperation and helpfulness prevail”.
Among the main ideas around “folkhem” was about a social model based on aspects as a large welfare state and redistribution, high taxation, a large role for the government in economic decision-making. The concept also included aspects as racial biology and hygiene as it was done in Nazi Germany.
One interesting thing is that Hansson was criticised within the social-democratic movement for trying to replace the Marxist thinking of class struggle and social progress with a conservative and right-wing view of community and identity.
It is worth mentioning that Kjellen seldomly used the term folkhem during his political life. However, the term has since the 2010s been more used in the public debate in Sweden by the far-right populist and nationalist Sweden Democrats party. The case is that Sweden Democrats are interpreting the folkhhem period as a period of sociocultural and ethno-nationalist unity rather than the fact that the social-democratic vision with folkhem as in the 1940s and 1950s was not about making Swedes more socioculturally similar nor ethnic-nationalist but by using the government to make Swedes more socio-economically similar and left-wing nationalists.
It is also interesting that Kjellen was not completely “anti-Left” since he admired some segments in the Swedish labour movement and hoped that they would become more nationalist and socially conservative through time. Instead, Kjellen was thinking in terms of “uniting the nation through socialist reforms”, which today can be seen as an example of why many right-wingers and authoritarian conservatives, as in Viktor Orban’s Hungary, are “left-wing” in economic issues.
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