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Summary: The Swedish police emblem contains two crossed fasces, placed behind the lesser coat of arms. The symbol has been used for law, authority, and state power long before twentieth-century fascism. At the same time, fascism takes its name from fasces, and the symbol was used by Mussolini’s fascist party and other fascist movements. The criticism is therefore not random: it concerns how a state agency with coercive powers should handle symbols that can be read both as rule-of-law tradition and as a history of oppression.
This is an investigative background article. It does not claim that Swedish police use the symbol with fascist intent. It examines why the symbol has been questioned, how the government answered, and why the issue remains relevant when police need public trust in a diverse society.
What is the fasces?
The fasces is a bundle of rods, often with an axe. In Roman tradition it was carried by lictors accompanying high officials. It symbolised public order, punishment, unity, and state authority: a single rod breaks easily, a bundle is stronger.
In Swedish police iconography, two crossed fasces sit behind the lesser coat of arms. That makes the symbol part of police visual identity, not merely a historical ornament in a heraldry book.
Why is it criticised?
In modern European history, fasces is inseparable from fascism. Benito Mussolini’s Partito Nazionale Fascista used the symbol, and fascism itself takes its name from fasces. In a written question in the Swedish parliament in 1999/2000, Kalle Larsson (Left Party) pointed to fascist and Nazi uses of the symbol and asked whether it was appropriate in the police emblem.
The issue was not merely aesthetic. Police are the authority with the most everyday power to use coercion against individuals. Symbols on uniforms, vehicles, documents, and unit marks therefore communicate what kind of power is being exercised and what tradition it wants to stand in.
The government answer: tradition and rule of law
Justice Minister Laila Freivalds answered that a symbol’s appropriateness must be assessed by what it stands for, by whom and for what purpose it is used, and what historical value it has for the user. She emphasised that fasces comes from ancient Rome, that it has been used in state administrations long before fascism, and that in Sweden it symbolises, among other things, the influence of Roman law on legal development.
Freivalds also argued that police should not have to abandon a traditional rule-of-law symbol solely because fascists had misused it in certain contexts. That is the official position in the parliamentary answer.
Why tradition is not the whole answer
The government’s argument makes sense heraldically: symbols can have older meanings than their most notorious modern use. But trust is not built only by the sender’s intention. It is also built by the receiver’s experience. For people whose family history includes fascism, Nazism, colonial policing, or authoritarian repression, fasces in a police emblem may be read differently than in an official heraldic explanation.
That does not mean every old symbol must automatically be banned. It means that a coercive authority should be able to explain why the symbol is still needed, where it is used, what alternatives exist, and how it affects public trust.
Still present in police contexts
Because the fasces forms part of the central police emblem, it still appears in police contexts and may also reappear in unit marks, training materials, presentations, or older emblems. The key distinction is between central heraldry and active local use: the appropriateness issue grows stronger when the symbol is used as an identity marker, not only when it appears inside a formal coat of arms.
A serious review should therefore ask not only whether the symbol exists in the emblem, but how often it is foregrounded, in which contexts, and whether police can present a modern symbol policy.
What should be reviewed now?
- Has the Police Authority made a modern trust analysis of fasces in its visual identity?
- Are there guidelines for use of fasces in unit marks, ceremonies, and internal culture?
- Has the issue been reconsidered after 1999/2000, especially in light of later debates about far-right symbols?
- Are there alternative symbols that communicate legal security without fascist associations?
Why this belongs in the investigation feed
This article belongs with our other police investigations. The shooting-range article concerns private police links to violent environments. The Gotland affair concerns the state’s proximity to crime as a method issue. The Palantir article concerns technological power and hidden analysis. The fasces issue concerns symbolic power: which historical associations the state carries on its own body.
Read it together with our statistics page. Statistics show how authorities are scrutinised in numbers. Symbols show how authorities want to be perceived.
