Former Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven on stemming the tide of right-wing authoritarianism

During his seven years leading Sweden’s government from 2014 to 2021, Stefan Löfven had a front row seat to observe the rise of right-wing and neo-fascist political parties both at home and around Europe. A former welder, and union leader from working class roots, Löfven earned the nickname “the escape artist” during his years as prime minister for his knack for holding together governments despite his country’s increasingly fractious and polarized politics. But this year the Sweden Democrats—a party with its roots in fascist and white nationalist ideology—became the second leading vote-getter and were embraced as part of a ruling coalition government by other conservative and centrist parties. Löfven says the Sweden Democrats, who were once politically radioactive, are now the tail wagging the dog of Sweden’s new government. And he says the rise of far-right parties is a trend all over Europe, most recently in Italy, but also in Poland and Hungary, where they have fanned fears of economic insecurity, cultural displacement, and crime to scapegoat immigrants and offer authoritarianism as a cure-all, which has enabled them to steal followers from more mainstream parties and take power. Löfven says Europe’s democratic multilateralists are now on the back foot, trying to sell democracy and tolerance in a social-media-driven communications culture that favors the simplistic slogans and memes favored by the right. In this tumultuous era in European politics, he says only time will tell whether the rapid pace of societal change will keep driving voters into the arms of extremist parties, or whether the unpopular Russian war on Ukraine being prosecuted by the Godfather of the continent’s strongmen, Vladimir Putin, will take some the shine off authoritarianism’s allure.