Youth’s attitudes towards extreme right-wing organisations : A study on social sustainability within the Swedish democracy

This case study aims to explore the social sustainability in a middle-sized city with extreme-right wing presence. The chosen middle-sized city had the Nordic Resistance Movement, an extreme and violent organisation with Nazi-ideology, in the local government election period 2014-2018. Even though the Nordic Resistance Movement is not in the local government, currently they still have social influence in the city. Schools in the middle-sized city have been under extra pressure due to propaganda on school areas and recruitment efforts. The Swedish government specifically target youth in relation to extremism because youth and children are considered a risk group for all forms of extremism. A selected group of youth, forty in total, in the middle-sized city answered an attitude survey, and four of them answered semi-structured interviews to give a deeper understanding of the survey answers. The results from the survey and interviews show that the youth had strong opinions on the presence of the Nordic Resistance Movement in their hometown. A majority of the youth perceived that Nordic Resistance Movement was present and made contact attempts in town, on social media and with graffiti and pamphlets. Furthermore, the youth responded that they wanted harder actions towards extreme-right wing organisations from the school, media, police and the justice system. Finally, the youth answered that adults around them could be both with and against the Nordic Resistance Movement, the same with the respondents themselves, indicating a polarised civil society. As for the future, the youth answered that they believe that the Nordic Resistance Movement will increase in the future, and they wanted harder regulations from the government to hinder an increase of the Nordic Resistance Movement. The social sustainability in the middle-sized city is not lost according to the youths, it can be sustainable with the help of governmental support