Fear hangs over Sweden (TT NEWS AGENCY/AFP via Getty Images)
Last week, Sweden’s far-Right Sverigedemokraterna party published a slick campaign video, a sort of closing argument before this Sunday’s election. “Swedes,” Jimmie Åkesson, the party leader, said, “are not a people who burn cars — we are a people who build cars.”
The messaging had a familiar ring to it: politicians, Åkesson reiterated, had for too long been allowed to make Sweden “uglier, poorer and more dangerous”. It was time to take the power back. “Sweden will be good again,” was the title of the video. Not quite “make Sweden great again”, but close enough.
While Britain, the US and most of Europe have seen populist parties, populist candidates and populist party factions move into power, Sweden remains the outlier. Despite steadily growing support for the Sweden Democrats, the party has effectively been powerless since it won its first seats in parliament 12 years ago.
At first, the other parties simply shut them out. In 2014, six parties even made an elaborate agreement to guarantee the largest bloc passed its budgets — effectively voiding the far-Right’s mandates. The agreement fell apart less than a year afterward, which sparked a debate within the conservative coalition whether to cooperate with the Sweden Democrats or not.
It might sound odd that the conservative and centre-Right parties in Sweden have hesitated for so long. In neighbouring Denmark, the Conservative-Liberal coalition government took parliamentary support from the Danish People’s Party as far back as 2001. But the Sweden Democrats are an odd shrub in the Scandinavian Right-wing flora. While its far-Right sister parties in Denmark and Norway started out as fairly standard Right-wing populists, the Sweden Democrats has roots in racist and neo-Nazi organisations.
The Swedish Democrats, as Anders Ygeman, now a government minister for the Social Democrats, once told a Danish newspaper, “was founded by people who celebrated the German occupation of Denmark and not the Danish liberation”. This is perhaps a bit pointed, but the Sweden Democrats’ troublesome history is a fact that no one questions: the party’s own white paper about its history, released just a couple of months ago, basically confirmed that it was founded by people from different racist groups.
It has been a difficult couple of years for the conservative and liberal bloc. Despite a solid, non-socialist majority in parliament, the Social Democrats have held on to power because no consensus has emerged as to how to handle the Sweden Democrats. In the last election four years ago, the Sweden Democrats gained 17.5% of the vote, making it largely impossible for conservatives and liberals to form a government without their support. After months of negotiation, the Centre Party in the end jumped fences and decided to support the Social Democratic prime minister.
Now, the other three parties in the former centre-right coalition — the Moderate Party, the Liberal Party and the Christian Democrats — have decided to take the Faustian Bargain and ally themselves with the far Right. Will centre-Right voters follow suit? Ever since the Moderate Party began its reluctant courtship with the far-Right, it has siphoned off voters. Since the election of 2014, the last election in which they had a clear line against the Sweden Democrats, they have lost more than a fifth of its support — which is now down to 18% in the most recent polls.
In order to win, they need some of those voters to come home again. Or at least choose the Christian Democrats or the Liberals. The polls suggest the race is too close to call. In any other country, this would be a pretty good environment for the Right-wing bloc to take power. Law and order issues are higher on the agenda than they have ever been in a Swedish election, inflation is running rampant, and households fear what their electrical bills will look like this winter.
The rise in crime, in particular, is a weak spot for the governing Social Democrats. So far in 2022, the Swedish police have registered 47 killings and 273 shootings, putting this year on track to be the deadliest in a series of violent years. Reports of innocent passers-by getting killed or injured also strike a new kind of fear in people. On August 19, less than month before the election, a man was killed and a woman was seriously injured by a teenage shooter at a shopping mall outside of Malmö.
But for many liberal, or even conservative, voters, it is difficult to opt for the Moderate Party or the Liberal Party this year, since a win will inevitably lead to a big influence — and maybe even government posts — for the Sweden Democrats. The far-Right party will likely become the biggest part of the new Right-wing bloc and have insisted that they won’t settle for providing passive support, although they don’t appear to seek the prime ministerial post.
At the same time, however, many Swedes are aligned with the Sweden Democrats on some of their policy proposals. One telling data point is that about a third of all voters say the party have the best migration policy. Many voters also associate the rise in gang-related shootings to the steep rise in migration over the last decade.
But there is more to its package than just a curb on migration. Prominent Sweden Democrats’ MPs have in the last couple of years put forward a host of illiberal proposals, such as control over the Swedish bar association, a replacement of all police chiefs in the country, more government control over the media and so on. In a column for the liberal weekly Expressen, the political editor Anna Dahlberg calls it an “incredibly difficult” choice for voters to make, but still comes to the conclusion that “good liberals” can vote for the Right on Sunday. Other famous liberals — such as the former Liberal Party leader Bengt Westerberg — have come to the opposite conclusion. Last week, he announced that he won’t vote for his old party, citing its decision to cooperate with the Sweden Democrats.
Perhaps most peculiar are the many issues that are completely absent from the election. Neither the country’s Nato accession nor its pandemic strategy are on the agenda. Instead, it all seems to boil down to whether to let the far-Right in or not. The Social Democrats appear to have come to the same conclusion. One of their key messages is what a gamble it is to let the Sweden Democrats near power. As polls now show the Sweden Democrats becoming the biggest opposition party, the Social Democrats have asked for one-on-one debates with Åkesson, instead of with the Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson, to hammer home their message. The Green party leader went one step further in a radio debate recently, calling Åkesson a “Nazi”.
Will this be enough? Certainly, Swedes appear to genuinely fear the rise in crime, and they don’t trust the current government — with its pro-migration coalition parties — to deal with it. On Sunday night, we will know which fear is stronger: the fear of crime or the fear of the far-Right.
Johan Anderberg is a journalist and author of The Herd, a bestselling history of the Swedish experience during Covid-19.
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Subscribe“Many voters also associate the rise in gang-related shootings to the steep rise in migration over the last decade.”
Perhaps the author could suggest an alternative explanation. Self-styled moderates forever rail against the rise of the far-right, without acknowledging that it is their own policies that create it. A strange inability to join the dots.
And its not just the gang crime; sex related crime especially rape has gone through the roof. Ayan Hirsi Ali wrote an excellent article bout it on Unnerd ion Arpil ’21: https://unherd.com/2021/04/swedens-migrant-rape-crisis/
A free people always get the government they deserve.
And they usually deserve to get it good and hard.
Then when a lot of people do join the dots, the idea becomes populist, which somehow makes fake.
There are ways to solve all kinds of problems, but first of all you have to acknowledge the existence.
I’ve always been perplexed by the use of the term populist, which is most often used disparagingly to describe more conservative candidates when they seem to become….. popular.
There are people who absolutely believe that they deserve to rule over others because the others are commoners. The usage of ‘populism’ is not entirely, but mostly about class, and to make people who are upwardly mobile, or have aspirations, to know what beliefs they must disavow. This is especially true in the USA which still has problems understanding they have an upper class because they only know how to recognise one if it comes with titles of the nobility.
oh we know it alright…
Sorry, I misspoke. Not all Americans have a problem recognising that they have an upper class, but I still run into plenty of them that do.
I completely agree, democracy by definition should give power to the most “popular” party, all winners are “populist”. The lefty media seems to assign populist to the derogatory bin, perhaps because the left is so inherantly unpopular?
A reminder, yet again, that if you vacate the middle ground of law and order through fear of dealing with difficult questions, that ground will be seized by people who are not afraid. And you might not like them.
Very true. David Frum makes the same point in his excellent ‘If Liberals Won’t Enforce Borders, Fascists Will’ article.
ah yes, the Egregious Frum. the man who insisted republicans who didn’t support Bush’s adventurism in Iraq should be run out of the party.
Yeah Frum is a hard journalist to read……he’s non-sensical on so many viewpoints, and dead accurate in others but not in the way he means it.
Why should leaders who wish to enforce laws be disparaged as Fascists?
It’s the same as saying those who disagree with you are a threat to democracy.
The longer the deferral of the issue, the more violent and extreme the reaction.
Absolutely correct.
Note that the only political party in the UK that was willing to talk about Pakistani child rape gangs was the execrable BNP.
There still is huge reluctance amongst the Beloved Leaders of all the “responsible” political parties to discuss it today, let alone to do anything about it other than to find a bored Baroness to head up another anodyne ‘investigation’ and ‘report’ (after a couple of years), from which ‘lessons’ will certainly be learned.
Non-Pakistani Asians feel defamed by the crimes being described as being committed by Asian grooming gangs by the msm.
They absolutely ARE defamed!
And deliberately.
Anything, rather than speak plain truth!
Although ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ would be even more accurate. In some places Bangladeshis and Somalis have been convicted of involvement as well. The religion and culture that goes with it are the common factor.
Yes, I know that not all Muslims blah, blah. However, given the scale of what went on and the fact it was organised groups of them, not lone individuals as our own paedophiles tend to be, suggests that it must have been quite widely known about among men in their community, most of whom, even if they did not actually participate, chose not to report what they knew to police, schools, local and national newspapers etc., even if it was not all Muslim men blah, blah and it would be wrong to be hostile to all Muslims because of it.
Strange article. Manages to get to the end without once mentioning the cause of the far right’s rise or why cars are being burnt instead of built.
The Democratic Party in the US defended slavery, started the Civil War, opposed Reconstruction, founded the Ku Klux Klan, imposed segregation, perpetrated lynchings, and fought against the civil rights acts of the 1950s and 1960s. Funny how the Party and other parties on the left such as Communist based parties are absolved by their horrific historical misdeeds, but parties supposedly on the right, such as the Swedish Democrats are never allowed to escape their history.
One can even go further. The Swedish Democrats are labelled “far-right” because at its inception in the late 1980s, its membership had associations Fascist and National Socialist organisations. But those political movements are far left movements.
Benito Mussolini and the Fascists were hard core socialists. With the National Socialists the clue is in the name. Both has been disgracefully historically mischaracterised as far right, which again has allowed the Left to escape its historic culpability for its sins.
Looking at the Swedish Democrats manifesto, I can see nothing controversial. They recognise the folly of energy generation based soley on renewables and advocate for more nuclear.
The Party want to introduce tougher prison sentences and deport non-citizens who commit serious criminal offences. Perfectly sensible. The incredibly weak sentencing and rather nice prison conditions might be enough to set the average Swede right, but for people coming from some of the most violent, corrupt, lawless places in the world, they are laughable.
Sweden’s very generous welfare system can only survive if it is not abused. But the system is being overrun with hundreds of thousands of permanently unemployed foreigners. Quite rightly the Swedish Democrats want to reform the system to prevent the abuse of the system and its inevitable collapse. One would think this would be a primary concern for the Left in Sweden.
The policies of the Swedish Democrats are not derived from “fear of the other”. They are based on real, objectively verifiable social and economic problems caused by recent immigration. The Left chooses to stick its fingers in its ears and ignore or deny the problems. They think that makes them the good guys. But being indifferent to injustice and suffering of the population that their policies have caused, makes them the most contemptible, heartless ideologues.
It’s amazing what one will discover if one takes the time to go the extra mile and actually read the political platform of a party rather than forming one’s opinion (having it formed?) merely by what one reads in the paper and unquestioningly accepts as the objective truth. Common sense or stating something truthful but politically unpalatable like it is often ends up being stamped as ‘nazi’ or ‘fascist’ by those with a rosier view on things. God help me if I dare to dissent much less dispute! But when you look up those words in the political or historical dictionary, it stands for something completely different to the way they use it. Language is being hijacked and we are too dumbed down and intellectually lazy to catch and counter it.
What happens though when you get a situation of a party stating the facts, having some good ideas of how to start to solve some of the problems but that may also also require you to swallow other red flags/ give up some other important values or freedoms / permit incursions on liberty as part of the deal? How does one distinguish between courageous leadership and the wolf in sheep’s clothing who uses the situation to coast in? Is there a better way than gut feel to distinguish between the two?
Unfortunately, that is just the party’s CV. It is what they want you to think about them, nothing more – especially for parties that don’t end up in power.
I believe you’re correct in your analysis and conclusions. Johan Anderberg seems more interested in highlighting the past ideological beginnings of SD than explaining their proposed policies and why a large proportion of the electorate are leaning towards them, even more so for the male electorate, where figures have been estimated at 30%. Sweden has a number of problems built up over the last 20-30 years which they have to get to grips with. Recovery from the pandemic management is less of a problem than other European countries have, although energy generation and distribution is a big issue thanks to pandering to the greens and misguided environmentalists on the left. Closing nuclear power stations and obstruction of onshore wind expansion in southern Sweden where the energy is needed has been close to catastrophic for energy prices there. This is compounded by having a glut of power production in the north through hydro and wind power where it’s needed less and where the energy loss and distribution bottlenecks in the national grid getting the electricity southwards doesn’t help. The national grid operator Svenska Kraftnät is the largest consumer of electricity in Sweden, having to pay for the energy loss between production in the north and consumption in the southern local grids. SD’s policies here are common sense. The centre/left parties have their heads firmly buried in the sand. However the overwhelming greatest problem which Sweden faces in the next 30 years is the combined issues of law and order, social security, education, healthcare, widespread development of areas of need (Ghettos), and achieving a balanced economy (employment and tax revenues versus social costs). While these are general problems which every western society has to deal with, in Sweden’s case all of these have been exacerbated by the massive and unbalanced immigration of the last 30 years. By unbalanced I relate to the country’s ability to manage immigration in a positive manner without jeopardising the fabric of society. SD don’t have solutions for all of these, the problems are far too extensive and in some cases unsolveable but when the political parties representing the centre and left and supported by 50-55% of the electorate refuse to even acknowledge the problems and the need for radical measures to address these then it’s not surprising that SD is becoming the 2nd largest party in Sweden, and a party which no one really wants to govern with.
The way I see it, Swedes wanted to show the rest of the world how their model and way of life is better. They did this by inviting the outside world to live in their country and creating an example for how things can be made better.
So, now either the above will happen and Swedes will teach the world a better way, or the rest of the world (now living in Sweden) will teach them a better understanding of human nature.
Actually it was the people who were loudest in arguing _against_ Swedish exceptionalism and saying that ‘we are no better than anybody else’ who did most of the inviting. The people who thought the Swedish model was better, and not just different, were the most insistent that it was the Swedish (or Scandinavian) culture that made it work at all.
Interesting – this hasn’t been my experience of Scandinavia, but perhaps things have shifted in the meanwhile as I have lost touch for a while.
‘We are no better than anybody else, and there is nothing to be done about it’ was very much a Swedish as opposed to Scandinavian thing. The Danes made fun of it in their newspapers. (I suppose if we went and looked, we could find some Danish proponents of such beliefs, too, but it seemed a very Swedish thing.)The cold war was over, and the socialists of Sweden, aside from the Swedish communists, wanted to make sure than everybody knew that they were on the winning side — nothing but capitalists here too! This is a tad difficult if you are the political arm of the Trade Union movement, but the Social Democrats sure tried!
Given that almost every political party is trotting out their own brand of Swedish Nationalism right now, it may be that this period of wearing a hair shirt to atone for the sins ‘of all Europeans’ is over for now. But we had at least a good 15 years of it, albeit concentrated in academia and certain government organisations.
As a correction to a sense of smug Swedish superiority, which I gather you ran into, this may be understandable, but learned hopelessness and guilt by association are not, in my opinion, improvements.
your simplistic summary of the democratic party of yore is woefully inept.
If you think my assertion that there is a differential treatment between the Left and Right in being held accountable for historical sins is wrong, then present your counter argument and supporting evidence. The floor is open.
Complaining that I didn’t provide a sufficiently comprehensive account of the history of Democratic Party is irrelevant to the discussion.
i’m sorry, frankly it’s too time consuming; i agree with the overall point but the sweeping list of the democrat party ‘sins’ was perpetuating a stereotype and i simply objected to it.
The common stereotype of the Democratic Party bears no relation to its real history. Therefore, I am hardly perpetuating it
.In Britain I would guess that only a relatively small number of people know the history of the Democratic Party I outlined. The BBC, Guardian, and the rest of the leftist dominated MSM have everyone convinced that the Democrats are the good guys.
Indeed If an 100 Americans were stopped on the street and asked which political party’s history was being described, I would punt that over 90% would say the Republicans; particularly if the street was in New York, California, or other Democrat stronghold. Most Democrats think Abraham Lincoln was a Democrat
I am not perpetuating a stereotype; I am challenging it.
Your woefully simplistic judgement on his sensible and excellent comment is woefully ludicrous. If you’re going to comment, back it up with sound arguments instead of empty one-liners.
it is not woefully ludicrous. either he’s not American or he has not been educated on the complexities of that war or its aftermath. i am unable to respond without spending a whole hale of a lot of time trying to research and cut and paste historical documents.
best you do that or no point commenting….
On the nail. Brilliant post.
well put sir !
Automatic fear of the ‘Far Right’ is the default setting for many people. But if we were being evenhanded fear of the ‘Far Left’ would be just as ingrained (if not more so) based on the number of corpses created.
Perhaps the difference is that the ‘Far Right’ is upfront in it’s dislike of the ‘other’ but the ‘Far Left’ pretend to be about ‘fairness’.
And it’s telling today that the far right is always portrayed as a “threat to democracy”, yet the far left, who has been proven to be the real threat, is not.
The choice for Western Europe now is far right or destruction. Take your pick.
Amen
This same statement applies to USA and Canada as well……
Turns out that trying to block out a party with 1/6th of the vote and calling its members Nazis is going to boost that party. A lesson for other countries in there I think.
Yet another example of one the many “Benefits” of immigration ( can anyone give me a list of the actual benefits to any of these countries on the unfortunate recieving end of these unarmed invasions we are now subject too?) – Increased crime, breakdown of established social cohesion and order, polarisation of society, massive increases in welfare spending, pressure on infrastructure and resources…..and all this while the liberal left have been unable or unwilling to discuss or acknowledge the issues and problems. And anyone who does, is denounced as a Nazi…….
But, but, but….Diversity is our strength!?!
Europe really needs to rebel against this default “far right” terminology. Returning a country to civilized standards that held for centuries hardly seems like an extremist position. Nor does indulging ongoing and escalating crime and violence seem at all “moderate.”
You are 100 per cent correct. The Left has weaponized the meaning of The Right to great effect……until now. Many people post Covid are having their, “Wait, what? “ moment. Red pills all around. The Left thinks they control media landscape. That ended awhile ago. But yes time to diminish the weight of the term. It’s meaningless now.
“While Britain. . . [has] seen populist parties, populist candidates and populist party factions move into power” – what is this meant to be referring to? The so-called ‘Conservative’ government we have had to put up with since 2010 ?
The Tory Party has had one “populist” policy: leaving the European Union, It was a policy the Party campaigned against and many of them continued to resist after the Referendum.
Since the Cameron era the Tories have shifted to the centre left to become effectively, social democrats. Johnson’s tenure has seen the Tories move even further left. Yet in the mind of foreign commentators, because of Brexit, the Tories and Johnson will forever now be referred to as “populists”.
Are movements only called “Populist” if they are proposed by right wing parties? Were Foot, Benn etc populists for advocating leaving the EEC in the 1980s and 1990s and therefore the Labour Party in the 1983 General Election?
Momentum by swelling the ranks of the Labour and advocating Left Wing policies not “Populist”?
It does seem that only the Right get labelled populists.
The commonly used definition of populism is identification with “the people” against the “elite” or the establishment.
But who better fits that description than the Left? They rail against the “Establishment”, the wealthy, those they regard as privileged, even if is supposedly because of their white skin. They want to tear down the system, the existing culture, and free “the people” ideologically, redistribute wealth and enforce “equity”.
Yet the Left are given nice designations such as “progressives” “liberals” “socially aware”. The truth, however, is they are clearly the most blatant populists. They use hateful rhetoric to demonisation those they regard as powerful in favour of those they regard as weak. They have now extended that to the entire white race; whose institutions, culture and history must all now be deconstructed and destroyed, to be replaced by the Left’s mythical utopia.
Trump is a populist AND a life long NYC democrat.
imagine.
They are described as populist by those who disagree with them. The intent is to slur and silence.
Or one might look at this in a more positive light: the electorate wishing to have a government that isn’t somehow embarrassed to give a stuff about its people. You know, the ones on whose votes it depends and for the benefit of whom it exists in the first place.
If first world nations allow the third world in, then soon they will degenerate into the places that their recent arrivals came from. No amount of wishful thinking will cause these incomers to adopt the behaviour and responsibility of the host population.
If the population of Sweden has any sense at all it will most certainly vote far right. It can then go about throwing out all the vermin that have been allowed into their once beautiful country and try to restore some semblance of order.
Sweden is part of the ECHR … they won’t be throwing anyone out
I’m sure pro-migration coalition parties were sent to destroy us.
Britain has seen populists move into power? What on earth is this person talking about?
correction- Sweden, as Italy, France, Poland, Hungary and now even the common-wealth of the republictoilet of nu britn are finally reacting to The National Socialism of the trident of racism LGBT gestapeco that has invaded life via the internet.
Sosial democracy only works when the population is cohesive and only takes from the state in when genuinely unable to contribute. Once you get a large number of freeloader the system collapses inevitably.
Which populist parties has Britain seen in parliament?
It is only a phenomenon in mainland Europe engendered by the deeply flawed Proportional Representation voting system.
Voters in Europe turn to populism in frustration of decades of coalition govts where ‘politicians’ stitch up their agreements behind closed doors
That is why we in Britain so urgently need a proportional representation system, so that right populists (like me) can have someone to vote for. The first-pass-the-post system guarantees a continuation of the present arrangement whereby every party represented in Parliament – including the “Conservative” party – is some shade of red.
very true – the only correct form of ‘democracy !
Johan Anderberg wrote, “So far in 2022, the Swedish police have registered 47 killings and 273 shootings, putting this year on track to be the deadliest in a series of violent years.”
Sweden has 10.35 million residents.
New York City has 8.38 million residents. For July 2022, the city had 47 murders, 142 rapes, and 178 shootings. (See the reference.)
In 2021, arrest statistics indicate that Africans or Hispanics committed 93% of all murders in New York City. Africans or Hispanics committed 96% of all shootings in the city. Africans or Hispanics committed 88% of all rapes in the city. (See the reference.)
The conclusion is clear. The excessive violence of some ethnicities or races is due to culture and genetics. Excessive immigration of violent demographic groups ruins the quality of life in a society.
The solution for Sweden is mass deportation of groups exhibiting excessive violence. The Swedes must adopt the strict Hungarian method of enforcing the borders.
As for New York City and the rest of the United States, there is no political solution. Hispanics and Africans are politically powerful. (Hispanics are 40% of the Californian population.) They ensure that the border remains open. The murders, rapes, and shootings will continue unabated.
The American fate is a dire warning to the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the rest of Western civilization.
By 2040, the United States will cease being a Western nation, due to open borders. By 2040, most Americans will reject Western culture, and Hispanic culture will dominate. In California, 40% of the residents are currently Hispanic. Most residents of the state already reject Western culture, and Hispanic culture dominates.
Get more info about this issue.
It doesn’t matter as Eurabia is an inevitable fact…
I think when the hand grenades started landing in gentrified neighbourhoods even Sweden woke up..as others have said, if the left and progressives simply ignore reality eventually they will find reality ignoring them.
Swinging pendulums and capitalisation. The pendulum does its work as it passes through the centre. At the extremes it hovers momentarily before it starts its return. Momentum carries it to the other extreme in order to gain energy for the return – to the centre. Plotted on a graph shows a sinusoidal wave. Left, right, left, right. If it stops we get a flatline.
As soon as the words or ideas ‘liberal’ and ‘democrat’ achieve capitals we see contradictions in terms. Obama’s ‘yes we can’ couldn’t. Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘kinder politics’ was not. Africa. California. Johnson’s Laissez faire to Lockdown. Whoever winds the clock, we just get the time. A hot summer, a cold winter. Tick tock.
In GöteborgsPosten (newspaper) a few days ago Magdalena Andersson (leader of the Social Democrats) said that she could support a Coalition government with Moderaterna. I haven’t read what Ulf Kristersson thinks of the idea. Does Left vs Right even make any sense any more In Sweden? Will Annie Lööf (party Chairman of the Centre Party) get her wish that we do away with block politics altogether?
i don’t understand european politics; why are there so many parties? is that why it’s so hard to change anything? i thought my country (USA) was a mess…
I think you have it precisely backwards. Having many political parties means that it is easier to change anything, at least here in Sweden. I look at the USA where Donald Trump took over the mainstream Republican Party, and Bernie Sanders tried to take over the mainstream Democratic Party because that is what is necessary to get elected. And where every election year the party that is not elected can go home, sharpen their knives, and get ready for the next one. The polarisation and the conflict is eternal, while change is hard. People who live in the middle, and would vote for the ‘A Plague on Both Their Houses’ Party cannot just create one and do so. Many Trump supporters think that Biden stole the last election, while many Clinton supporters thought that Trump did the same the one before that, and Sanders supporters thought that Clinton stole the nomination from Sanders. But can you get a bi-partisan project to fix your electoral system so that it is not only fair, but demonstrably fair so that everybody trusts the results, whether or not it gave them the results they like? Seems not, and you would think that this is something that everybody wants.
Meanwhile, back in Sweden in 2014 the people who were worried about crime and the failure of new immigrants to integrate into society had a problem in that the mainstream large Right (Moderate) and Left (Social Democrat) parties didn’t want to talk about it, admit it was a problem, or do much of anything about it. But the very fringe, (at the time) Swedish Democrats who had barely enough votes to qualify for representation in Parliament (5%) were willing to do so, and people took note. And another 4 years went by, tick tick tick, it is now 2018… and the mainstream still did not want to talk about crime and immigration. The Swedish Democrats got even more votes, 17.5%. The traditional left and right were horrified and decided that the thing to do was to say that voting for the Swedish Democrats was voting for Fascism. They were agreed on that. And to not discuss crime or immigration or do anything. Tick Tick Tick …. it is 2022 now. The Swedish Democrats are now polling at 20% and have overtaken Moderaterna (17%) to be the second largest party in Parliament. (The Social Democrats have a projected 29%).
source: https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/sweden/
And to some degree it doesn’t matter any more. The Social Democrats are campaigning on a platform of Swedish Nationalism, ‘We will lock up more criminals than they will, promise!’ and ‘Fixing our Failed Policies of Itegration’. There is broad consensus now that we are going to do something about the problems we have. If we had been stuck in a system that only had Moderaterna and the Social Democrats in it, ‘Ignore the problem we don’t want to deal with’ would have continued to work. The Swedish Democrats built a bonfire under establishment politicians and wouldn’t let it happen.
So no matter who wins and by how many votes, we are going to get change. I’d say that is easier here than in the USA. And whether, in the future, the Swedish Democrats become ‘ho hum, just another Swedish party’, or if they fade away having caused the changes that so many people want (which happens to political parties in Sweden a fair bit, but usually not to ones that are of this size) or if they merge with Moderaterna (seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened) isn’t as important. We’ve got broad consensus that meaningful change is needed.
And if you happened to be one of the people who liked the old policies, well, you can still vote for the Communist party of the Left, or the Centre Party. You won’t be disenfranchised. There is still somebody for you to vote for, too. ‘Stay home because it doesn’t really matter’ seems more of a US problem than a Swedish one, as well.
essentially you are describing the same issues that we all seem to be having. at least for us, bernie and trump enjoyed massive support because they recognized that the two main parties were essentially the same and neither side worked for what their constituencies wanted even though they talked up a good game at election time. it’s obvious that the DNC took the nomination from bernie and that the bureaucratic swamp would never let trump take away any of their power. the election was rigged there’s no doubt about that, it’s just a matter of how people are describing it. zuck bucks and suppressing the crimes of the biden family via the media means that yes, it was stolen in a sense that people weren’t allowed to make informed choices. like i said i don’t live there so i don’t really know what is going on but it sure doesn’t seem like you are able to change anything. brexit sure didn’t result in changing anything and in canada they keep electing trudy even though so many despise him. france can’t get anything done either. so forgive me but i think we are all in a pickle so to speak.
Yes, but your question was whether the large number of political parties in Sweden, or Europe was the reason that we couldn’t get things done which you contrasted with the USA. I think that a paucity of political parties is evidence than the political process has suffered institutional capture by a political class.
It’s funny that Hitler rose to power by causing fear of the ‘other’, while our clever and capable politicians 😉 maintain their power by doing likewise.
wrong – current poloticians rise to power by causing fear of their own people and praising the ‘other’.
It is breathtakingly blind to not see that it’s the far left that are creating the idea of the other (ie white people and men) in order to create division and then take power in exploiting it.
It looks like the Left in the US and Europe are very much seeking to maintain their power by demonising “the other”. The other being the politicians and people who point out the failure and consequences of the Left’s naïve, simplistic policies.
People who want secure borders, criminals appropriately punished, a welfare state that provides for the genuinely needy and is not routinely abused; that immigration be limited by the ability to provide social integration and available infrastructure, People who want practical action on climate change not pipe dreams. These people are variously described by the Left as “racists”, “fascists”, Nazis, “xenophobes”. Even their presence is not tolerated by the Left. They are to be banned, deplatformed or otherwise silenced. They must lose their livelihood, and be ostracised from “decent” society. The are “the other” in our current leftist dominated society. Increasingly, for the Left, “the other” is the white race in general
When the ‘other’ is burning your house down, when is the time to act?
Well Miss, in one of the former colonies, the Right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Remember it’s for the children.
Your famed right to bear arms doesn’t seem to impinge on the flow of illegals into your country at all, though. The city of Dearborn is sure to become muslim, your southern border is leaking like a sieve, and your guns make no difference.
Methinks that virtue signaling Democrats are responsible for the immigration mess. On a different note: I no longer trust the terms “Left” vs “Right Wing.” Much as is the case in this article–sorely in need of an editor–constant mention of these terms (as if they were instructive) serves to obscure, rather than improve the usefulness of the message.
Where on earth is the link between the 2nd amendment and the non-enforcement of our border laws?
I thought we were discussing the takeover of western countries by violent, criminal third-world interlopers. Scott McCloud was suggesting that the US was better placed because of its guns. I made the point that your problems are like those of Sweden or the UK.
Your borders aren’t enforced and neither are ours. Ask Scott what the guns are for.
Just before you complete the mandatory tolerance course.
all i know is that my country is more dangerous and less cohesive now than it was in my childhood.