Sweden has had to grapple with some unwanted revelations of late. Chiefly pertaining to the “icky” acknowledgement that Stockholm has become one of the European epicenters of immigration, most notably for Africans, Muslims and Roma. Yet when one thinks of what Sweden looks like in their mind’s eye, the image of angelic blondes of both gender embodied by the likes of Swedish pop powerhouses ABBA and Ace of Base still remains. So just imagine how the more extremist Swedes must feel about the “abdication of their unsoiled throne” to the likes of “foreigners.” Amid those pop groups of a “pure” Swedish golden age was also, of course, Roxette. Arriving at the end of the 80s to rise to prominence at the outset of the 90s to the tune of “It Must Have Been Love” (which reached a wealth of American audiences on the soundtrack for Pretty Woman after its original release in ’87), the duo was comprised of its founder and vocalist Marie Fredriksson and guitarist Per Gessle. Singing of tragic and fateful romance with an upbeat lilt as ABBA once did, Fredriksson, with her Madonna circa True Blue look, was the sleek, innocent yet “edgy” addition to the pop oeuvre of the country that Sweden could get on board with. Naming themselves after the Dr. Feelgood song of the same name, Fredriksson ironically had stronger ties to her punk roots than the pop branches that would immortalize her in the nation.
It was on their second studio album, Look Sharp! (a title that sounds decidedly ripped off from Huey Lewis and the News), that Roxette continued to serve as an ABBA-esque representation of not only what the Swedes looked like but also what their “good” values were. Even if much of that “goodness” pertains only to their own kind, and certainly not to the Jews during WWII, many of whom were turned away at the border thanks to the Swedish government insisting that their passports be stamped with a “J” by the German government. Sweden, in fact, did everything it could to wash its hands of the Jews during the war, leaving the responsibility of guilt and action to their Scandinavian brethren, Denmark and Norway. When the war was over, they pretended as though no extreme rightist, Nazi-loving mentality was ever at play.
Yet thanks in large part to Per Engdahl (who shares a first name with one of Roxette’s members), many tenets of the Nazi “philosophy” were allowed to thrive, including the notion of “ethnopluralism”–a.k.a. the belief that different “cultures” can live among one another so long as it is separately (you know, kind of like how each ethnicity keeps to itself in different parts of New York despite touting being a melting pot). That way, no one’s “purity” is compromised by intermixing, better known as interracial fucking. It’s all part of a grand plan to “avoid extinction” (a line of reasoning that makes the plot of Midsommar all the more believable). On a side note, Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad was a big supporter and friend of Engdahl’s.
Thus was born the Sverigedemokraterna–or Swedish Democrats–accounting for the third largest political party in Sweden, and one that firmly believes in “ethnicity as a basis for nationhood.” Saving the best part of his anti-foreigner campaign for last, it was in 1979 that Engdahl unleashed the slogan “Keep Sweden Swedish” (with the appropriate abbreviation, BSS) onto the country, and it was never quite the same. For it would always serve as a fallback reason for “purists” (just what Nazis euphemistically tried to bill themselves as with their preference for an Aryan race) to discriminate against too many immigrants or refugees trickling into their once unbesmirched land. That the residual Nazi sympathizers residing in Sweden after WWII were largely members of the upper class meant a long-term perpetuation of an “us v. them but let’s pretend it’s all for the good of the nation” rhetoric.
As the rise of gängkriminalitet has caused an upsurge in use of grenade attacks against private civilians and police (with a total of 116 instances reported in a seven year period), older and more nationalistic Swedes accustomed to wholesome, unquestioning pop are looking to immigrants to place the blame. The ones who offered enough incentive for A$AP Rocky to play to their market before being jailed in one of the more bizarre legal cases in recent years. These are the Swedes wondering what the hell happened to just putting on a little bit of ABBA or Europe. Or Roxette. Alas, with the death of a key member of the second-highest selling band from the country, there seems, to those wishing desperately to Keep Sweden Swedish, an ill omen of the future ahead. But hey, come join the joyride.
