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# Celebrating the fanatically normal
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/celebrating-fanatically-normal/
- Published: 2010-10-07T10:10:20.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:09:51.000Z
- Description: Sweden needs to reinvent itself around the idea of constitutionalism in order to create a future that is truly shared between new Swedes and older. An interview with Maciej Zaremba (audio, 45mins)
- Author: Tony Curzon Price
- Tags: Europe, #Migrated, Politics & activism, Democracy and government, Sweden, Civil Society, #en, #Import 2026-04-09 17:11

The rise of the Sweden Democrats is partly about a nostalgic, patriotic right feeling the absence of a voice as the moderate right embraced markets and globalisation with the simultaneous abandonment of anti-EU stances by the Greens. This double absence created a space on the extreme right. Xenophobia, explains Maciej Zaremba (himself a refugee immigrant to Sweden), is not a natural part of Swedish political culture, although immigration does require renewed integrative efforts. Some of this is about labour market reform, and some is about combining a liberal multiculturalism with a notion of what brings all Swedes together. Maciej Zaremba hopes that the common project will be found in a new republicanism.

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