Feebeminded, demented & antisocial.

In 1997 the journalist and author Maciej Zaremba published an article in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. The article drew associations between racial biology, eugenics and the Swedish social democratic governance. Zaremba’s article presented records from a period of forty years when over 60 000 people of the Swedish population were sterilized. The records showed that many of them were executed under questionable circumstances. Zaremba woke a debate within the Swedish mass media with the intended goal to foil the general view of the Swedish state of welfare. In this study the debate that led to the laws of sterilization will be investigated to provide answers if the motives behind the law were based on eugenic motives. Furthermore, any disagreements between the different parties in the parliament are analyzed. Previous published research in the field evolves around the origin and the consequences of the Swedish sterilization laws however, the analysis of the argumentation that led to the creation of the regulations seems to be missing. The empirical data is gathered through qualitative research of parliament protocols and newspapers followed by an analysis based on Foucaults concept of bio power. The model for a power analysis by Axelsson and Qvarsebos have been used to concretize the concept of bio power. The analysis shows that the arguments were often rooted in eugenic thoughts and beliefs. The overall purpose was to improve the human race through the fabrication of sterilizations