I think it's difficult for many in Sweden to see the broader context of Jason Arday's case. A large British opinion has been in a free fall regarding immigration since Brexit. The other side is invasive, the country that is besieged. The largest right-wing mass mobilizations since World War II have been carried out. There have been racist outbursts, several summers in a row.
The UK has had a black intelligentsia since at least the 1930s - and it has been unique (a link between Pan-African movements in Africa, the Caribbean, the USA and Europe) and has been a precursor (the anti-racist beginnings in the conversations that Western European society has had about the place of blacks, which started in the UK).
Figures like Claudia Jones, Stuart Hall, John Akomfrah, Isaac Julien, Gary Younge, and Paul Gilroy have formulated such things that have been passed down beyond the UK.
There are things that were rightly scrutinized around Arday's merits. But when his case generated more attention than 100 times in not only conservative war media such as the Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Sun, but also in liberal and left-wing press that has been involved in alleged plagiarism with white academics, it has generated a lot of controversy... and people don't hear "black people are bad" - the "auländer raus" slogan that forms the background noise on the tsunami of the tsunami...
...it's no longer about criticism, but about a violent political theater where Arday became a prop for a narrative that black people are trying to infiltrate and don't belong in British society.
The racism mixed with imperial nostalgia that has been stirred up in the UK in recent decades is quite underreported in Sweden. A brutal stew of different ingredients. Incitement against labor immigrants, mainly Polish, who were chanting "Brexit vote". Conspiracy theories that have openly taken on antisemitic expressions, an unflourished Islamophobia, and obsession with the UK as a Christian nation (from people who can barely spell out even a single line from the Gospels).
A terrible afrophobia with roots going back as far as Windrush and before, which has gained new legitimacy in recent years. A monumental backlash and is openly supported by Elon Musk and Peter Thiel in a way that is different from how it is done here.
Young people, disillusioned by Labour, are lured by toxic nationalism. Reform and Tommy Robinson are pushing out those who have no capacity or historical proximity to even understand the phrase "we're here because you were there," and instead see black people, Asians, Muslims, and sometimes even Jews (when fake concern for them is not used as a pretext for Islamophobia) as invading foreigners.
If one tries to explain what has happened by criticizing meritocracy as the foundation, then the "critical" judgment is weak.
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