Sweden Democrats Demand Action on Racism Against Swedes

STOCKHOLM - Swedes who face racism in their own country do not get the same attention or support as other groups. That is the argument of six Sweden Democrat MPs who are now asking parliament to officially recognise anti-Swedish hostility and order the government to draw up a national action plan against it.

The motion, titled Stop Anti-Swedish Hostility, was filed in the Swedish parliament on Thursday. It is led by Tobias Andersson and co-signed by fellow Sweden Democrats Pontus Andersson Garpvall, Josef Fransson, Denice Westerberg, Leonid Yurkovskiy and Jonas Andersson.

The MPs note that Swedish politics is united in condemning racism and discrimination - until the victims are Swedes. Terms like Islamophobia, antisemitism, Afrophobia and antiziganism are established in public debate, they write, while anti-Swedish hostility is still questioned or flatly denied.

"Racism Only Runs One Way"

According to the motion, part of the resistance comes from the ideological belief that racism can only flow in one direction - from a majority population towards minorities. The MPs take particular aim at theories claiming that so-called reverse racism does not exist and that relations between groups must always be read through a hierarchy of power.

That thinking, they argue, means racism against Swedes is never taken as seriously as racism against anyone else. And because Sweden is the only homeland Swedes have, they say, ethnic hostility against them in their own country is especially serious.

Victims Targeted for Being Swedish

The motion points to decades of testimony about Swedes facing contempt, threats and violence because of their ethnicity - from Swedish pupils' experiences in schools to court rulings in which offenders hurled ethnic slurs at their victims during assaults, rapes and other attacks.

In some cases, the MPs argue, victims were picked precisely because they were Swedish, making their ethnicity part of the motive. They also criticise how people who point out such racist elements risk being branded racists themselves.

The issue has come up repeatedly in connection with Sweden's wave of so-called humiliation robberies, where young victims are not only robbed but also beaten and degraded. Much of the debate has focused on cases where the offenders had immigrant backgrounds and the victims were ethnic Swedes.

Whether such a crime is also a hate crime depends on whether prosecutors can prove the victim's ethnicity was a motive. A different background between victim and offender is not, on its own, enough to establish a racist motive.

A National Action Plan

The MPs want more than a symbolic recognition. They want the government to act on hate-crime legislation, how schools teach about racism, how public agencies work against discrimination, and how official crime statistics are compiled.

The motion contains three formal demands: that anti-Swedish hostility be recognised, that measures be taken against it, and that a dedicated national action plan be drawn up by the relevant ministries and agencies. It does not propose specific changes to the law. The goal is first to have parliament acknowledge the problem exists and hand the government the job of tackling it.

Crime Agency Already Probing Hate Crimes Against Swedes

The question has already reached government level. The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå) has been ordered to produce an in-depth report on hate crime that explicitly includes crimes against the Swedish majority population.

The agency will examine how different groups are hit by hate crime, compare crimes against minorities with crimes against the majority, look at how other countries' hate-crime laws protect majority populations, and study why many hate crimes are never reported. Its findings are due by 14 October 2027.

Swedish law does not in fact exclude hate crimes against the majority. The penalty-enhancement rule in the criminal code covers crimes motivated by a wish to offend someone because of their national or ethnic origin. The real question, critics say, is how that rule is applied - which motives investigators bother to look for, and which ones ever make it into a courtroom.

Same Protection for Swedes

The new motion goes further than the ongoing government review by demanding an explicit political recognition of anti-Swedish hostility and a separate plan of action. The MPs say individual Sweden Democrats have tried to raise the issue for years without anything meaningful being done.

The first step, they argue, is for society to admit that Swedes can be targeted by racism simply for being Swedish. Only then can effective measures follow. Parliament has not yet dealt with the motion.