The drawing depicts the house where I grew up. I have left out the window frames, keeping only the dividers—like crosses closing the surface.

Sometimes a smell or a sound—perhaps a piece of music—suddenly transports you back in time. For a moment, the past feels so vivid and present that it is almost difficult to accept that you cannot step back into it. The idea that the past is sealed off can feel less believable than the opposite. And yet it is. It is gone, almost as if it has been taken away from you.

Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. Reflecting on the past can be comforting, even inspiring. Learning from history—and from our own experiences—is essential. But when nostalgia is deliberately activated in a political context, it becomes dangerous.

It seems to me that this has long been a strategy of fascist movements, and it certainly is today—in Sweden and elsewhere. What is striking is how effectively they have managed to repurpose an egalitarian past to promote an authoritarian and xenophobic agenda.

We must stop falling into this trap. It feels as though we are standing at a crossroads. By glorifying the past, we risk ignoring the uncomfortable truth that our former prosperity often depended on global injustice and latent prejudice—forces that are now re-emerging as overt racism.

If we are to move forward, we must focus on building a future grounded in equality and freedom. Not a hollow “freedom of opportunity” that allows some to rise at the expense of others, but a deeper freedom—one rooted in shared security and broadly distributed prosperity.