'Helg… seger!” shouts Rebecka Fallenkvist, raising one arm in a seeming salute to the camera. It is the evening of Sunday 11 September, and the 26-year-old politician from the far-right Sweden Democrats is being interviewed, champagne glass in hand. Her party had just become the second-largest in parliament, gaining more than 20% of the votes.
A few days later the Social Democratic prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, resigned, conceding defeat to, a “weekend victory” – a hitherto unknown concept in the Swedish language. But the way she pronounced her words made them sound uncannily similar to . That is the Swedish version of Sieg Heil, the Nazi salute. (The party’s press secretary said Fallenkvist was drunk and “it came out wrong”.)
