This piece originally appeared on New York Transatlantic.
NEW YORK—A tense argument pitted two members of a Swedish nationalist party against a handful of New York University students and professors on Thursday. Josef Fransson and Tobias Andersson, who belong to the Sweden Democrats, presented their case for cutting immigration into Sweden, getting “tough” on crime and scrapping the United Nations Convention on Refugees. They say that only those who adopt “Swedish culture” should be welcome in Sweden.
Professor Christian Martin, also on the panel, minced no words in denouncing the Sweden Democrats’ platform. “Your party has positions that are outright racist,” he said to the politicians.
Although the panel was meant to address backlashes against globalization, it quickly turned into a discussion about migration, race and culture, with members of the audience questioning and challenging Fransson and Andersson.
The Sweden Democrats is a conservative nationalist party and currently among the most popular parties in Sweden. Since the refugee crisis hit its peak in autumn of last year, the party has grown increasingly popular, eclipsing the governing Swedish Social Democratic Worker’s party. The party has ties with other nationalist, Eurosceptic parties like the United Kingdom Independence Party, and is part of a larger group of nationalist and nativist parties across Europe.
Political analysts, including Martin, regard the Sweden Democrats as a “populist” and “right-wing extremist party.”
“Populist parties are parties who, in their ideology and their political outlook, pit an imaginary ‘us’ against another people, a ‘them,’ or against the political elite,” said Martin.
Fransson, a member of the Swedish parliament, rejected this label as “one that you use very lightly for people you don’t agree with.” Later in the discussion, Andersson, national president of the Sweden Democrats’ youth organization, remarked that, “If it’s populist to listen to the working-class people, then you can call me a populist, I’d be totally fine with that.”