The motion was passed by a large majority in Sweden's Riksdag

From Europa Blues by Arne Dahl. Page 315.

Anton Eriksson was born in 1913, in a small town called Orbyhus to the north of Stockholm. At the age of twenty he enrolled as a student at the university in Uppsala and, after reading a range of subjects including medicine, German and anthropology, transferred to the grand old university town's most famous independent institution: the State Institute for Racial Biology. The institution had been founded in 1922, the very same year the Swedish Social Democrats had recommended the forced sterilisation of mentally handicapped people on the basis of 'the eugenic dangers inherent in the reproduction of the feeble-minded'. It was the world's first institution for the study of eugenics and later served as a standard for Kaiser Wilhelm's Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin.

The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Eugenics was, in turn, an important precondition for the Holocaust. Though its roots were, of course, much deeper. The early twentieth century had been a time of great change — Sweden was transformed from an agricultural to an industrial society — and in times of upheaval, the need for a scapegoat always arises. The Jews were an obvious choice, since they could just as easily be accused of bolshevism as of capitalism and anti-patriotism — it was simply a matter of choosing which.

Racial thinking of this kind was also linked to the popular science of the time: anthropology and genetics. The Swedish Society for or Eugenics had been founded in 1909, and there was also an international society of racial biology which met regularly to discuss how best to produce and Ubermensch. When they held their grandiose world congress in London in 1912, none other than Winston Churchill had been the chairman. In 1918, a professor from the Karolinska Institut in Stockholm had suggested that a Nobel Institute of Racial Biology should be established, but the time was not yet ripe. In 1921, however, a motion supported by representative from each of the governing parties was launched, advocating the founding of the State Institute of Racial Biology. The motion was passed by a large majority in Sweden's Riksdag, and the institute opened on New Year's Day, 1922. At its head was Herman Lundborg, with seven staff and an annual budget of sixty thousand kronor.

Herman Lundborg believed that the Nordic race was superior to all others, and as the years went by, he became increasingly drawn to anti-Semitic standpoints. The institute was also influenced by Lundborg's fondness for Germany. He invited a number of Germans to give lectures at the institute, among them Hans F. Gunther, who would later become the Nazi ideologue in all matters racial. When the State Institute for Racial Biology held its world congress in New York in 1932, Herman Lundborg was there, as was much of the American upper class, with families like the Kelloggs, the Harrimans and the Roosevelts at the centre of it all. The chairman of the meeting was Ernst Rudin, a man who would, in just a few short years, be at the fore of Hitler's extensive programme of sterilisation.

By that point in time, the State Institute for Racial Biology in Uppsala had started to stagnate, despite its firmly rooted international reputation. The annual budget had been lowered to thirty thousand kronor and Lundborg was becoming increasingly untenable as head of the institute. In 1936, he was replaced by Gunnar Dahlberg, a man who, to a certain degree, changed the direction of the institute, with its focus shifting from racial biology to human genetics and social engineering. This shift eventually culminated in the now-notorious programme of forced sterilisations carried out on many of Sweden's mentally handicapped citizens.

All true except for the character of Anton Eriksson.

I lived in Sweden as a child and forced sterilizations, from the best of intentions, continued until 1975.

For cultures rooted in inherent rights and freedoms, this is inexplicably appalling. I am not singling out the Swedes. All European countries had this. There was certainly eugenic movements in the US, including that led by Margaret Sanger which became Planned Parenthood.

There is a tendency to conflate progressivism with moral rectitude which is a fundamental category error. All movements believe themselves to be ethical and yet fervor often leads to actions which are astonishingly inhumane and immoral.

Progressive, social democratic Sweden was one of the earlier formalizers of a world view based on white superiority and one of the last practitioners of eugenics. Not because they were evil but because they were mistaken. They thought rational man could design a better man through education and eugenics. It was an evil means towards a theoretically beneficial ends. As long as you ignore human rights and freedoms.