Ask Lemmygrad

There is a neat interview by Breakthrough News regarding this topic. Basically, Scandinavian companies participate in imperialism by outsourcing their labour to third world countries where they could exploit cheap labor and bypass the labor regulations in their own countries of origin. This is a phenomena that is common to all deindustrialized economies that boast about their progressive laws when in reality they are dissimulating exploitation done elsewhere.

https://lemmy.ml/post/288656

A few links.

• What about social democracy / democratic socialism / the Nordic model? Isn't Sweden socialist?
• On the unraveling of the Nordic welfare states: increasing inequality and forced austerity.
• Scandinavia's covert role in western imperialism

Also worth reading about unequal exchange, and how the "nordic model" funds its social services on taxes on imports from super-exploited workers in the global south.

• John Smith - Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century (article) [audiobook] by dessalines
• John Smith - The GDP Illusion - Value added versus Value Capture , audiobook

You don’t need a source. Just point out that Norway’s economy isn’t any more separate from Britain’s economy than Nigeria’s economy.

Just look at which companies the Norwegian sovereign fund invest on. Not to mention Norwegian mining companies abroad.

I can't believe that in 2026 we still have to explain how virtually all European countries are both beneficiaries and perpetrators of colonialism and imperialism.

My ickle wittle scandenazian countries never did anything wrong

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_West_India_Company

lol, try a cursory glance at history, what a loser

inB4, they blame merchants or something

Even if a country didn't/doesn't engage directly with colonialism (which Sweden and Norway did, just not as successfully as others), they still benefit from exploiting the global South by being part of the Western system. Their banks finance and benefit from exploitation of the global South. Their industries are fueled by cheap natural resources imported directly or indirectly from the global South. These resources are maintained cheap by constantly destabilizing and puppeteering countries of the global South. For example, if the United States does a coup in Equador to acquire cheap lithium for Tesla's car batteries, then Finland (notorious for importing cheap metal ore, then processing it and exporting the refined product) could just as easily benefit by bidding for and buying a part of the cheap lithium, through a small "cost of imperialism" fee.

The only country that somewhat fuels its social democracy through its own means is Norway, which relies on the North Sea oil & gas operations to do so.

Norway is host to a whole slew of Western instruments, including the organization that promoted Juan Guaido to be the "interim" president of Venezuela.

I mean Sámi people exist and they get discriminated by the wholesome Nordic socdems to the point their culture and language is being erased

Norway is a founding member of NATO and participated in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya. They behave like any other imperialist country. Sweden and Finland only more recently joined NATO, they chose the side that benefited them more, which was the empire of course. But even before joining NATO Sweden is a very well known weapons manufacturer and exporter.

Search up Norway, Denmark, and Swedish colonialism. They had colonial empires too.