Kavanaugh, the Court, and the Republicans' Assault on Democracy

Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination and potential appointment has been a long time in coming. As the Republican Party today ignores or dismisses the testimony of a woman who has alleged sexual assault against a Supreme Court nominee--someone who is about to be given lifetime power over the lives, liberties, and wellbeing of all women in the U.S.--we are seeing the ongoing crescendo of processes set in motion ten years ago, and with roots far further back.

In the early years of the Obama administration, the Republican Party came to realize that obstruction or even destruction of the normal processes of governance was not merely a way to inhibit the ability of the Obama administration to pursue its policy ends.  The method simultaneously served other purposes.  Serial, indiscriminate, destructive obstruction was also designed to diminish Americans' faith in the processes of democracy and the legitimacy of institutions of government and governance.

And finally, obstruction represented a taunt, and an effort to bait Democrats to--in comparatively minor but still significant ways--begin their own abandonment of certain processes and procedures designed to preserve democratic norms over the long-term even when they proved barriers to short-term political gains. In this game—toxic for our institutions and discourse—the left cannot win and should not wish to win. An ideology premised on protecting and empowering the unprotected and disempowered majority relies on the power of construction, which requires legitimacy and process, rather than that the power of destruction, which works as well if not better for the right-wing’s project of dismantling democratic safeguards, regulations, and institutions.

This was a logical strategic move from a party which, by 2009, had in only one of the past five elections won support from a majority or plurality of voters. Today, that record is one in seven, that one triumph facilitated by a naked appeal to patriotism in the aftermath of an illegal, immoral, and ill-advised war of aggression designed to scare the country into an embrace of neoconservative terror. Our constitution allows for a minority of voters to claim triumph in national elections, but the continuation of this undemocratic and dangerous feature should be taken not as an indulgence, but as the power of what Paine described as the “vanity of governing from beyond the grave,…the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.”  In addition to its injustice, the framework is calculated in the twenty-first century to generate cynicism and mistrust.

The Republican Party’s embrace of this strategy was accompanied by a shutting down of its other evolutionary pathways and a movement if not a centrally-driven decision to morph into a nakedly ethnic nationalist party.

Diminishing faith in democracy and institutions initially created a deadlock.  That deadlock, in the context of the recession, put the United States on autopilot toward austerity, making the state powerless in ways that reaffirmed people's mistrust.  The absence of regulation is corruption and abuse.  The absence of measures to protect wellbeing is a vacuum entered by powerful economic and social predators. This, combined with an unimaginative, historically illiterate, and cowardly approach by Democrats between 2009 and 2016, continued the cycle of mistrust and disenchantment. Campaigns premised on transformation of an unjust political economy demonstrated not even remote interest in anything more than technocratic tinkering, and subsequent efforts to displace blame onto hostile Republicans ignore the genuine commitment to a faltering liberal political economy by Obama-era Democrats.

Since 2016, the strategy of deliberately diminishing faith in democracy and institutions has been used to make the case for mounting authoritarianism and corporatism, a two-pronged assault on civil and political rights on the one hand--targeting the rights of ethno-religious minorities and women--and on social and economic rights on the other. The deliberate attempts to further engineer both political and economic inequality creates conditions of great instability and anger, and combined with diminished faith, makes more likely the routine deployment of violence as a legitimized mode of politics, whether by the state against its critics, or by ethno-nationalist groups against those they are instructed to see as the wrongful beneficiaries of democratic forms of governance, encouraging those nationalists' turn to authoritarianism.

Thus far, many of these efforts to destroy faith in institutions have focused on the executive and legislative bodies.  However, Republicans' decision to obstruct Merrick Garland's nomination in 2016, and their decision today to back the nomination of an accused abuser as the best possible candidate for a position of extraordinary power, demonstrate their intent to diminish the legitimacy of the court.  Should Kavanaugh's appointment prove successful, Republicans will not just have secured the ability to shape the contours of American live for decades to come, relying on the rulings of a confirmed authoritarian-sympathizer and accused predator.  They will also call the legitimacy of that court into question in ways that will enable the rejection of law should it intervene on behalf of democracy, and which will muddy the waters around the sites of legitimate power in the United States.

I certainly don't believe that in 2009 Republican legislators set out with the express intention of creating the world that is now emerging from a decade of their guerrilla campaign against government.  But as an institution, the Republican Party is motivated by a particularly cynical and baleful version of the short-term, zero-sum approach to power that afflicts American political parties and political discourse more broadly.  Their temptations lurked in the desire to engage in willing association with movements that deal simultaneously in legislative maneuvers and party conventions, but also white-cloaked cross-burnings and a return to what Gilbert Allardyce described as "years of marching columns, flags, and torchlight, a season when grown men indulged themselves in pagan pageantry and Roman salutes," an era that its survivors hoped would appear to the future as a "nightmare," but which its jack-booted legions believed was a “vision of the world that was to come.”

The essence of this broad strategy is to create a climate of mistrust, fear, uncertainty, and anger.  In such an environment, when democracy is weakened in its ability to speak for people who do not possess power in the form of wealth and privilege--the majority--the outcome is a political wilderness, where desolation is taken for peace, might is read as making right, and the strong are permitted to prey on the weak. 

Good Sweden, Bad Sweden

As I wandered through Arlanda airport waiting from my flight to California from Stockholm in early July, I buckled to temptation and took a pass through the airport bookshop. A caution-tape yellow and black book caught my eye, and the title made me look twice: Good Sweden, Bad Sweden it blared.

Paul Rapacioli is the founder of The Local, an online newspaper covering Swedish news, culture, and lifestyle. What sets it off from other papers is that it’s in English, perfect for someone like me who is keen to follow events in Sweden, but whose Swedish is fit for little more than ordering tea (a risky business, Swedes put odd things in their tea), explaining that I don’t speak Swedish, or taking and clarifying orders from a three- and six-year-old about whatever game they’re indulging me in.

In Good Sweden, Bad Sweden, Rapacioli sets out to explore why Sweden and its social democracy assume outsized significance in the world today, situating the discussion against changes in media, politics, and Sweden itself. The book is timely on the eve of the country’s September 9 election.

Much conventional wisdom holds that elections in Sweden are less seismic in character than some across the Atlantic, in part thanks to a comparative consensus governing the parameters of political economy and the bounds of civility. However, this election seems different both inasmuch as it is drawing greater than usual attention elsewhere in the world, and in that there are some disturbing potential outcomes.

Ethnic nationalists are in power--the U.S., Hungary, Poland, Norway, Austria--or prominence--France, Britain, Germany--across the west. Sweden’s national variant, the Swedish Democrats, are now snapping at the electoral heels of not just the Moderate Party which comprises the centerpiece of Sweden’s right-wing “Alliance” grouping, but also the Social Democratic Party. Recent polls have given the Social Democrats a slight edge, and seen the Moderates pull ahead of the Swedish Democrats, but the gap separating the first and third polling parties remains small.

Many Americans look to the social democratic parties of Europe--whether in hope or fear--for alternative models to our country’s lengthy history of liberalism, and the current administration’s tilt toward fascism. The Labour Party consolidated Britain’s welfare state in the most dramatic burst of activity during the late-1940s. French and Spanish socialist movements as well as parties claim power regularly, as well as the streets. But few parties of the left in Europe have had the success of Sweden’s Social Democrats.

The Social Democrats have been the party of government for 78 of the last one hundred years, and the largest party in every election for 104 years. They have dipped only once below a 30% result in one hundred years, and that was in 1920. During their heyday, they averaged around 45% in parliament, and twice topped 50%.

If those percentages don’t sound remarkable in countries that have seen parties secure “landslide” victories, it must be borne in mind that all of these elections have occurred in system of proportional representation. In 1964, for example, when it secured 47.3% of the vote, the Social Democrats were competing against five other parties, rather than in a Republicans vs Democrats scenario. Their 45.3% in 1994 pit them against six other parties. To Americans who argue that proportional representation--which empowers more than two parties and offers a finer grain of representation--leads to chaos, the Social Democrats’ electoral success and the political hegemony the party exerted in and out of government is a stunning riposte.

It is possible to overstate the Social Democrats’ power. While they have eschewed a South Africa ANC-style alliance with communists, the communist (now Left) party delivered supply and confidence votes for coalitions headed by the social democrats, which at other points included the Environment and Agrarian (now the liberal Centre) parties. And variable results between a bicameral parliament before the 1970s meant that some Social Democrat governments teetered on a knife-edge.

One of the party’s successes across its history was its ability to cast itself as a neutral arbiter between the Trade Union Confederation (LO) and the employers’ associations, a model which generated noteworthy stability, predictability, and captured American Marquis Childs’ attention, leading to the publication of Sweden: The Middle Way, in 1936. Childs not only began the process of popularizing the Swedish model abroad, but also offered an early argument for social democracy as a middle road between liberalism and communism, preserving the former’s respect for civil and political liberties with the latter’s defense of social and economic rights. The brand Childs helped to launch was since been shorn up by the Social Democrats’ electoral success, notable names like Volvo and IKEA, and lately the export of a lifestyle brand which competes with Nordic noir for global attention.

But, depending on how you look at it, the Social Democrats’ success has bred hubris; or their sometimes comparatively narrow grip on formal political power has been dramatically eroded by de-industrialization, global political events beyond their control, and the kind of changes in media that Rapacioli outlines in Good Sweden, Bad Sweden. The Social Democrats’ regularly- and convincingly-reconstituted model of modernity has failed to keep apace with events in the world, and amidst converging political cultures that demand drama and are susceptible to manipulation, the absence of leadership capable of forcefully restating the case for social democracy in the contemporary world and in relation to long-term historical trajectories, has put the party, its cause, and the society it seeks to protect in peril.

Part of the challenge comes from the Alliance, a grouping of four liberal and conservative parties. These range from the Centre Party, once a governing ally of the Social Democrats, and now claiming a liberal mantle, to the Moderate Party, which served as the inspiration for the 2010 reinvigoration of Britain’s Conservative Party, which mixed talk of compassion with brutal austerity. Sweden’s Moderates maintain a smiling, technocratic face. Their program might be described as the “Americanization” of Sweden’s social and welfare system. They would disclaim any comparison, which would sell poorly in a country that looks warily across the Atlantic at the profiteering, unequal, callous United States, and with some astonishment at Americans who beat their chests and bay at the moon about the splendor of their country even as they settle for a decrepit education system, a costly and debt-inducing healthcare system, and an astonishingly expensive public higher education system, never mind the absence of real vacation time and parental leave.

But the Moderates’ program for gradual privatization, reduction of tax obligations, intended or otherwise, will lead that way over time. Even partial privatization creates new interests, new incentives, and new momentum, and questions the basic logic of universalism underpinning Sweden’s social democracy, which distinguishes it from many of Europe’s other nominally social democratic states. And a steady if slow reduction of tax obligations weaken a safety net that depends on a broad and deep commitment to its maintenance.

The kind of robust welfare state that Swedes enjoy has taken decades, considerable political capital, and a great deal of care to build, but as has been demonstrated elsewhere in the world, such elaborate systems can be undone much more rapidly, and collapse like a Jenga game if turned over to wreckers, deliberate or otherwise.

The other challenge to the left comes from the Swedish Democrats, an ethnic nationalist party with fascist roots and sensibilities. Catapulted to prominence in part by the Social Democrats initial decision to open the country’s doors to refugees in late-2015, the Swedish Democrats have waged a racist campaign, officially and unofficially offering voters a mash-up of all the far-right’s favorite bogeys: Muslims, Roma, Jews, and continental Europeans. With each new anti-Muslim or anti-Semitic utterance that slips a Swedish Democrat official’s lips, the party insists that it isn’t actually racist, and that the individual in question was just a bad apple. But the whole barrel has clearly been afflicted by the party’s wholehearted return to ethnic nationalism, the variant of nationalism responsible for most of the twentieth century’s calamities and horrors.

The Swedish Democrats have been celebrated by American fascist Steve Bannon, and the party has bound itself to Donald Trump’s own stance on immigration, and drawn dismay from Israeli newspapers. They have also committed themselves to dismantling the flawed but essential project of European unity. Trump gave voice to their views when in Britain earlier this year he discussed how “allowing immigration to take place in Europe is a shame,” because migrants “changed the fabric of Europe,” meaning that Europeans were “losing their culture.” This full-volume tin dog whistle, echoed by Jimmie Akesson, Sweden’s heartless Tin Man, defines European culture initially in terms of values. Those values are then linked to race by the argument that democracy, the welfare state Akesson pledges to whiten, and political culture are incompatible with non-Europeans or Islam.

In some regards, the Swedish Democrats have already won. Their surge in the polls after fears about the repercussions of admitting large numbers of migrants reached Sweden’s voters forced the Social Democrats into dramatic retreat, and the left-wing party’s leadership eschews most of its earlier humanitarian commitments.

Thus far, Swedish conservative parties have shown far greater restraint than some counterparts in refusing to deal with ethnic nationalists. Had the Alliance permitted itself to engage with the ethnic nationalists, they could now be in government. They have pledged that they will maintain this opposition to cooperation after this next election as well, although some dissembling about this helped to precipitate a recent change in Moderate Party leadership. But if current polls indicate where the post-election chips will fall, the temptation to break the pledge will be great. With some variation, polling suggests that the left and right blocs will each secure around 40% of parliamentary seats, with roughly 20% accruing to the ethnic nationalists.

This likely means another minority government (the Social Democrats and Greens currently run one). A government by either right or left that requires budgetary support from the other constrains the ability of the bloc in question to pursue its more substantive political economic commitments, and will open Sweden’s political system to further wild charges from the Swedish Democrats about a conspiracy to silence them. Like the far-right in the United States, they rail against “political correctness,” understood in most contexts to be nothing more sinister than an effort to eschew the racism and bigotry that defined earlier political discourse.

Serious questions about education and healthcare also loom large in the election. But as Rapacioli discovered, the entanglement of crime and immigration is coming to dominate Swedish discourse in part because it reenters the country after being energized, and in some cases fabricated outright, by media elsewhere. Until the last couple of days, when serious global media outlets turned their attention to the coming election, virtually all of the hits from entering “Sweden” and “election” into a google news search came from FOX, Breitbart, the Daily Telegraph, RT, the Daily Express, and a few other right-wing British tabloids and Russian-sponsored outlets. Headlines portrayed a picture of a country under siege, in flames, etc. Rapacioli does a good job of demonstrating the processes whereby right-wing media come to and cultivate these stories, and their impacts on Swedes’ perceptions of their own media and politics.

With considerable linguistic assistance, I took a Dagens Nyheter political quiz and, unsurprisingly, found my views most closely associated with the Left Party, followed by the Greens and Social Democrats, then a lengthy gap before the Center, and then a long plummet to the Christian Democrats, Liberals, Moderates, and Swedish Democrats.

But the question beyond these individual parties is one that voters around the world face when they contemplate voting. How should the world’s national communities create bases of identity, belonging, and community? Across the past two hundred years, in large measure, the answers offered have dealt with two forms of nationalism.

The first, ethno-linguistic nationalism, suggests that language and ethnicity should be the basis for belonging in nations. Ethnic nationalism is by definition exclusive, as it goes to pains to draw lines around the “pure” national community, and victimize those regarded as second-tier citizens, interlopers, or subversives, each of these characterizations offered on the basis of language and ethnicity. It is this form of nationalism--its torch carried around the world today by Donald Trump in the U.S., Narendra Modi in India, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Jimmie Akesson in Sweden, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and too many others elsewhere--which has led to or supported yellow stars, internment camps, segregation, and colonialism.

The other form of nationalism is civic nationalism, wherein belonging is defined by shared access to law, institutions, and the fruits of collective investment. Some countries like the U.S. have juggled the two versions at some points, or restricted themselves to a narrow--and often disingenuous--form of civic nationalism, focusing on law and a handful of public institutions. While better than openly ethnic nationalist states, this model has the obvious weakness of generating social and economic inequities which leave populations highly vulnerable to appeals by ethnic nationalists.

Sweden, and some other countries around the world, have taken this model further, creating a welfare state with universal benefits that give greater meaning to belonging, and expanding the number of institutions designed to serve a state’s people. Here, Swedishness is defined not by being an ethnic Swede, but by sharing access to the welfare state in its entirety. It is this model that is being challenged--deliberately by Sweden’s far right, and more subtly by its Alliance grouping. It is my fear that too many Swedes, like too many Americans, will use the election to give a black eye to some representative of “conventional wisdom,” be that the Social Democrats, the Alliance, or any of those that the Swedish Democrats have dubbed parties to a dastardly conspiracy of tolerance and decency. Americans in electing Trump and Britons in backing Brexit have realized that “blowing up the system” to make a statement comes with dramatic and uncertain costs and very real casualties.

And so hopefully as Swedes participate in their election, they will consider not just the immediate repercussions of a vote for their pocketbook or for parties they might wish to discipline, but will look at this election in its larger global and national historical context.




Some reading material on Swedish history/politics


Brandal, Nik, et al. The Nordic Model of Social Democracy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Hilson, Mary. The Nordic Model: Scandinavia Since 1945. London: Reaktion Books, 2008.

Hinde, Dominic. A Utopia Like Any Other: Inside the Swedish Model. Edinburgh: Luath Press Limited, 2016.

Kautto, Mikko, et al, eds. Nordic Social Policy: Changing Welfare States. New York: Routledge, 1999.

Kent, Neil. A Concise History of Sweden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Misgeld, Klaus, et al, eds. Creating Social Democracy: A Century of the Social Democratic Labour Party in Sweden. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988.

Partanen, Anu. The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life. New York: Harper, 2016.

Rapacioli, Paul. Good Sweden, Bad Sweden: the use and abuse of Swedish values in a Post-Truth world. Stockholm: Volante, 2018.

Ruin, Olof. Tage Erlander: Serving the Welfare State, 1946-1969. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990.

Sejersted, Francis. The Age of Social Democracy: Norway and Sweden in the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

Tragardh, Lars, ed. State and Civil Society in Northern Europe: The Swedish Model Reconsidered. New York: Berghahn Books, 2007.