“En ensam galning” – med folkligt stöd och utstuderad ideologi: Om högerpopulismens påverkan på rasistiskt våld

Sammanfattning: In recent years a trend of alt-right extremism has taken place globally. While radical right-wing populism (RRP) is also on the rise, events like the Capitol attack during the presidency of Donald J. Trump raise questions about how politics might affect the use of extremist violence. Focusing on racist hate crimes, this paper considers whether radical right-wing populism affects the degree of racial violence in society. I develop a theoretical pyramid visualizing how the normalization of political sympathies might drive radicalization, theorizing that legitimation is the causal mechanism. With a mixed methods design this study uses a regression analysis combined with three qualitative case studies. Regressions on national level and on the municipalities of Malmö and Göteborg show statistically significant relationships between growing support for the Swedish Democrats (SD), a radical right-wing populist party, and the number of racist hate crimes. Stockholm, however, goes against the trend. The analysis of three well known perpetrators, who committed racially motivated murders in Sweden, primarily showed that they perceived growing support for RRP-parties as legitimizing. A predominant part of the result of this study therefore supports the hypothesis stating that growing support for RRP-parties will increase the risk of more racist violence.