In the 20th century, Sweden positioned itself as a welfare model. Represented as a rich, democratic and socially just country, many wanted to see it as a path between capitalism and socialism. At the time, few of them put it in my hands that in Sweden social policies and solidarity played a very important role, although, as we have heard, they carried out deplorable xenophobic and clasile measures. For example, between 1935 and 1996 Sweden detected 230,000 people (mainly women), of whom 63,000 were “to protect the purity of the Nordic race”.

The generous regulation of the right of asylum abroad favored the growth of the myth, but in the meantime we have learned that some Swedish companies violated basic human rights and brutally exploited the workers to enrich them. In this regard, one of the latest news is that IKEA 1970.eko and 1980.ko used the work of East German prisoners for decades to produce their products. The leap from ugly practices to colonialist practices is not so great. This is demonstrated by Swedish financial companies in recent years in the Baltic States: they almost completely control the banking system and from it they tell governments what economic policies they should do. At the outbreak of the economic crisis, the Latvian Government was forced to withdraw the devaluation of its currency in the face of pressure from the Swedish financial capital to deal with the serious economic situation. In particular, the Swedes, in the Baltic countries, imposed the opposite of the recipe being used at home.

It is clear that globalisation has led to major changes in Swedish political culture. The individualistic initiative, rooted in society, gradually disappears with a community approach of solidarity, opening the way to more selfish individualism and to problems of coexistence.

The street riots we have seen in recent weeks in the immigrant neighbourhoods of Stockholm have already been seen in advance in France and the United Kingdom. Sweden is no exception. Here, too, in recent years neoliberal measures have been adopted that have significantly increased the distances between the poor and the rich. These differences have been reinforced by policies such as the “school check” that came into effect in 1992, according to which parents receive a sum of money to spend for each child in a public or private school. This has meant the growth of private schools and, therefore, the development of a more lenient school model. Among the young people on the peripheries, in most cases family immigrants, school failure, high unemployment rates and feelings of discrimination are widespread. Although they are born in Sweden, some do not identify with society because they feel marginalized.

In this context, all the surveys give a significant rise to the extreme right-wing party, the Swedish Democrat (SD). The SD first entered Parliament in 2010 and would become the third force if autonomous elections are now held. It is no wonder that, at a time when the welfare state is shrinking, xenophobic speeches have become commonplace in order to create conflicts between those affected by neoliberal policies and to remove public debate from the roots of the profound problem: the separation of wealth.