Extreme Right Parties in Scandinavia

Anders Widfeldt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415265898
• eBook ISBN: 9781134502141
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Conservadurismo y liberalismo

This book provides an up-to-date account of extreme right parties in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It seeks to explain why these parties have grown in support, and in Denmark and Norway reached positions of direct political influence.

Following an analytical framework, in which explanatory factors on the demand- as well as supply-sides are identified, the book investigates a wide range of possible such factors. The account covers economic conditions, immigration and political trust, as well as the extent of the fascist and Nazi legacy in Scandinavia. Each of the three countries is then subject to an in-depth study. The origins, historical development, ideology, organisation and leadership of the relevant extreme right parties in each country are analysed thoroughly. The analysis draws on party documents and publications, such as party manifestos, as well as media sources, biographies and academic literature. The main argument of the book is that internal supply-side factors, that is factors within the parties themselves, are indispensable in order to understand variations in the success of extreme right parties. External conditions are not unimportant, but account for very little if the parties do not provide a political package that can tap the potential demand.

1 A year of many tragedies

Like its predecessor ten years earlier, the year 2011 will be long remembered. But while 2001 could, without too much simplification, be summed up into a single fateful event, the 11 September attacks on the USA, a summary of 2011 is less straightforward. The year contained a long list of momentous, mostly tragic, events. The Green Revolution in Northern Africa and the Middle East led to some regime changes, but also to repressive responses and civil wars. There were several large-scale natural disasters. The global, and not least European, economy was in serious crisis.

To this could be added the events that took place in Norway on Friday, 22 July 2011. At 3.26 p.m. local time, a bomb detonated in central Oslo, next to the so-called government bloc where a number of key ministries are located. Several government buildings were completely destroyed. Eight people, all government officials or civil servants, were killed. The exploding device had been constructed and placed by a 32-year-old Norwegian man named Anders Behring Breivik. By the time of the explosion, Breivik was driving towards Tyrifjorden, a lake some 38 kilometres north-west of Oslo.

Tyrifjorden contains a 26-acre (10.6 hektar) island named Utøya. Since 1950, Utøya has been owned by Arbeiderpartiets Ungdomsfylking (AUF), the youth organisation of the Norwegian Labour Party. It is used for a variety of activities, the most important of which is the annual AUF summer camp, which is very popular among AUF’s 9,000 members. In 2011, the camp was held between 19 and 24 July, with around 550 participants. It was Breivik’s next target.

Transports to and from Utøya took place with a small shuttle ferry. The ferry was not open to the public, but Breivik was able to get on board by posing as a policeman. He had brought a bag containing firearms, including a semi-automatic rifle, and large amounts of ammunition. Shortly after having reached the island, he started shooting people around him, apparently at random. Panic ensued among the mostly youthful and completely unprepared camp participants. The confusion was exacerbated by Breivik’s spoken assurances that he was from the police, and his clothes, which looked like some kind of uniform.

Some tried to escape into sheds, buildings and natural hiding places on the partly wooded island. Others attempted to swim away. A few managed to reach the mainland despite being shot at, others were rescued by people in boats, but the water was cold and many were forced to return, in some cases to their death. One drowned. There were several miraculous escapes and rescues, but Breivik was able to continue shooting more or less undisturbed for over an hour. When police arrived, at 6.26 p.m., he gave himself up without resistance. By that time, 69 persons had lost their lives, or were fatally wounded. Together with those killed by the bomb blast in Oslo, the eventual death toll was 77.

Breivik claimed to be a member of the international Christian “Knights Templar” order, fighting a war against Marxism and multiculturalism. Before committing the 22 July atrocities, he had mounted a 1,518-page document on the Internet. Titled “2083. A European Declaration of Independence”, it is hardly a coherent piece, but rather a dossier consisting of texts copied from other sources, bomb-making instructions, an account of Breivik’s own life, a fairly detailed summary of his political ideas plus other mixed content.¹

The events of 22 July made headlines across the whole world. The reason is obvious – even though there had been several cases of mass shootings across the world in preceding years, the number of casualties was extremely high in any comparison. In addition, while other shootings have tended to be driven by personal grievances and mental problems, Breivik’s motive was explicitly political. Quite naturally, Breivik’s mental health has been questioned. Whether he is insane in a clinical sense is not straightforward, however. Indeed, two different expert assessments of his mental status during the legal process reached diametrically opposing conclusions. In the end, however, he was declared fit for a custodial sentence.

Thus, although the motivation behind his acts may never be fully explained, Anders Behring Breivik cannot easily be dismissed as just a madman. To be sure, his (unsuccessful) insistence on speaking from a podium, and wearing his “Knights Templar” uniform during the initial court hearings came across as bizarre. So was his interrupted attempt to make a declaration to other radical nationalists when he was sentenced. But besides the idiosyncrasies, Breivik is also a political extremist. His ideas are extreme, but by no means unique. They are quite widespread on the Internet, and can even be found in organisations calling themselves parties. Where Breivik differs from most other extremists is that he put these ideas into brutal practice.²

The international reaction was one of disbelief. To a significant extent of course, this was due to the cruelty of Breivik’s actions, and the powerful witness accounts from Utøya. In addition, however, many asked how something like this could happen in a country like Norway, known for its prosperity and stability. More or less immediately it was revealed that Breivik was a former member of Fremskrittspartiet, at the time the second biggest party in the Norwegian parliament. Fremskrittspartiet is by no means a party associated with violence, but anti-establishment rhetoric and criticism against immigration are significant parts of its agenda.

Norway was not the only Scandinavian country to hit the headlines for reasons linked to far right politics in the early 2010s. In neighbouring Sweden, Sverigedemokraterna entered parliament some ten months before Breivik’s terrorist attacks. Emerging out of an anti-immigration subculture in the 1980s, Sverigedemokraterna was for many years little more than a fringe phenomenon, and its transformation into an electoral force strong enough to enter parliament in September 2010 was remarkable. In Denmark, 2011 was not one of Dansk Folkeparti’s best years. For the first time it registered a loss in a parliamentary election, and lost a position of political influence it had occupied for almost ten years. The party could, nevertheless, look back on a period during which it had arguably been more successful than any comparable party in Europe. Formed in 1995, Dansk Folkeparti adopted a platform with strong nationalism, welfare chauvinism and Euroscepticism as key elements. Between 2001 and 2011, the party provided parliamentary support for a centre-right minority government. From this position, it was able to exert considerable influence on government policy, notably on immigration.

Thus, while Anders Behring Breivik is an extreme case, far/extreme right ideas and their political expressions were by the early 2010s an established part of everyday political life in Scandinavia. To international observers this may come as a surprise. The Scandinavian region and its constituent countries have a long-standing reputation as consensual and stable democracies, with low levels of societal and political conflict. Not the kind of climate one would normally associate with extreme right politics.

Yet anti-establishment parties have a long history in Scandinavia. In Denmark and Norway populist parties broke through in the early 1970s. The fortunes of these parties that emerged in the 1970s would fluctuate, but they did not disappear. They all still exist, not in their original form but under new names or as successor parties: Fremskrittspartiet and Dansk Folkeparti.

Whether these parties are classifiable as extreme right is not entirely straightforward. Immigration was not originally part of their agenda, but is now a key part of their message. Thus, even though there is quite an extensive discussion about definitions and classifications, the majority view in the academic literature is that the three parties in question are members of the extreme/far/radical/populist right party family. The case of Sverigedemokraterna is more clear-cut, with the only qualification that it was for many years so small that it received little attention in the comparative literature.

There is by no means a shortage of academic texts about extreme right parties in the Scandinavian countries. The tendency, however, has been to treat the different countries one by one. In some cases these single-country accounts are highly accomplished, theoretically as well as empirically, but the broader comparative perspective has been lacking. There are also examples of Denmark and Norway being treated together, but Sweden left out.³ For many years this made sense, as the extreme right in Sweden was insignificant at the time when the work in question was written. On the other hand, it could be seen as a weakness that attention was only given to the most successful cases.

Other studies nominally deal with Scandinavia as a whole, but with heavy emphasis on Denmark and Norway, with the apparent justification that those two countries contain the most successful extreme right parties.⁴ A comprehensive, theoretically informed empirical treatment of the Scandinavian region as a whole has been lacking. It is the aim of this book to fill that void – at least in part. The following account will not deal with the whole of what in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish is called Norden. It will focus on Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Finland and Iceland will thus be left out, as will the semi-autonomous regions/islands of Greenland, Faroe Islands and Åland.

For many years the three countries studied in this book comprised something of a textbook collection of cases suitable for comparative analysis. Denmark, Norway and Sweden are not identical but have much in common, in terms of history, culture, geography and language. Politically they have, sometimes together with Finland and Iceland, been described in terms of a “Nordic model”, with stability and consensus as the key characteristics.⁵ Even if the empirical support for the existence of such a model is at best questionable, it has often served as a point of reference in many studies.⁶ Above all, there were variations among the three countries in terms of extreme right success. Extreme right parties were strong in Denmark and Norway but weak in Sweden. In recent years, this picture has changed. Sverigedemokraterna is still comparatively small, but everything suggests that the party is established at the parliamentary level for the foreseeable future.

Still, these recent developments have hardly meant the destruction of a delicate research model. Rather, the fact that fortunes for extreme right parties have fluctuated over time in all the three studied countries is an eminently promising setting for comparative analysis. If the findings disappoint, it is because of the quality of the research, not empirical quirks in the selected cases.

The book is structured as follows. The next chapter deals with some key conceptual and terminological issues. It will be argued that extreme right is, after all, a justifiable name of the party family we are dealing with. Other relevant concepts, such as populism, racism and xenophobia will also be discussed. Chapter 3 sets out the analytical framework. Chapters 4–8 are the empirical applications of the explanatory factors identified in Chapter 3.

Notes

1 The “Manifesto” was soon taken down from its original Internet location, but copies have circulated quite widely on the Internet and should, in the foreseeable future, be easy to find via search engines.

2 This summary account of the events of 22 July 2011 and their aftermath is based on media reports available on the Internet. It is not complete, and may not be accurate in detail, although every effort has been made to avoid factual errors.

3 E.g. Bjørklund and Andersen 2002.

4 E.g...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• 1 A year of many tragedies
• 2 A rummage in the conceptual jungle
• 3 A framework for analysis
• 4 The social, economic and political setting
• 5 The extreme right legacy in Scandinavia
• 6 Norway: from Lange to Jensen
• 7 Denmark: from Glistrup to Dahl
• 8 Sweden: from Wachtmeister to Åkesson
• 9 Conclusion
• Index