So here's the deal. There's a concept that needs to be understand to kind of wrap your mind around this, and it's controversial (but scientifically sound and should not be questioned as though it is a mere "opinion"). The concept is that of "invisible whiteness." This means that being white is invisible and therefore goes unnamed. "I saw this black guy at the store today, who was..." That same sentence would be "I saw this guy..." if that guy was white.
OK. Now we need to remember that much of what we think of as old fashioned race biology comes from the halls of Swedish academia. This is one of the reasons that the "Swedish type" is on top, even in American eugenics work and stuff. It should be noted that this was partially because of the fact that Sweden wanted to define themselves against "the Norwegian race," actually. This is kind of a funny little fact.
In any case, Swedish neutrality during WWII—while an entirely reasonably defensible position given what happened to Norway and the strength of Germany—means that Swedes never made the "right" choice. And actually, according to a Jewish friend of my girlfriend, Jews were treated quite poorly in Sweden during that period and among the overclass there was a lot of pro-German attitudes (in the Church for example, which I read an entire dissertation about at one point). And the building up of the great state in Sweden was largely done at the behest of the nationalistic conception of the "people's home" (
Folkhemmet). Post-WWII, however, the nationalism fell into the background (towards the 60s and 70s).
All of that said, Sweden has largely been a very openly anti-racist society in a lot of ways. Hell, they even have "colorblind" laws that are supposed to encourage people to not think about race, such as that the state can't ask for ethnic information. Sweden is one of the most conscientious about UN regulations and so forth, there has been a strong desire to help people in other countries, to allow those looking for asylum to come to Sweden and so forth. But, a bit like how an alcoholic who quits drinking but never gets help is still an alcoholic, Sweden still has never really overcome these old concepts of "race" and "nation" and the fact that in their history these things have been connected. That means that uncomfortable things happen when Swedes talk about race.
See, according to people in the city there
is no racism in Sweden. There is only racism among people who live "in the country" and certainly no self-respecting Stockholmare could be a
racist. But what they don't understand is the invisible privilege that comes with being a white Swede. Immigrants: and let's be clear, by immigrants I mean brown ones from Africa or the Middle-East, have tons of problems in Sweden. They have trouble getting jobs. They have trouble assimilating. White women think that men of African or Middle-Eastern descent are dangerous and don't go out with them. Interethnic groups are still pretty rare. And it doesn't matter how many generations you've been in Sweden, if you're brown and have the name Rahim (hell, even if you have the name Andreas), you're going to be asked "where you're from." Because being Swedish is being white.
In fact, I'd argue that this is largely the case in ALL European and "white majority" countries. You don't "become Swedish" when you become a citizen. Ask any Swede. Being Swedish is not civic like being an American is (though, let's be clear, the USA is still a racist, white majority country where white people have invisible privilege). Being Swedish is about being "culturally" Swedish, and how do you do that? You get that by being born in Swedish. Oh, and being white.
I think that this knowledge and the underlying racism in Swedish society are what makes it easy for Swedish racists to grab the Swedish flag and to look back to "folkhemmet", which, mind you is
exactly what the racist party (
Sverigedemokrater) says. They're just not following the secret societal playbook: i.e., don't talk about it. But so long as Swedes have a definition of Swedish which is inborn and means that you celebrate midsommar and can sing Evert Taube songs and being "ethnically Swedish" is being white, then you have a recipe for nationalists to take the societal subtext and turn it into something very uncomfortable for everyone around them.
And
THAT is the reason that I think that metal in Swedish, which sings about liking Sweden or things about Sweden, makes everyone uncomfortable. And so to show that they are
definitely NOT RACIST they pan it.
Anyway, that's how I see it. Much of what I said there is founded in literature that I can give citations for. I assume that many people will feel uncomfortable with the topic and not really want to talk about it. I suspect others will disagree with what I have to say about the issue. And I think that this is a difficult issue. I don't want to come off as some sort of "know-it-all" or some shit, that's not my goal. This is simply my working hypothesis (founded on the sociological literature) for why Swedes interact with these issues in the way that they do. The most important thing to remember when thinking about this is that racism can be
interpersonal, but often the most important racism is
structural. And structural racism is the racism that gets ignored the most in Sweden, while everyone fauns over what a good, non-racist society we have while the suburbs get all the more segregated, schools become all the more segregated and a class of brown immigrants and children of immigrants become more and more marginalized from birth.
TL;DR: I think Swedes feel uncomfortable with metal in Swedish because they think it's nationalistic, regardless of whether it is or not. And they have good reason to be uncomfortable with nationalism because such strains exist in Swedish culture.