ABSTRACT
The chapter explores the way in which violent imaginaries of Sweden have been discursively constructed and used by populist radical right (PRR) parties in Europe. Just as the figure of the alien migrant, ‘conceptual Jew’ or Muslim can feature in racist imaginaries as a threatening Other (Bauman 1989, Esposito and Kalin 2011), I argue that violent imaginaries of Sweden have emerged in radical right anti-immigration discourses, practices and narrative strategies. Based on analysis of practices and narratives propagated by the UK Independence Party (Ukip), the Sweden Democrats (SD), the Norwegian Progress Party and the Hungarian Jobbik from 2015–2017, the chapter demonstrates how individual acts of violence are ‘transvaluated’ into violent imaginaries of migrants from Muslim-majority lands. What I term ‘the Swedish dystopia’ not only entails a message of alarm and warning. PRR parties use the trope of the Swedish dystopia in their call for action against the Muslim migrants and minorities.
