Popis: |
This article deals with the political conversion and ideological thought of the Swedish National Socialist Sven Olov Lindholm (1903–1998). Lindholm began his career as a fascist in the twenties, and became a member of Sweden’s main National Socialist party led by Birger Furugård, in the early thirties. Ideological divisions and a failed attempt to oust Furugård saw Lindholm found his own party in January 1933, the nsap (later renamed the sss). Previous research has often described this party as a left-wing Nazi alternative, but its ideological basis has never been thoroughly dissected. The present article uses a variety of archival collections, speeches, pamphlets, and newspaper articles to suggest a cluster of six interdependent core concepts in Sven Olov Lindholm’s ideological thought: anti-Semitism, anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-materialism, the idealization of the worker, and the definition of Nazi Germany as a worker’s state. Lindholm underwent a second political awakening in the sixties, redefining himself as a communist, and thus the article also examines the ideological remains thereafter. It is found that anti-materialism, linked to a broad antipathy to modernity, was central throughout his career. |