How fascist Per Engdahl’s ideological legacy survived

World War II ended in catastrophe, but its defeat did not eliminate the ideas behind it. In the postwar era, new laws and moral principles sought to prevent another war and genocide, while Europe’s far-right movements were crushed or banned. At the same time, the article argues, anti-democratic politics continued underground through the work of Swedish fascist leader Per Engdahl.

A recent biography by Anders Sundelin left important questions about Engdahl’s ideological legacy unanswered, the author writes. Historians Lena Berggren and Heléne Lööw have examined his influence, while Elisabeth Åsbrink has mapped his postwar networks in her book “1947.” For Åsbrink, that period is more revealing than Engdahl’s childhood, blindness or grandiose poetry.

Engdahl was not simply an old fascist with no political influence, the article says. He acted as an international strategist whose goal was to prevent Nazi and fascist ideas from dying out. His legacy unfolded in three stages: the racist politics he advocated for Sweden in the 1930s, the postwar ideas that led to the founding of the Malmö Movement, and the movement’s later influence on the far-right notion of “ethnopluralism,” now embraced by the Sweden Democrats among others.

In 1934, Engdahl opposed “racial mixing” and promoted a hierarchy that placed white Europeans at the top. He supported sterilization of Black people, Asians and Jews, as well as restrictions on Jewish business ownership and marriage to non-Jews. In 1941 he founded the fascist Svensk Opposition, which developed wartime plans for a Sweden without Jews.

The article also points to IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, who belonged to Engdahl’s fascist movement during the war and still admired him decades later. In an interview in 2010, Kamprad said, “Per Engdahl was a great man, and I will maintain that as long as I live.”

“

Per Engdahl was a great man, and I will maintain that as long as I live.