Et tu, Sweden?
Sweden is facing an election, and the right seems poised to make a better showing than usual:
Polling over the summer has put the ruling Social Democrats on as low as a 21% vote share – down 10% on its showing at Sweden’s last parliamentary election in 2014 and the party’s worst showing for more than a century.
“When we talk about about Sweden and other Scandinavian countries you associate them with social democracy,” Patrik Öhberg, an expert on Swedish politics from the University of Gothenburg.
“But it seems like this era is going to end now. We have become more a country like everyone else. It’s a bastion of social democracy now maybe going to rubble. Something big is going on here.”
The main beneficiary of the centre-left’s slump has so far been the far right Sweden Democrats, who some surveys have predicted will pick up 28.5% of the vote, more than double its performance four years ago before the peak of Europe’s refugee crisis.
Why this is happening is no mystery. The article quotes a Swedish social scientist as saying, “people do not feel at home culturally, they doubt that we are on the right track.” Now, why might that be?:
It is a legacy of Europe’s refugee crisis in 2015 when Sweden received a record-breaking 163,000 asylum applicants.
People were told by their government that any objection they had was racist (the following is a quote from a Swedish political scientist):
For such a long time [government officials] said: ‘This [immigration] is not an issue, you’re racist, we should not talk about it, it’s a win-win.
And then reality bit, in the form of crime:
“There are problems with burning cars, shootings and so on in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo,” said Professor Gustavsson [a political scientist].
“But you shouldn’t exaggerate it because in an international context it’s not so dramatic. But it is in a Swedish context because we have not had this kind of thing before.
“To some extent [there is a link between violent crime and immigration] of course. It’s something to do with the fact it’s difficult to integrate all the newcomers but it’s extremely exaggerated because we’ve integrated a lot of refugees from the Balkan wars in the 1990s and up to a couple of years ago the consensus was we were very successful at it.
Note the mealy-mouthed equivocation, and the conflation of one immigrant group (from the Balkans) with another (from the Middle East). Both may have been predominantly Muslim, but previous refugees were European, well-educated, and Bosnian for the most part, from the former Yugoslavia. A very different group from the recent arrivals.
If you speak to actual Swedes who are contemplating casting their votes for that far-right party, however, you get this sort of thing:
“We don’t recognize our country as it is today,” said Bengt Borg, 66. His wife, 64, says she no longer feels safe walking alone at night due to reports of rapes by immigrants. Both plan to join a growing number of Swedes voting for a nationalist and anti-immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats, in Sunday’s general election.
The article I just quoted as says that the Sweden Democrats “have their roots in a neo-Nazi movement.” What does that mean, exactly? The article doesn’t elaborate, but here’s what Wiki has to say on the subject:
The party[founded in 1988] has its roots in Swedish fascism and was primarily a white nationalist movement through the early-1990s, when it first began distancing itself from its past; The SD’s logo from the 1990s until 2006 was a version of the torch used by the UK National Front. Today, the Sweden Democrats officially reject both Fascism and Nazism.[
More here. It’s hard to say, but as best I can tell the party really does have neo-Nazi roots, at least in terms of the history of certain people originally affiliated with it, but has repudiated those roots. There is also some troubling evidence of anti-Semitism among some of the party’s local candidates.
At any rate, as with my recent post on the coming Brazilian election, one could certainly say:
“Elites” are fond of telling people what they can and cannot do, but elites are for the most part protected against the disturbing phenomena they have created in a way that the regular populace is not. So why wouldn’t a Trumplike figure [and/or populist, nationalist, anti-immigrant party] have mass appeal? And why would people heed the warnings of their “betters,” who have not seen fit to offer them any other way to deal with myriad problems except to suck it up, and grin and bear it?
It is quite obvious that whatever it was that led to Trump’s appeal in this country, there are similar (although of course not exactly the same) influences leading to the rise of similar (although of course not exactly the same) politicians in different countries. And the powers-that-be in those countries seem similarly surprised at the entire phenomenon.
Sweden—that tolerant, peaceful, welfare state—is not immune, particularly if it has invited in a group with a higher proportion of less tolerant and less peaceful people who are interested in becoming wards of the welfare state the Swedes have constructed.
The Swedish Democrats are probably not going to win the election, and other parties have so far refused to form a coalition government with them, so the results of the election will probably be that other parties will join together against them. If you want to try to make sense of the possible coalitions in Sweden that might emerge from the election, see this. Reading it may make you very happy we basically have a 2-party system in this country.
” The article quotes a Swedish social scientist as saying, ‘people do not feel at home culturally, they doubt that we are on the right track.'”
I think one key element that people fail to understand (although they should after Obama) is that the leftist national leaderships are embarrassed by and despise their own people and wish to replace it. I believe the copyright if there ever was one has expired concerning Berthold Brech’ts great poem about the East German uprising. in any case I quote it under the doctrine of fair use:
“After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another? ”
The fad of hating “old white men” is proof that Marxism never went away. It just redefined itself as post-modernist identity politics. But the Bourgeoisie oppressors are still the heterosexual white christofascist men, and the proletariat are everyone else. If you are so bold, Neo, catch a dragonfly. Then bend it’s abdomen (tail) around to it’s mouth. It will consume itself. That’s what we are witnessing.
Swedes say that when they complain about how the leftist social engineering is destroying Swedish culture, the pols say there is no such thing as Swedish culture and if there were it needs to be destroyed. Our own leftists are no different. The symbol of the Democratic party shouldn’t just be a jackass. It should be Pancho Villa raiding Columbus, NM, riding a jackass.
The progress of anti-nativism is a concern in Sweden, Syria, Libya, and globally, and can be traced to social justice adventures (e.g. elective regime change, trail of tears, immigration reform), a pernicious diversity or color judgments, and Planned Parenthood or evolutionary reductase a.k.a. dodo dynasties.
“… as best I can tell the party really does have neo-Nazi roots”
Neo-Nazi, should these pale democracies fail to correct their drift, is where Europe is heading and should that happen it makes a population purge all the more likely.
We need to hope that the ballot prevails. If not it will be many going to the wall in a Europe whose interlopers are also armed far beyond the dreams of a Warsaw Ghetto resistance.
Their leaders–who, I’m sure, have taken steps to make sure that they and their families are very well insulated from and protected against the violent and destructive results of their policies–have sold out the native peoples of the countries of Western Europe, and it’s just too late to reverse things.
“the conflation of one immigrant group (from the Balkans) with another (from the Middle East). Both may have been predominantly Muslim, but previous refugees were European, well-educated, and Bosnian for the most part, from the former Yugoslavia. A very different group from the recent arrivals.”
Very true from my experience. About 10 years ago when I was in the Army Reserves, my unit was deployed to Kosovo for a year with the NATO peacekeepers. The ethnic Albanians, which made up about 80% of the population, were Muslim, but very secular. Most of them seemed very Western in their dress and attitudes. I never saw a burqa the whole time I was there.
I live in the Detroit area now, and hijabs and burqas are very common here.
Stockholm is no longer a destination for us, which is sad because it is a beautiful city. Our Swedish friends have left the city and now live full time in the cabin they own about 100k from the capital. They resent being labeled racist for opposing the refugee flood. This will only drive more voters to the right.
“In 2004, Jens Orback, Sweden’s Minister for Democracy, Metropolitan Affairs, Integration and Gender Equality, said this on Swedish radio: Quote: “We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us.”
Perhaps the most famous Abraham Lincoln quote is about deception: “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Sweden has for a number of years now been the rape capital of the West: “Sweden: Rape Capital of the West”
Apparently if you fail to send flowers the next day, in Sweden, that’s rape. There’s even a joke in the other Scandi countries. If a man has any interaction with a woman that isn’t perfectly friendly, “In Sweden, that’s rape.” Ask Julian Assange.
But the capacity of the Swedes to pretend that the sky isn’t blue if it might make one of the immvaders look bad is amazing. If one of them claims to be under 18 it enhances the chances of asylum greatly. So there are stories in the press about some guy who looks 22 holding his teddy, and another with a guy who has beard and mustache, clearly a foot taller than his rivals, winning footraces at his middle school.
And of course, the other day some chick refused to sit down on an airplane because some guy was being sent to Afghanistan. She’s in treatment now for injuries caused by patting herself on the back. He’s in Afghanistan, because he was flying there voluntarily.
I was visiting Sweden in the 90s when the bulk of the immigrants were from the newly freed countries like Latvia and anyone who opposed it was being called racist. I enjoyed discomfiting the Swedes I met by asking: How could it be racism – they are white folks just like you and me? They would answer; “You know what we mean.” I would reply that I was from the US where we knew what real racism was. It is clear the particularly Swedish version of waterproof political correctness is still the ummmm…dominant paradigm, but thankfully losing ground.
It is ironic that the nordic countries are, simultaneously, the most politically correct in denouncing anyone resistant to immigration while being, themselves, the least prepared to assimilate new immigrants.
Over the last thirty years, or so, Finland accepted several thousands of Somali refugees. What could go wrong with that? Well, it turns out nearly everything. In spite of incredible generosity on the part of the Finnish government, the Somalis have persisted in being… well… Somalis.
They live in government provided housing, which they always manage to destroy because they don’t know how the heating systems or plumbing function. They attend schools to learn to speak Finnish, but don’t actually learn it. They mostly spend their time in the parks collecting cans and bottles which they can sell for cash. Even while being geographically dispersed within the city of Helsinki, the Somalis are isolated socially. The Finns are scared of them, but pretend they are not.
It is not a happy situation for anyone.
The political right may have roots in anti-Semitism but the political left has roots in anti-Swedenism. Which of those do you think is a worse problem in Sweden?