Svenskhet som politisk mobilisering

Sammanfattning: Social identity is a well established concept in social psychology, and nationality as social identity has been theorised to function as a powerful tool for political mobilisation in democratic elections. With this in mind, the purpose of this text is to analyse how the Swedish far-right political party the Sweden Democrats constructs the social identity Swede. To this end, a discourse analysis of their political platform from 2011 was conducted. The material was divided into three principal themes, which were analysed separately and in interaction with each other, with a specific focus on cultural racism and islamophobia. The platform was found to construct Swedishness as intrinsically liberal- democratic, and to construct Islam as incompatible with Swedish culture, with the implication that Islam is anti-democratic and anti-liberal. This reflects one of the main themes of contemporary islamophobia. The platform also constructs nationality as a fixed identity, which combined with distinct cultural attributes is an expression of cultural racism.