Sweden Democrats challenge democracy

Sweden’s election campaign is underway, and the Sweden Democrats are at its center. The party, known as SD, now supports the Tidö government in parliament after spending years outside the political mainstream.

The coalition consists of Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals, with parliamentary backing from SD. Opinion polls suggest that the government could change after the 13 September election, leaving Social Democratic leader Magdalena Andersson to seek a majority in the Riksdag. But the campaign is not over, and the columnist presents SD as a party testing the limits of Swedish democracy.

SD was founded in 1988 by people with roots in neo-Nazism. It entered the Riksdag in 2010 and became Sweden’s third-largest party in 2014. For years, the established parties broadly agreed that SD should remain excluded from political cooperation. The party continued to gain voters, however, appealing to people who saw it as a counterweight to established parties and responding to worsening living conditions and future prospects with familiar language, hard rhetoric and pocketbook policies such as lower fuel taxes.

“

propaganda

The party’s exclusion ended in 2022, when the Tidö government established a cooperation agreement with SD. Since the 1990s, SD has tried to distance itself from its Nazi background and replace overt racism with anti-elitism. The columnist argues that many of its actions still directly attack democratic institutions and political rules.

One warning sign concerns the media. SD leader Jimmie Åkesson has repeatedly called editorial decisions at independent news organizations “propaganda” or “scandalous.” In 2024, TV4 employees were advised not to display the channel’s logo in public because of fears of violence after a TV4 journalist went undercover in SD’s communications department and uncovered troll factories linked directly to the party. The columnist says SD has also helped move rhetoric associated with social media into the election campaign.

“

scandalous