The video, brought to light by the Swedish digital publication KIT, shows Tobias Andersson making a speech at the annual meeting of the UKIP’s youth party.
“Don’t worry. I’m not here to steal your belongings, occupy your houses or attack your women,” Andersson said in the August speech. “I suppose you have enough foreigners doing that already.”
The joke was met with a mixture of groans and applause from the largely British audience.
Sweden Democrat press secretary Felix Bystrom defended Andersson when contacted by KIT.
“It is a statement with a touch of humour, aimed at highlighting the problems that high immigration brings in the housing market and crime – not least when it comes to sexual crimes,” he told KIT.
The populist party last year severed all connections with Sverigedemokratisk ungdom (SDU), its former youth party, after falling out with its leadership, launching a new youth movement Ungsvenskarna SDU, headed by Andersson.
Andersson refused to apologise when contacted by KIT, arguing that while the joke was “daring”, it had gone down “extremely well with the audience”.
“Of course you can argue about whether it can be considered inappropriate or not, but this was a speech I held at one of our cooperation partners. It's not as if I’m saying that all the foreigners in the UK are there to attack women.”
Later in the speech, Andersson described Sweden as the “rape capital of the world” and accused asylum seekers in the country of carrying out a series of gang rapes.
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