Pop, Populism, and Pandemic: The Swedish Soundtrack of Radicalization

Populism, Pandemic, and Music

Scholars note that populism, as a political style, does not align with traditional conceptualizations of the left or right. Populist modes of expression do not necessarily have a particular political color; they can connect formerly separate groups. For Ernesto Laclau, populism is based on the discursive construction of a binary distinction between a large group comprising “ordinary folks” and a small adversary group portrayed as “the elite,” which acts against the larger group’s interests. The imagined antagonistic relationship entailed in this binary pits “we the people” against “them, the establishment.”⁹ Other scholarship on populism echoes this dualism. Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, for example, describe populism as a “thin ideology,” constructing morally charged camps of “the good people” and “the corrupt elites.”¹⁰ In his seminal book, Benjamin Moffitt presents populism as performative. A “political style” comprising an appeal to “the people” to oppose “the elites,” populism supports itself by affirming ordinary people’s “bad manners” and constructing a “sense of crisis.”¹¹ Adding to these perspectives, Pierre Ostiguy construes populism as “the flaunting of the low.” By exhibiting behavior perceived as transgressive, populism breaks with what normative cultural discourses define as good taste.¹² On the basis of these accounts, we understand expressions in Swedish pop music as populist when they performatively break with “good taste” and/or discursively pit a constructed “us” (“the people”) against a “them” (“the establishment,” “the elite,” or “well-behaved society.”)

As a performative discourse rather than a clear political alignment, populism comes in different varieties. The case studies described in this article, however, are consonant with the recent rise of Swedish right-wing populism. As Benjamin de Cleen has described it, whereas populism operates on a vertical axis (with elites at the top, “the ordinary people” at the bottom), nationalism divides society into “insiders” and “outsiders.”¹³ We therefore distinguish populism from nationalism on the basis of how the imagined collective (“we”) and their core antagonists (“them”) are conceptualized, keeping in mind that populism and nationalism can also coexist—as in some of the presented cases.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the anthropologist Gideon Lasco and sociologist Nicole Curato had explored and defined the flavor of populism that would emerge in the context of public health emergencies. Calling it “medical populism” they distinguish a specific populist political style based on politicizing complex public health issues, presented as both uncomplicated and urgent. Such populist narratives often emerge in response to medical emergencies—Lasco and Curato cite Trump’s tweets about Ebola. In defining medical populism, they update Moffitt’s three characteristics of populist political style: an appeal to “the people” against “the elites,” the evocation of “bad manners,” and the construction of a “sense of crisis.” They advance three claims. First, medical populism’s construction of “elites” often includes not only state actors but also medical experts (“big pharma” being a common trope). Second, spectacularized performances of health crises tap into people’s fear of death and suffering, making medical populism particularly effective at arguing for swift and decisive action. Third, medical populists’ “bad manners” can take the form of “low style” performances, but are more commonly expressed in the simplification of discourse, denial of expert knowledge, and questioning of medical conventions.¹⁴ Medical populism’s natural “other,” Lasco and Curato claim, is to be found in technocratic responses to health crises and the moral panics associated with them—responses that prioritize expert involvement, with the goal of soothing public anxieties and ending the crisis.¹⁵

During COVID-19, Lasco applied the concept of medical populism to responses to the pandemic on the part of populist leaders in Brazil, the United States, and the Philippines. He found that, despite their differing approaches, politicians in all three contexts exhibited medical populism’s main characteristics: they simplified the pandemic, spectacularized their responses to crisis, divided “the people” from dangerous “others,” and made medical claims that were unsupported by expert research.¹⁶ This kind of discourse about the pandemic was also to be found online and in the streets. Focusing on examples from the United States, sociologist Rogers Brubaker describes the discourse surrounding protests against coronavirus-related restrictions as populist. However, he also questions why, despite populism thriving on spectacularizing crises, the anti-restriction protesters accused the “establishment” of exaggerating and manufacturing the pandemic. Why, for once, did they advocate openness instead of protectionism?¹⁷ The skepticism of restrictions, he suggests, aligned with a broader right-wing skepticism of “safetyism”—the supposed overprotectiveness of “elites” that also manifests itself in “safe spaces” and minority protections.¹⁸

Although populist protesters still produce a narrative of crisis, it is not medical. Instead, it involves “misguided and out-of-touch experts, power-hungry regulators, and excessively risk-averse elites have combined to wreck the economy, destroy livelihoods, and trample on liberties.”¹⁹ According to the sociologist Ulrike M. Vieten, this narrative can be understood as a moral panic: a “delusion distracting from the causes of crisis.”²⁰ Combined with an economic crisis and the perceived failures of government responses to the pandemic, this delusion led to “extremist anti-elite establishment resentments”—what Vieten calls pandemic populism.²¹ Notably, she emphasizes that far-right organizations and discourses were welcome at the German “hygiene demonstrations.” In fact, these demonstrations functioned as meeting points and platforms for anti-elite skeptics and anti-institutional radicals. They included (and potentially normalized the orientations of) the far-right AfD party, Reichsbürger, other neofascist groups, and conspiracy theorists.²² In analyzing case studies of Swedish popular music, we trace this process of anti-institutional and far-right normalization, focusing on medical populism and the associated phenomenon that we call the radicalization of dissatisfaction.

The conspiracist element of anti-restriction protests cannot be equated with populism. However, as Jakob-Moritz Eberl, Robert A. Huber, and Esther Gruessing have shown quantitatively, populist views correlate with lower trust in political institutions and science, which enables the spread of COVID-19 conspiracies.²³ This confirms earlier research on correlations between populist attitudes and conspiracy theories; as Bruno Castanho Silva, Federico Vegetti, and Levente Littvay conclude, conspiracy thinking is generally rooted in a belief that authorities are deceptive, which is not too far from populist anti-elitism.²⁴ At the same time, many classic conspiracy theories (such as those relating to cultural Marxism or Eurabia) either originated on the far right or have attracted large far-right extremist followings.²⁵ As the political scientist Eirikur Bergmann has argued, conspiracy theories have moved from the fringes to the mainstream.²⁶ This process is encouraged by the rising prominence of (right-wing) populist leaders in Europe and the United States, who sometimes deliberately engage with conspiratorial attitudes and the politics of misinformation. Extremism follows: Bergmann points out that populist actors who draw on conspiracy theories can easily construct a crisis or delegitimize opponents on the grounds that they are involved in the conspiracy. In some cases, they then move on to dehumanize entire social groups or justify violence as necessary to defend “the people” from a scheming establishment.²⁷ We therefore propose that conspiracy theories can be considered a threshold between medical populism and far-right extremism: a shared ground on which the two meet and form unlikely alliances. These are only strengthened by actual public health emergencies, which are reframed in terms of moral panic.

Popular music has been one of the means of expression where the populist political style’s influence on anti-restriction protests during the COVID-19 pandemic could be observed. Given that music is one of the most widely consumed cultural forms today, analyzing music matters. There is a rich tradition of studying the significance of music to social movements²⁸ and a growing field of research on how populist actors tap into popular music repertoires and even create music themselves.²⁹ In Norway, for example, the hip-hop scene has contributed significantly to the debate and culture wars surrounding the Norwegian populist Progress Party.³⁰

Similarly, in Sweden, music that articulates populist messages helps normalize radical-right parties such as the Sweden Democrats.³¹ These musical productions reproduce certain perceptions of reality and become key nodes in information networks that shape opinions. In the context of Swedish anti-restriction protests, popular music relates to not only populism (as previous research claims) but medical populism specifically. Consider how anti-vaccination songs circulated on social media and prominent music artists participated in the Freedom Movement.³² Through populist political lyrics and form, such music provided a soundtrack to the movements, helping build their collective identities grounded in a common distrust of institutions, states, and experts. Radicalizing this identity through conspiratorial culture, it cast musical artists as medical-populist “heroes.”

To contextualize our case studies, we will discuss the specific situation in which medical-populist attitudes and the Freedom Movement emerged in Sweden, drawing comparisons with the US context explored by Brubaker and German cases studied by Vieten. While other countries implemented strict lockdowns, Swedish policy imposed fewer restrictions. Discussions in Swedish media regarding the government’s pandemic strategy polarized public debate. Some claimed that Sweden’s handling of the crisis demonstrated the superiority of its administrative system and the nation’s overall adherence to scientific rationality. Others used nationalistic language to mobilize patriotic support for the state.³³ However, others highlighted the Swedish government’s passivity in handling the pandemic, criticizing what they perceived as their compatriots’ unquestioning trust in the political establishment.³⁴

In the autumn of 2020, Sweden saw its first major medical-populist demonstration. It was organized by the international World Freedom Alliance (WFA), which denied the existence of the COVID-19 pandemic and framed it as an elite conspiratorial strategy. Held in central Stockholm, the demonstration took place under the banner of “standing up for freedom and truth.”³⁵ In 2021, Filip Sjöström and Max Winter founded the Freedom Movement, drawing explicitly on US extreme-right and conspiracy-theorist organizations.³⁶ It would become the largest medical-populist movement in Sweden and was central to anti-vax mobilization in Sweden during the pandemic.³⁷ The ethnologist Kalle Ström followed the Freedom Movement over two years, conducting extensive interviews with its leaders and participating in several of its events, which yielded key insight into the group.³⁸

According to Ström, Sjöström, and Winter were alternative health entrepreneurs. Having met at an alternative health fair in Helsinki in October 2019, they both wanted to “change the world and saw the COVID-19 pandemic as a possibility to do so.”³⁹ Sjöström was the Freedom Movement’s spokesperson and Winter its organizer. Inspired by classic antisemitic conspiracies, they saw themselves as the good ones fighting a war against an undefined global evil elite. Both were also aligned with the extreme-right organization The Network (Nätverket) during the pandemic. The pandemic offered the Freedom Movement an opportunity to form a capacious anti-institutional and conspiratorial movement, which achieved broad appeal while incorporating extremist positions. They called for a new “Nuremberg Trial” to punish politicians and for an organized group of “strong men that have the capability to protect freedom”—allowing the Freedom Movement to use force and challenge the state.⁴⁰ During a 2021 demonstration, Sjöström declared that “we are the army in the third world war” (vi är armén i tredje världskriget), shortly before the event turned violent.⁴¹ Winter also founded the hypermasculinist militant group Freedom Defense Sweden, intended to train physically and mentally strong men to spearhead the defense of freedom. Among those active in the force was far-right media activist Nick Alinia. Repeatedly, he later shared propaganda for the violent neo-Nazi fight club Aktivklubb Sverige (AKS), which has become increasingly popular across Sweden.⁴² The Freedom Movement uses antisemitic rhetoric and relativizes the Holocaust, equating themselves with persecuted Jews in Nazi Germany.⁴³ Another inspiration is the Sovereign Citizen movement, a loosely organized, anti-government conspiracist ideology whose adherents reject state authority altogether, claiming that they are independent of governmental laws and taxation.

Even whilst presenting itself as antidemocratic, anti-institutional, and militant, the Freedom Movement mobilized crowds of up to 10,000 people with strikingly varied backgrounds. Some were members of independent Christian organizations, others right-wing extremist groups (such as the Nordic Resistance Movement). There were football hooligans, esotericists, New Age spiritualists, alternative-health practitioners, hippies, and healthcare workers opposed to vaccination mandates—all were united under a shared notion of freedom: an empty signifier that could “mean whatever their interpreters want it to mean.”⁴⁴

Following internal struggles, Sjöström left the Freedom Movement in 2022, Winter in 2023. Today the movement exerts little direct political influence, though some of its networks persist.⁴⁵ Bringing together various social groups with anti-institutional, conspiracist, and antiestablishment ideologies under the aegis of medical populism, it amplified these ideologies and helped connect previously unconnected groups as part of a broad antidemocratic front. After the Freedom Movement’s collapse, Winter founded the fringe far-right party Svenska Rikslagen: a fusion of far-right representatives, including The Network, the far-right alternative media channel SwebbTV, and other corona critics and conspiracy theorists. Those actors had somewhat converged during the pandemic, the health emergency and medical-populist discourses papering over their ideological divergencies.⁴⁶

We show how these medical-populist discourses were articulated through music, something that studies of such movements have overlooked. Two of the artists discussed in this article, Christoffer Lundquist and Dogge Doggelito, have played at the Freedom Movement events. Our third case study (“Aldrig Vaccinera Mig” by Gozzi and Bodin) conveys many of the Freedom Movement’s arguments and conspiracy theories, though in a different context and medium. Featuring distinct genres, employing expressive strategies catered to various Swedish social groups, and combining these groups under the shared banner of medical-populist and conspiratorial claims, this music is symptomatic of the ‘meeting point’ function of the Freedom Movement and similar movements. Moreover, it mainstreams radicalization. The involvement of well-established music artists brought these movements to the attention of the mainstream (media). Further, when packaged in relatable, evocative, and entertaining popular song formats, their extreme rhetoric becomes more appealing.

As we demonstrate, the pandemic and its political consequences provided fertile ground for medical populism, which in turn legitimized conspiratorial attitudes and channeled dissatisfaction into the radical right. The artists analyzed in this article participated in these processes. By tapping into populist, medical-populist, anti-institutional, and conspiratorial tropes in their narratives and performances, they mobilized opinions and helped polarize the political climate. Our case studies represent different tendencies. First, Gozzi and Bodin’s “Aldrig Vaccinera Mig” is a medical-populist articulation tied to clear conspiratorial attitudes and nationalist tropes, presented as youthful transgression. Second, Christoffer Lundquist’s Freedom Movement activity stands for a subtler way of mobilizing medical populism, which recontextualizes pop-rock freedom ballads and presents itself as inclusive. Third, the case of Dogge Doggelito indicates how individual artists’ trajectories illuminate surprising connections between medical populism and right-wing radicalization. Through these cases, we sketch the broad spectrum of ways in which medical populism is manifested in Swedish pop music, moving from most to least explicit.

“Say No to Bill Gates”: Gozzi and Bodin’s Anti-Vax “Transgression”

In August 2021, Rasmus Gozzi and Louise Anderson Bodin released the song “Aldrig Vaccinera Mig” (Will never get vaccinated),⁴⁷ which has over 84,000 views on YouTube and openly encourages people not to get vaccinated against COVID-19.⁴⁸ The duo, which began releasing music with the album Vi lever Life (We are living life, 2017), commonly uses populist tropes. Delegitimizing the then social democratic government, Gozzi and Bodin draw on their cultural milieu, which is rooted in Swedish rurality and youthful culture, to represent themselves as a populist alternative to the “urban establishment.” After briefly contextualizing the two artists’ place in Sweden’s political and cultural scenes, we discuss “Aldrig Vaccinera Mig,” arguing that it marks their turn toward medical populism. The song illustrates how populist tropes rearticulated the health emergency, promoting distrust of medical experts and pushing conspiratorial thinking as a youthful, “cool,” and “edgy” transgression.

A producer, musician, and DJ, Gozzi (b. 1993) has recently enjoyed nationwide success. Having started as a bedroom producer in 2016, he made the Swedish national charts with his 2021 song “Strypsex i ditt garage” (Choke sex in your garage), a parody of Albatraoz’s hit “Rave i mitt garage (Rave in my garage).”⁴⁹ Several of Gozzi’s other singles have also appeared at the top of the Swedish charts, notably “Rid mig som en dalahäst”(Ride me like a Dala horse, 2022), which he released with Fröken Snusk. Like Gozzi, Snusk is considered a “big name” in Sweden’s growing EPA-dunk genre,⁵⁰ which Swedish reporter Anna Rosenström has described as “Eurodance and bubblegum pop on steroids with lyrics about fucking, drinking and cars.”⁵¹ Named after epatraktorer (self-built vehicles that could be driven without a license), EPA-dunk became an unexpected mainstream success, drawing on lowbrow aesthetics, rural youth culture, and rockabilly influences. The genre also gained political traction, the Sweden Democrats describing EPA-dunk as part of the national culture.⁵² Both EPA-dunk in general and Gozzi’s music in particular exemplify what Ostiguy has termed the “flaunting of the low” in ways that connect explicitly with anti-urban, rural, and youthful identification.

This cultural transgressiveness chimes with Bodin’s personal history. She is well-known for her racist remarks on YouTube—notoriously she used the N-word in a video that has since been removed.⁵³ These comments drew scathing criticism from the famous Swedish rapper Adam Tensta. In her role as a social media influencer, Bodin appeared in shows on TV-4, a large Swedish television channel on which she styled herself the representative of “the people” or “ordinary folks,” especially rural youth. Tensta walked out of a live TV-4 studio in protest at Bodin’s involvement in the channel, which consequently cut ties with Bodin. Her exclusion from TV-4 played into right-wing populist logic and conspiracist thought, for which leftists (if not global/cultural elites) dominate the media and exclude “ordinary” perspectives to enforce “political correctness.” EPA-dunk has been described as a revolt against political correctness.⁵⁴ Indeed, in providing space for artists proudly to “flaunt the low” and by using lyrics and themes perceived as distasteful or insensitive, the genre could be seen as resisting these attitudes that supposedly comprise political correctness and the segments of society that exhibit them. At the same time, artists often claim that their music should not be taken too seriously, thus avoiding accountability for the messages they communicate. This is what Fröken Snusk does in one newspaper interview, for example.⁵⁵

Gozzi and Bodin’s music consistently presents a rural, popular (folklig), and antiestablishment Swedishness, performed in opposition to an ostensibly incompetent and malicious Swedish (and international) elite.⁵⁶ Previous songs, such “Värmland” (2021), seem to present this popular Swedishness as rural, White, and blue-collar. Other songs, including “Stefan Löfven”⁵⁷ (2016 and 2021) and “Greta Thunberg” (2019), clearly express anti-government attitudes and allude to conspiracy theories.

“Aldrig Vaccinera Mig” contains medical-populist arguments and flaunts the low in the name of free speech. Presenting “political correctness” and government recommendations as restricting freedom of expression and bodily autonomy, it actively encourages the audience to shun vaccination. Gozzi and Bodin therefore use vaccination to articulate their broader opposition toward the unquestioning rule-following, which many describe as a Swedish cultural norm.⁵⁸ Instead they stoke rebellion against cultural and legal frameworks by flouting the state’s recommendations. Although the sound of “Aldrig Vaccinera Mig” belongs to the EPA-dunk genre, it is much less accentuated. It can therefore be described as a ‘light version’ of EPA-dunk. Combining a rhythmically simple poppy beat with a simple guitar and melodic whistle hook, the song is a mixture of a pop-anthem and EPA-dunk.

Along with its accompanying music video, the song “flaunts the low” in several ways. Furthermore, it draws on medical-populist articulations and conspiratorial tropes, presented as a rebellious youthful affirmation of bodily autonomy. Bodin sings about wearing a tinfoil hat (a symbol of conspiracists and increasingly “anti-vaxxers”) with pride and wears one ironically in the video. She dances seminude, seemingly without much artistic purpose. She also sings about living in rural isolation, presenting a rebellious rural attitude and contrasting country life with a cramped urban experience. Rural and urban life, the song suggests, might require different policies. The viewer has the impression that Bodin is dancing naked defiantly—“don’t tell me what’s in good taste!” The tinfoil hat is also provocative, a symbolic middle finger to those portraying anti-vaxxers (and by extension, conspiracy theorists) as unintelligent and misinformed. The video depicts a red-painted wooden house, signifying idealized Swedishness.⁵⁹ This connects Bodin’s defiance with a symbolic representation of Swedish identity, which has a nationalist element. Neither Bodin nor Gozzi has performed at Freedom Movement events, yet they disseminate conspiracist narratives that are similar to those voiced at those meetings. Insofar as they also address a “vaccine-critical” Swedish public, their music can be seen as connected to the movement.

The music video is deeply populist in its presentation of an elite seeking to manipulate people into getting vaccinated. In this case, the elite is embodied by the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. According to the chorus, to spurn vaccination is to “say no to Bill Gates,” to rebel against the political economy of COVID-19 vaccines and the interests of an international elite more generally. Bill Gates is referenced here due to a widespread conspiracy theory claiming that he wanted to use COVID-19 vaccines to implant microchips into people in order to control them. Given Gates’s advocacy for vaccination and financing of COVID-19 vaccines, those who reject vaccination are understood as saying no to Bill Gates—resisting supposed elite oppression.⁶⁰

While the figure of Bill Gates anchors the song’s stance toward international vaccination policies, Thunberg is a Swedish celebrity—albeit active on a global stage. In the song, Bodin describes Thunberg rolling up her sleeve for vaccination, referencing the “kavlaupp” campaign (roughly: the “roll up your sleeve” campaign) that encouraged COVID-19 vaccination.⁶¹ Thunberg was not active in this movement; Bodin and Gozzi rather take her as representative of a politically correct elite. The artists also sample Thunberg’s famous statement, “How dare you?”⁶² Here the question, which originally referred to the ongoing climate crisis, is taken out of context. Simultaneously with this sampling, the video shows Bodin dancing provocatively, seminude, beside Thunberg’s outraged face. In short, through representations of Thunberg and Gates, Bodin and Gozzi reinforce a rebellious attitude toward a politically correct elite in Sweden and beyond. To that end, they present transgressive behavior, conspiracist thinking, and idiosyncratic narratives.

The music video clearly plays on the populist dichotomy of “elites” versus “ordinary people.” Yet it also expands on this trope, building in elements of medical populism by depicting a healthcare worker (or rather Bodin dressed up as one), presented as in cahoots with “the elites.” In one scene, Bodin, wearing medical scrubs, forcefully vaccinates a child, who screams in fear of a large syringe Bodin is holding. Later, an adult initially resists Bodin’s efforts until they are threatened with a knife and submit to vaccination. In both scenes, vaccination is presented as an infringement of bodily autonomy and violation of individual rights, orchestrated by the elites and executed by medical experts. The latter are portrayed as villains manipulating common folk. This aligns with conspiratorial tropes of “big pharma” and medical populism’s antipathy toward technocratic responses to health crises. This spectacularized narrative discredits medical professionals and their expertise. Populism’s two constructed camps (“the people” versus “elites”) are recast in terms of a specific conspiracist story. On one side are “ordinary folks,” who refuse COVID-19 vaccines. On the other side are elites, which seek to trick the general population into getting vaccinated so as to gain control of their bodies, as well as the medical experts who do their bidding.

Overall, “Aldrig Vaccinera Mig” articulates a medical-populist narrative of pandemic politics. Presenting the elite’s supposed infringements on bodily autonomy as the “real crisis,” it promotes distrust of medical professionals and proudly embraces its “tinfoil hat” status. Given Bodin and Gozzi’s personal backgrounds and the video’s aesthetic, this conspiracist narrative is packaged as youthful and transgressive. Made appealing in this way, the narrative is presented not as fringe paranoia, but a reasonable, casual, and even joyfully rebellious response to Swedish pandemic politics. EPA-dunk genre conventions also fit this message, which Bodin and Gozzi communicate by “flaunting the low.” Indeed, their song can be interpreted as belonging to EPA-dunk’s rebellion against “political correctness” and Swedish polite society. As mentioned above, in their online music video “Aldrig Vaccinera Mig” Bodin and Gozzi play on medical-populist tropes that have also been articulated in physical events organized by the Freedom Movement. As our next example indicates, however, the same tropes implicitly feature in radically different genres. In these alternative guises, they reach beyond those who enjoy EPA-dunk to a different segment of the Swedish public.

“We Are Free”: Christoffer Lundquist in the Freedom Movement

At first glance, Bodin and Gozzi’s explicit opposition to vaccination seems incompatible with the message of Christoffer Lundquist’s song “Vi är Fria” (We are free, 2021). Whilst the former is presented as a youthful and fun medical-populist rebellion, the latter has different cultural connotations that speak to a different audience. Both visually and textually, “Vi är Fria” and the accompanying music video play on cultural signifiers of idealized Swedishness. It posits a national “we,” grounded in general values such as peace and freedom and closely connected with Sweden’s flora and fauna. On the surface, this Swedishness might seem inclusive, and the song’s message utopian, lacking apparent connections with the anti-vax movement or extreme right. Yet through his soft pop-rock ballad, Lundquist actually presents perceptions of pandemic politics that resemble those of Bodin and Gozzi. Further, he mobilizes the Freedom Movement’s key empty signifier: freedom. The song has not broken through to become a significant commercial success. Even so, with over 40,000 streams on Spotify as of November 2025, it is among Lundquist’s most streamed songs on the platform.⁶³ Furthermore, it was played at the Freedom Movement’s protests and has resonated in anti-vax circles.

Lundquist’s success in the Swedish music scene is primarily as a producer and songwriter, though he also plays the bass in the band Brainpool. He mainly works with pop-rock music and has had an accomplished career among mainstream, commercially successful Swedish musicians. Among others, he has collaborated with several artists who are famous in Sweden: Ulf Lundell, Joakim Thåström, Peter Jöback, Eldkvarn, Sahara Hotnights, and Moneybrother. He is perhaps best known for being the producer and background musician for the Swedish artist Per Gessle, known internationally as part of Roxette. Lundquist has recently focused on his own music, though he also co-produced the soundtrack of the biopic Sommartider (2024) about the famous Swedish pop group Gyllene Tider. In short, he is embedded in the Swedish pop scene, which has often been dubbed “the Swedish pop-wonder” (Svenska popundret) due to its international success.⁶⁴ Widely appreciated as Sweden’s cultural marker and export, this scene has a social status and target demographic that differ significantly from those of genres such as EPA-dunk.

During the COVID pandemic, Lundquist aligned with the anti-vax protest movement, specifically the Freedom Movement.⁶⁵ First, he urged his fans to participate in the major demonstration that the Freedom Movement held in Stockholm in May 2021. He did so on the official Freedom Movement YouTube page, calling on viewers to mobilize against a repressive regime that limited its citizens’ freedoms.⁶⁶ Later, he also performed at Freedom Movement events. Some of these were not officially permitted and the police apprehended a number of attendees. Lundquist was among them, “guitar in hand,” reportedly still singing “Vi är Fria” as he was taken away.⁶⁷ The scene may have led some to imagine him as the movement’s new antiestablishment hero. Indeed, his arrest received wide attention in mainstream media, increasing the movement’s visibility, and indeed legitimacy, in wider society. Under a YouTube video showing Lundquist’s detention, users posted comments hailing him as a “hero” and citing lyrics from “Vi är Fria” to express support for the artist and his performance of resistance toward an ostensibly authoritarian system.⁶⁸ In contrast to the Freedom Movement’s militant and hypermasculinist discourse, Lundquist emphasizes peaceful protest, an “overflow of love, community, joy, respect, and humility.”⁶⁹ During the COVID-19 restrictions, Lundquist also initiated flashmobs—illegal dance events that featured his song. In the first of these, he played the song on the streets of Malmö in August 2021, with fellow musicians then joining him and the band dancing with the audience. He encouraged further events in other towns: participatory actions meant to save Swedish culture from a restrictive authoritarian regime that would limit citizens’ freedom.

On his official website, “We Are Free,” he describes the mission expressed in “Vi är Fria” thus:

Authoritarian systems have always suppressed and controlled culture. This is not by accident. Cultural expression has an enormous power to help humans connect with our hearts, with our core, our spirit. With emotion. With each other. The authoritarian mind set [sic] fears this because when we are connected like this it’s not possible to control us. Cultural expression makes us feel our power, helps us reconnect with who we really are.

So when someone wants to take your freedom away, count on culture being the first thing to go. History shows us this beyond any doubt.⁷⁰

Interestingly, Lundquist frames culture—specifically music—as the logical voice of resistance, able to unite the people in fighting a repressive regime. He thereby aligns music and protest with anti-institutional extremism in the context of the Freedom Movement. Accordingly, we use the seemingly apolitical “Vi är Fria” to discuss the role that performance contexts can play in enabling and normalizing medical-populist narratives. The indirect manner in which Lundquist conveyed medical-populist messages expanded their potential audience, while simultaneously producing an alt-right anthem.

Without the requisite contextual knowledge, the medical populism of “Vi är Fria” is not obvious for a listener or viewer of the music video. The song sounds simple and spare, featuring only leading vocals, acoustic guitar, and little production. It could be described as soft pop-rock, a campfire ballad in the folk tradition: Later on in the song, Lundquist’s voice is joined by background vocals that evoke collective chanting or musicking, establishing a collective identity or “us” that gains power through collective cultural expression. The music video’s imagery is utopian, depicting nature in a romantic-nationalist manner. At the beginning of the video, Lundquist is shown barefoot and in casual clothing. He has long gray hair and a beard. Playing the guitar alone in his studio, he looks directly into the camera. Both his appearance and the setting connote authenticity, viewers are presented with what seems to be a genuine expression, delivered by an approachable, down-to-earth man. This opening is followed by footage of nature and happy people, to whom the lyrics consistently refer as “we.”

Lundquist’s song frequently invokes the subject “vi” (we). This is a typical example of what Michael Billig terms the syntax of hegemony, whereby someone claims to speak on behalf of a collective as a means of exerting influence over it.⁷¹ The song’s lyrics are repetitive, effectively reinforcing the song’s message of “freedom.” What exactly this freedom entails or refers to is left unsaid; its reference is only specified in the context of Lundquist’s performances. The lyrics include a Freedom Movement slogan: “We are free, we are strong, we will never back down.”⁷² Here Lundquist is explicitly supporting the Freedom Movement’s ideology. The song suggests that “we” possess a range of general qualities, including truth, meaning, love, and dreams. Like freedom, these terms are open to interpretation. They serve less as nouns than as positive adjectives that are attached to the collective. Instead of being explicitly defined, they are contextually opposed to an authoritarian regime that must be resisted through music. In song, Lundquist declares that “vi går inte på det mer” (we’re not being fooled anymore). This refers indirectly to the Swedish government’s COVID-19 restrictions and presents official medical discourses an elite trick on “the people.”

That the song’s central subject is a Swedish “we” is made clear by direct references to the Swedish national anthem and pathos-laden language characterized by romantic-nationalist tropes. Consider these lyrics:

We will immerse ourselves, we will cherish our land./We will fly so high over our mountainous north

(Vi ska ge oss hän, vi ska dyrka vår jord/Vi ska flyga högt i vår Fjällhöga Nord.)

Here Lundquist uses a famous phrase from Sweden’s national anthem, “fjällhöga nord” (roughly: mountainous north), making explicit that the collective referred to is national. While this is a direct reference to Swedish national identity, the music video is also filled with more implicit references: the picturesque imagery of nature and rurality around which Swedish identity is often constructed.⁷³ That Lundquist calls on listeners to cherish “our land” (vår jord) prescribes an imagined relationship between nature and Swedes. This is strengthened by Lundquist’s appearance in the music video: His round glasses, long hair, beard, and denim all suggest someone who lives in harmony with nature. More importantly, he walks barefoot, sometimes on grass, signifying physical proximity to nature, innocence, and the harmlessness of his intentions. Footage of Lundquist singing and playing guitar in vast open natural landscapes is interspersed with shots of birds in flight. This visually connects an idealized notion of freedom to a Swedish natural Heimat or populist heartland “in which, in the populist imagination, a virtuous and unified population resides.”⁷⁴ In the lyrics quoted above, Lundquist directly references this notion.

Despite the song’s connection to Freedom Movement events, which in turn were connected to The Network, Lundquist’s music video included Black people. On the surface, this could be read as presenting an inclusive Swedishness. Yet this inclusivity is only superficial. In the video, a Black woman is depicted jumping between a protesting crowd and riot police. Later, she gives the police the middle finger. This stands in stark contrast to how the video represents White people, most of whom are depicted in natural settings and engaged in expressions of love and friendship. Hence, even if the video suggests that Black people are part of the dissatisfied “we” presented in the song’s lyrics, they mainly serve to channel anger and aggression at current circumstances. Utopian and idyllic imagery, however, is reserved for White Swedes. Furthermore, the footage featuring the Black woman is from neither Sweden nor an actual protest. Rather, it is edited stock footage produced by a group based in Ukraine, Tel Aviv, and Tbilisi, and posted online accompanied by broad tags including “battle,” “people,” “protest,” and “riot.”⁷⁵ By including this footage, Lundquist presents minority populations as part of the Freedom Movement’s anti-vax struggle. Given that the movement saw itself in opposition to the police, their imagined antagonists, the decontextualized, staged footage lends itself well to such appropriation. Lundquist’s use of racialized footage highlights the conceptual emptiness of affective signifiers such as freedom and love (associated with Whiteness) and mobilized racial stereotypes of anger and aggression (associated with Blackness). Like the footage itself, the apparent inclusiveness of Lundquist’s song is fabricated. Instead of an actual Afro-Swede, included in the category of the Swedish people, the Black woman is a prop used to make the anti-vax movement seem inclusive, whilst simultaneously reinforcing racial stereotypes.

Used alongside romantic-nationalist language, the imagery of freedom and proximity to nature conjures the idea of an anthem—in this context, an anti-vaccine anthem, about “freedom” and for a Freedom movement. In it, Lundquist dares to stand up and speak truth to authoritarian elites in the name of the people. Although he presents himself as a medical-populist hero rebelling against dominant discourses, promulgated by the establishment, so far only a minority of the Swedish public have imagined him as such. In this sense, Lundquist mirrors the musical nationalism that Benjamin Teitelbaum describes in his ethnography of the radical right in Sweden: a blending of folk and popular idioms that sacralizing “freedom,” “the people,” and “the nation.”⁷⁶ Like Bodin and Gozzi, Lundquist suggests that vaccination against COVID-19 infringes individual rights. Yet he does so allusively, in contrast to the visceral depiction of such intrusions in “Aldrig Vaccinera Mig.”

Unlike Bodin and Gozzi’s EPA-dunk music, which speaks to youthful, rural, and popular (folklig) Swedishness, Lundquist’s music video presents a supposedly inclusive and egalitarian Swedishness, grounded in values and nature. His references to medical populism are much more subtle and less direct than Gozzi and Bodin’s, leading some to defend him as just an “elderly man with guitar,” whom the police should not have apprehended.⁷⁷ As we have mentioned, however, “Vi är Fria” is played at events that were directly connected to Swedish extreme-right organizations. The context in which the song was performed affords it different meanings and connects its message of “freedom” with the Freedom Movement and its many implications: freedom from vaccination, freedom from “elites,” and possibly freedom from political correctness. This freedom entails confronting a supposed medical and political “establishment,” even at the cost of being arrested and allying with the extreme right.

The fundamentally vague framing of Lundquist’s message spoke to all segments of the Freedom Movement, from extremists to hippies. It allowed people of different political persuasions, who might not otherwise have a common cause, to join forces in criticizing the Swedish government and political elites more generally. For the movement’s less radicalized participants, this was a first step on a path from broad dissatisfaction and a desire for freedom toward a distrust of supposed elites and conspiratorial thinking. This path might ultimately bring them into contact with extreme-right groups involved in the movement, if only temporarily. Still, such contact had the potential to reshape their perception of these groups, reframing them as possible allies against a “repressive” state at moments of crisis. This is what happened to Dogge Doggelito.

From Antiracist Hip-Hop to Posing with Neo-Nazis: Dogge Doggelito

The case of the Swedish hip-hop artist and public figure Dogge Doggelito (Douglas Jonathan Alexander León) shows how medical populism brings people into contact with the Swedish extreme right and normalizes that association through claims of apoliticality. A household name in Sweden, Doggelito is a controversial figure. In March 2024, he was making weekly appearances on Swedish Television.⁷⁸ He was also receiving a lot of negative attention for controversial remarks he made regarding his childhood on the YouTube Channel “Reallokal.”⁷⁹ Specifically, Doggelito claimed that he and his friends had sexual intercourse with a fifteen-year-old girl when he was six or seven years old. Laughing, he presented this as a fun, entertaining story. Despite his transgressive, “politically incorrect” behavior, the attention paid to these remarks testifies to the breadth of Doggelito’s audience and influence in public discourse. He told this story, which many in Sweden perceived as disturbing, on his own initiative. At the time of writing, his most recent public activity was appearing in a song alongside reality-TV stars Samir Badran and Momo Alikar, both of whom are known more for their television appearances than their musical repertoire.⁸⁰ Largely known for his controversial remarks and making music regarded as the opposite of “high culture,” Doggelito frequently “flaunts the low.” Like Lundquist, Doggelito criticized the Swedish government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.⁸¹ He too performed at Freedom Movement events, yet his subsequent radicalization led him even further into the far right.

Notably, Doggelito’s current political alignments differ significantly from his earlier views. During the 1990s, his music was explicitly antiracist and spoke of discrimination, inequality, substance abuse, and poverty in Swedish society.⁸² The son of a Venezuelan father and Swedish mother, Doggelito grew up in the suburban area of Norra Botkyrka—a municipality in the greater Stockholm region with one of the largest migrant populations in Sweden. The Swedish police designated Norra Botkyrka a “vulnerable area” (Utsatt område), riven by social problems and criminality.⁸³ Doggelito’s breakthrough came in the 1990s with the pioneering Swedish rap group The Latin Kings, which was then seen as championing an open and multicultural Swedish society. The Latin Kings have a special place in Swedish music history. Often described as trailblazers in the country’s rap and hip-hop scene, they were the first commercially successful hip-hop collective to use Swedish lyrics. In this way, they opened doors for young talent and influenced the next generation of local hip-hop artists.⁸⁴ Crucially, The Latin Kings explicitly presented themselves in opposition to the far-right populist party Ny Demokrati (New Democracy), which enjoyed short-lived electoral success in the Swedish Parliament during the 1991–94 parliamentary term. The band was also highly critical of the wave of anti-immigration violence that shocked Sweden in the early 1990s. They were perceived as the ideological antithesis of the far-right rock band Ultima Thule, whose nationalist music made it onto the national music charts.⁸⁵ Thus positioned, The Latin Kings came to symbolize—and advocate for—suburban, multicultural, and heterogeneous Swedishness.⁸⁶

In stark contrast to this, in a 2019 interview Doggelito stated that over the last twenty-five years Sweden has lost its way and its identity. Playing on nationalistic, idealized tropes of the past, he elaborated that “the Sweden” in which his grandma had once lived was now lost and needed to be rebuilt⁸⁷ During the pandemic, Doggelito described himself as a passionate spokesperson for freedom of expression. Like Lundquist, he performed at a highly politicized Freedom Movement event, labelled Frihetsmarschen (the March for Freedom), which involved a torchlight march through Stockholm on October 30, 2021. As its organizers emphasized, the March for Freedom was directed against “medical apartheid”—a polemical term referring to the claim that those who refused vaccination against COVID-19 would suffer discrimination in Swedish society. Doggelito justified his involvement by stating “I perform for everyone who likes Doggelito” (Jag uppträder för alla som gillar Doggelito), framing himself and his performance as ostensibly apolitical.

Doggelito himself was contracted both to sing and to participate in a fire show as part of the March for Freedom.⁸⁸ Among other songs, he performed “Som en Kung i Luthagen”⁸⁹ (Like a King in Luthagen, 2019). Made in honor of his late cousin, it tells an emancipatory underdog story set in a suburban neighborhood of Uppsala, alongside a simple pop sound comprising a ukulele, guitar, drums, and bass. The lyrics claim that one has nothing to lose—but much to win—by breaking free from personal fears and daring to be one’s true self such that one can eventually stand strong as a “king.” During the performance, Doggelito encouraged members of the audience to make noise. Accordingly, they cheered him on. Afterward, someone yelled “up with Dogge” (upp med Dogge) in approval of his performance and message.⁹⁰ At the March for Freedom, the song’s message of breaking free and overcoming societal restrictions is readily interpretable as indirectly referring to government COVID-19 policies. When a journalist asked about his participation in the event, Doggelito said that “it is nice that there are different viewpoints in these matters, it is important in a democracy that one can express one’s thoughts and opinions” (det [är] kul att det finns olika läger i de här frågorna, det är viktigt i en demokrati att man får lufta sina tankar och åsikter).⁹¹ Here, he frames the Freedom Movement as beneficial to democratic processes. Perhaps inadvertently, he neglects to mention its extreme, antidemocratic aims. He then articulates his suspicion of the COVID-19 vaccine by referring to the Swine-flu vaccine, which some studies suggest provoked narcolepsy among a notable percentage of vaccinees.⁹² Although he would consider getting vaccinated if it came in a pill, Doggelito explains, he is suspicious and afraid of syringes. Not based on medical knowledge, this statement plays on the same fears associated with syringes that Bodin and Gozzi discourses in their music video. Doggelito therefore publicly supported vaccine-skeptical discourses and performed at a radical event that promoted medical-populist ideas. Yet he was also cautious, insinuating medical-populist arguments rather than making explicit statements like Bodin and Gozzi. Doggelito’s expressive caution and claim to hold prodemocratic values (despite his avowedly apolitical stance) could have made his radical engagements more acceptable to fans and the wider public. He sums up his stance by claiming that “one needs to be diplomatic as an artist” (Man måste vara diplomatisk som artist).⁹³

On the same day as the Freedom March, Doggelito participated in the second iteration of the extreme-right New Book and Media Fair (Nya Bok och Mediamässan). Organized by The Network in Stockholm, the event featured Filip Sjöström and Max Winter (the Freedom Movement’s founders), as well as Erik Almqvist, the radical-right Sweden Democrat and former member of parliament.⁹⁴ As we have mentioned, Carl Lundström (a central figure in The Network) saw conspiracist groups such as the Freedom Movement as potential recruitment pools for his organization. The fair was presented as a “freer” alternative—and challenge—to Gothenburg’s annual national book fair. In 2021, all of its profits went to The Blue-Yellow Cross (Blågula Korset), a non-profit organization “for ethnic Swedes.”⁹⁵ Doggelito himself made commercial videos for the event, summoning his followers to meet him at the fair if they also valued freedom of speech. At the fair, he posed for photos with Johan Staaf, a known neo-Nazi and major producer of White power music in Sweden. Staaf has been convicted for posing in SS uniforms and performing the Hitler salute, among other offenses.⁹⁶ When questioned about this, Doggelito said that he does not ask people if they are Nazis before taking photos with them.⁹⁷ It should be noted that in the said photo, Doggelito stands smiling immediately before a booth for White power music. Doggelito complained that the media portrayed him as right-wing and antisemitic, insisting that “it should not be used against an artist if they are simply attending a fair or singing a song.”⁹⁸ Meanwhile, the extreme-right magazine Nordfront ironically celebrated him as a newly outed artist of White power, though the editors also expressed confusion regarding his attendance at the fair and wrote about him using racist stereotypes.⁹⁹ On the social media platform Reddit, fans discussed a selfie published in Nordfront featuring Doggelito with Staaf. Most were confused at the unlikely alliance: “What the hell. Now we have seen it all” (Va i helvete. Nu har man sett allt).¹⁰⁰ The fans write that they seem to have ended up in a parallel universe and reality increasingly feels like a simulation. “Sometimes reality really feels like a tv-sketch” (Ibland känns livet verkligen som en tv-sketch), as one user put it.¹⁰¹ Joking about Doggelito and his inconsistent choices, the audience concludes that he must have participated in the book fair for the money. Like Doggelito, Bert Karlsson—a former member of parliament and leading figure in New Democracy—promoted the event through commercial videos. Hence, today Doggelito has links with a politician belonging to a party that he had explicitly rejected in the 1990s.¹⁰² As this example shows, the cultural networks in which Doggelito participated in during the 2020s are very different to those in which he was involved in the 1990s.

Medical-populist discourses regarding the COVID-19 pandemic offered many a language with which to criticize Swedish elites, articulated in the indirect and easily digestible terms of freedom and liberty, rather than the far right’s more controversial language. Both of the events in which Doggelito participated—the March for Freedom and New Book and Media Fair—sought to challenge the current political order by creating separate cultural, political, and media networks and spaces. In this way, they sought to contest hegemonic cultural and political institutions in Sweden. Doggelito justifies his participation by invoking free speech and calling on likeminded spirits to join him. Furthermore, he often claims that his choice to associate with the far right and its politicians is not political. Yet in implicit, indirect, vague, or deniable ways, he references medical populism and signals his skepticism regarding the use of syringes in vaccination.

As Benjamin Teitelbaum argues, radical-right actors in Scandinavia often appropriate Black and immigrant musical idioms to express a sense of victimhood and White displacement.¹⁰³ Dogge Doggelito’s performances in the extreme-right and anti-vax milieu inverts this logic: In this case, a racialized artist channels the affective repertoire of freedom and authenticity, as well as the narrative of the misunderstood underdog, embedded in conspiratorial, nationalist, and anti-institutional protest culture. As a celebrity and famous artist who promotes events featuring medical-populist tropes, Doggelito aids the Freedom Movement and The Network in pursuing their goals, garnering broad mainstream media attention for both organizations by attending. By passing through the door to radicalization represented by the Freedom movement, Doggelito ended up aligning himself with the far right. He presented this unexpected alliance to his fans as an apolitical choice, grounded ultimately in the values of liberty and free speech, showing how the profoundly ideological nature of medical-populist networks can become obscured in discourse.

Conclusion

In times of intense political change and uncertainty, especially public health crises, populism can operate as a unifying force. Through empty signifiers and the construction of a common enemy, it mobilizes opinions in ways that can impact political landscapes. As we have shown in this article, medical-populist discourse brought together otherwise very different groups in Swedish society that shared perceptions of reality regarding pandemic politics. Specifically, it allowed them to unite temporarily against common foes: the Swedish government, national and international elites, medical experts, and their “well behaved,” “politically correct” followers. These medical-populist discourses could reach various audiences through different styles of popular music—from explicitly radical and transgressive EPA-dunk, through music palatable even to those from more progressive alignments, to ostensibly “apolitical” music. It would be hard to connect the rural, youthful, and explicitly politically “incorrect” style of Gozzi and Bodin’s “Aldrig Vaccinera Mig” with Lundquist’s ambiguous “Vi är Fria,” which expressed a desire for freedom packaged in images of nature and superficial inclusiveness. Nonetheless, Gozzi, Bodin, and Lundquist had the same views on the pandemic, which they popularized among distinct demographics. As for Doggelito, his connection to the Swedish extreme right best exemplifies how, in times of crisis, populist discourses have the potential to redraw political landscapes. It shows how participating in manifestations of medical-populist dissatisfaction, such as the Freedom Movement, could lead one to view far-right extremists more favorably. They become not enemies, but allies in a fight for “freedom” (of speech)—a fight that can even be framed as apolitical.

Considered today, it might seem that the coalitions forged during the period of the Freedom Movement’s activity, including its musical engagements with medical-populism, are something of the past or at least dormant. However, in the current political climate, riddled as it is with (real and constructed) crises, the prevalence of populist framings means that any new emergency could be an opportunity for anti-institutional networks to resurface with broader appeal. Indeed, future crises might further mainstream the idea that far-right extremists are heroic freedom fighters combating “the establishment.”

As previous research has argued, medical populism mobilizes the fear of suffering, which is rearticulated in terms of a distrust of “elites” (including experts), imagined as trampling on individual freedoms. This can be seen, for instance, in far-right politicians’ social media activity. In Sweden, music made it possible for particular understandings of the pandemic to have a broader appeal. Through the participation of already-popular artists, who became part of the movement, these discourses reframed a health crisis as a crisis of free speech. Effectively, they created a new space for bringing conspiracy theories and alt-right groups from the fringes into the mainstream. In an atmosphere of temporary solidarity and to the tunes of various genres, marking the movement’s breadth, extremism was incorporated into broader anti-restriction movements. We conclude that, during the pandemic, populism facilitated unexpected alliances between segments of society that would not previously have been associated with each other, increasing their reach through popular music. Ultimately, this populism contributed to radicalizing dissatisfaction, normalizing conspiratorial attitudes, and far-right extremism as heroic resistance to institutionally imposed limitations and health recommendations. The Swedish case offers valuable insights for understanding similar movements in other contexts. Still, the full extent to which such networks might matter for political landscapes remains unclear; perhaps another crisis will reveal their full significance.