Sverigedemokraterna and 'ethnicity' in July 2026

Ludvig Aspling, migration-policy spokesperson for Sverigedemokraterna.

There's a reason for why I include a date in the title of this blog post: boundaries keep shifting. A word that was spoken in 2025 may not mean the same thing in 2026. This is noteworthy, simply because of how Sverigedemokraterna want to normalise the way they speak about 'others'.

Sverigedemokraterna is a Swedish political party that is built on racism, xenophobia, anger, and fascism. Less than a year ago, Ludvig Aspling, the migration-policy spokesperson for Sverigedemokraterna, said he wanted to recall permanent residence permits¹ for people who 'just stick around with no reason to be here' (my translation). This naturally goes against the entire point of permanent residence permits: if a residence permit is permanent, a person with such a permit has equal rights to stay in Sweden just as a Swedish citizen.

The year 2026 is election year in Sweden, Aspling now wants to push boundaries, to show what he's capable of, to become one of the big party boys. Still, this is all part of a Sverigedemokraterna strategy: normalise xenophobia.

We have far too many people who are not part of the ethnic Swedish population, and that has caused huge problems.²

This is something Aspling said a week ago. To speak of ethnicity is a problem.

Let's break down his latest statement.

Ethnicity is a specific quality or affiliation. Here's my translation of the start of a newspaper article³ where Simon Fuglsang, a writer, explains a problem with Aspling's statement:

For a while, it sounded different. Back then, "multiculturalism" was singled out as the threat to society, and the solution for immigrants who came here was called assimilation. Now, they are suddenly moving the goalposts. All of a sudden, you contribute to the problem simply by virtue of not being ethnically Swedish.

Let's examine what this actually means. Fundamentally, ethnicity is a social construct. Etymologically (from the Greek ethnos), it refers to a group that shares culture, history, language, and identity. The concept is therefore, sociologically speaking, fluid. The problem arises in the connotation and meaning SD attaches to the concept when they talk about "ethnic Swedes".

In their rhetoric, ethnicity is transformed in practice into a static, biological marker where ancestry and appearance become completely decisive. By drawing such a hard line that they would never classify, for example, a Romani person or a person with a distinctly Arab appearance as an "ethnic Swede"—regardless of how culturally rooted the person is in Sweden—they completely abandon the sociological definition. Instead, they use "ethnicity" as a more socially acceptable word for race. And this is exactly where Aspling's statement crosses the line into pure racism.

A few years back, a Sverigedemokraterna politician said that 'Jews and Sami are not Swedish'⁷, a statement that was echoed by Björn Söder, one of the biggest persons in Sverigedemokraterna.

Niels Paarup-Pedersen, Centerpartiet politician in Sweden, says 'My only surprise is that they for once openly speak this way'⁴, about Aspling's latest statement.

The statement reminds me of something that Richard Jomshof, one of the biggest persons in Sverigedemokraterna, said about Jews⁵ when asked by a newspaper reporter:

We live with Judaism as an ethnic minority in Sweden today, with synagogues, rabbis, children who go to Jewish schools. Is that a problem?

• No, I have never seen that as a problem because the Jewish group is so small.

A collage of screenshots of what's been said in a pro-Jomshof Facebook group.

Nothing is new about Aspling's statement. Sverigedemokraterna have since long tried to push the language barriers, to use 'islamist' instead of 'muslim' to get away to islamophobia. On Facebook, there's a group to support Jomshof. Around twenty Sverigedemokraterna politicians are members of the group. The group is filled with hate and death threats, as seen in the image above. Some of what's written in the image:

• Only by means of war can Europe be saved
• She is dangerous and disgusting imagine putting a bullet in the disgusting creature, look at her eyes
• When muslims increase in numbers should culling be introduced to limit the numbers
• [Put a] bounty on these bastards
• Deport the vermin

Standard xenophobic stuff, kept alive and well on Facebook. The twenty Sverigedemokraterna politicans that are members of said group do nothing to stop any of what goes on.

This is not strange. Any network that's built on hate and complaints instead of love and care can quickly grow this infected. I've written about what Sverigedemokraterna do nowadays many times before⁶.

What's important is that we fight against these racistic, xenophobic, and utterly ludicrous statements whenever they pop up. I know, it's a game of whac-a-mole, but we must do it; otherwise, these sick ideas grow and fester. Why not look at what happened in Nazi Germany? Sverigedemokraterna have, since their very start, looked at Nazi Germany for ideas and solutions.

All the people have all the power. We must use that power come election day in September 2026.