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Celebrating the fanatically normal

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)
Maciej Zaremba Tony Curzon Price
7 October 2010

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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