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Cultural heritage is increasingly used as a political force to achieve societal goals. This is specifically noticeable in the rhetoric of right-wing nationalist parties in Europe. Cultural heritage and 'politics of the past' have become key tools in explicit nationalist agendas and right-wing politicians are using cultural heritage to attract disenchanted voters. But how is cultural heritage constructed through these processes? The aim of this paper is to explore the constructions and uses of cultural heritage within the Swedish nationalist party the Sweden Democrats (SD). With non-government bills formulated by the Sweden Democrats as a point of departure, the paper illustrates how an ideological fantasy is reproduced, which is based on establishing a direct connection between the party's seemingly non-ideological ideology and ideas about an authentic Swedish cultural heritage. The latter reflects a 'return' to neorigorism, which refers to the belief in cultural heritage as an objective, given, and non-negotiable, phenomenon.

Organized rural development in Sweden can be described at two levels; a local level with a large number of local actors organized in a so-called village-action movement, and a national level where political parties and the government present different suggestions on how to develop rural areas. However, characteristic for Sweden is also a close relationship between these two levels and a bottom-up perspective encouraging local initiatives, which is exemplified by All Sweden Shall Live (ASSL); a general rural development organization characterized by both policy-making ambitions and support of local development projects. A central but also ambiguous concept in the organization ASSL's campaigns and ideology is 'the local,' and with discourse theory, as a point of departure, this case-study examines how different meanings of 'the local' are used to advocate investments in local perspectives and local measures. Special attention is directed towards how meanings of 'the local' form a 'fantasy,' an emotional and ideological worldview, and how this worldview is of importance in the organization's self-legitimization and for its potential as an agent of political mobilization. While ASSL is a Swedish organization, the subject is of general relevance because ideological investments in both 'the local' and 'the regional' are common, for example, in processes of relocalization—local responses to globalization—and in arguments about the importance of localities and regions in a global economy. Furthermore, the paper illustrates how such investments can have unexpected effects such as the transfer of responsibility for rural development from the government to local actors.

The empirical material of this article consists of interviews with politicians in Västerbotten, an area in the north of Sweden. The aim of the article is to identify and analyse how these politicians relate to digital information technology and new media. What democratic opportunities and risks of information technology and new media are reflected in interviews with the politicians? What does this technology and these media mean for politicians' political strategies and for their identity production as professional politicians? We argue that the interview data reflect two partly contradictory political identities: on the one side a progressive and modern political identity, and on the other a 'real' and 'authentic' political identity. However, both identities are consistent with a digital discourse and are populist due to their pro-technological character.

This article analyses the coverage of the #MeToo movement in Swedish news media. The aim of the study was to explore how men and masculinity were represented. The results showed that masculinity was associated with violence, harassment, and a culture of abuse, as well as with progressive ideas of a "new man" that is both strong and gentle at the same time. The article discusses how the represented masculinities might be problematic in relation to the #MeToo movement's ambition to reform a sexist society because of the stereotypical and gender-dualistic tendencies that permeate the material and the tendencies to individualize the represented assaults and perpetrators.

How do politicians make sense of situations in which they may find themselves caught up in between opposing loyalties, for example, party loyalty on the one hand and loyalty to neighbours and friends or ideological convictions on the other? Based on interviews about a rural occupation in protest of a political decision in a small community in Northern Sweden, this paper explores the approaches of local politicians to the protest and to the people involved in it. The results show how discourses of geographic space and party-political loyalty structured the negotiated responsibility for the situation, affected the politicians' descriptions of the occupation as such, and made support for the protest become more or less difficult.

This article analyses the coverage of the #MeToo movement in Swedish news media. The aim of the study was to explore how men and masculinity were represented. The results showed that masculinity was associated with violence, harassment, and a culture of abuse, as well as with progressive ideas of a "new man" that is both strong and gentle at the same time. The article discusses how the represented masculinities might be problematic in relation to the #MeToo movement's ambition to reform a sexist society because of the stereotypical and gender-dualistic tendencies that permeate the material and the tendencies to individualize the represented assaults and perpetrators.

AbstractSwedish media regularly indicate that people's confidence in politicians is low. This distrust in or discontent with politicians is often related to rural politics. This paper focuses on the populist tendencies in the representations of politicians in the Swedish rural press during the parliamentary election year of 2014. A discourse analysis of the press material illustrates three closely related and critical themes; politicians are regarded as being urban centred, as doing anything for power, and as acting in an autocratic manner and misusing their power. The discourse analysis also reveals how the critical press material is linked to a moral geography relating space to a specific moral order. Drawing on theories on rural populism, the article shows how the media's references to a rural‐based victimhood, and to an alleged inequality between urbanity and rurality, can morally legitimate and bluntly express their contempt for 'scandalous' politicians, and they can present their critique as rational and justified.