An anti-fascist minority? Swedish-speaking Finnish responses to fascism

This chapter explores responses to fascism by the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, which made up approximately ten per cent of Finland’s population in the interwar period. It explains the question of Swedish-speaking Finnish responses to fascism and shown that the diversity in anti-fascist positions highlighted in international research is also evident in interwar Finland. An important argument that the Social Democratic Party made under the leadership of Wiik was to show how the Swedish and the Scandinavian Social Democrats were worried by the rise of fascism in Finland. The ethnonationalist turn of Finnish fascism was in line with the argument of Wiik and the Swedish-speaking Social Democrats that international capitalism threated the nations of Europe through its influence over fascist and Nazi movements, whereas social democracy could further the development of all nations. In an international comparison, the small stories and historical exceptions shed new light on the history of anti-fascism and challenge old grand narratives.