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SWEDEN ELECTS

Sweden Elects: Far right sets sights on becoming Sweden’s largest party

In our weekly Sweden Elects newsletter, The Local's editor Emma Löfgren explains the key events to keep an eye on in Swedish politics this week.

Published: 12 December 2022 08:23 CET
Sweden Elects: Far right sets sights on becoming Sweden's largest party
Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson speaks at a party conference. Photo: Tommy Pedersen/TT

Hej,

Jimmie Åkesson told a conference of some 800 Sweden Democrats in Karlstad over the weekend that he wants his anti-immigration party to challenge the Social Democrats for the spot of Sweden’s largest party.

It could happen.

The Social Democrats have been Sweden’s largest party throughout modern political history, even when they’ve lost elections, but their support has dwindled from the 50 percent of their social movement heyday of the mid-20th century to the 30 percent-ish of today.

The Sweden Democrats, meanwhile, have grown from being an outcast faction started by neo-Nazi sympathisers, to 20 seats in parliament in the 2010 election, to their 73 seats in parliament today. In the 2022 election they overtook the conservative Moderates to become Sweden’s second-largest party, and now they’ve got their eyes on the top spot.

I remember interviewing a Swede back in 2017 who went undercover for a year with the US alt-right movement, and one of his quotes stuck with me. “They’re not just doing political campaigning (…) but they organise barbecues and picnics, go to gallery openings, concerts, and just have a beer in a pub. (…) I think many of the people there are there for social reasons. It provides a context for them as friends,” he told me.

There’s a similar feel whenever you read reports from Sweden Democrat events or their presence in local politics. It’s a social glue that used to be provided by the Social Democrats and to some extent other parties.

If the mainstream parties wanted to draw inspiration from anything, perhaps this would be the thing to choose, rather than fighting to see who among them can be the toughest on immigration. But the latter is the path they’ve chosen, and Moderate Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told the DN daily in a new interview that her government “is prepared to do whatever it takes to get immigration numbers down”.

You hear similar pledges from the right wing to the centre-left.

The leader of Kommunal, Sweden’s largest trade union for municipal workers (for example people who work in elderly care or preschools), urged the Social Democrats to stop “copying the Sweden Democrats”.

“Elderly care was barely mentioned in the election, despite the fact that all parties seemed to agree during the pandemic on how important and underserved it is. It is tragic,” she told DN in an interview last week.

As a news site founded by immigrants for immigrants, here at The Local we’ll keep covering this issue and other issues that matter to you.

In a new article, The Local’s acting editor Richard Orange (filling in for me while I’m on maternity leave) looked at the number of people who could be affected if the government abolishes asylum-related permanent residence permits, as Malmer Stenergard has said it wants to do.

On the latest episode of our Sweden in Focus podcast, my colleagues discussed Sweden’s plans to introduce a state-mandated cultural canon and what it will mean for foreigners (the episode also features a really interesting interview with Pakistan’s ambassador to Sweden).

In other news

The man who murdered a high-profile psychiatrist at Sweden’s annual political festival in July was last week found guilty of murder and preparing to commit a terror offence – the latter because of his plans to also attack Centre Party leader Annie Lööf. He was sentenced to psychiatric care.

Sweden’s business and energy minister, Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch, has called on people to reduce their heating by 1C and halve their use of hot water in order to reduce electricity demand over the winter.

As Le Monde’s Nordic correspondent pointed out, that’s a very different tune to the campaign in 2021 when Busch, armed with a vacuum cleaner, criticised the then-government for urging people to save energy.

If you speak Swedish, a new documentary by public broadcaster SVT follows Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson and Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar on the campaign trail and in post-election talks.

Sweden’s popular speaker of parliament, Andreas Norlén, is ready to travel to Ankara to help negotiate Nato membership with Turkey, according to emails seen by DN. Nothing’s been decided yet, though.

Sweden Elects is a weekly column by Editor Emma Löfgren looking at the big talking points and issues after the Swedish election. Members of The Local Sweden can sign up to receive the column as a newsletter in their email inbox each week. Just click on this “newsletters” option or visit the menu bar.

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For members

POLITICS

‘Very little debate’ on consequences of Sweden’s crime and migration clampdown

Sweden’s political leaders are putting the population’s well-being at risk by moving the country in a more authoritarian direction, according to a recent report.

Published: 29 April 2024 08:56 CEST
'Very little debate' on consequences of Sweden's crime and migration clampdown

The Liberties Rule of Law report shows Sweden backsliding across more areas than any other of the 19 European Union member states monitored, fuelling concerns that the country risks breaching its international human rights obligations, the report says.

“We’ve seen this regression in other countries for a number of years, such as Poland and Hungary, but now we see it also in countries like Sweden,” says John Stauffer, legal director of the human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders, which co-authored the Swedish section of the report.

The report, compiled by independent civil liberties groups, examines six common challenges facing European Union member states.

Sweden is shown to be regressing in five of these areas: the justice system, media environment, checks and balances, enabling framework for civil society and systemic human rights issues.

The only area where Sweden has not regressed since 2022 is in its anti-corruption framework, where there has been no movement in either a positive or negative direction.

Source: Liberties Rule of Law report

As politicians scramble to combat an escalation in gang crime, laws are being rushed through with too little consideration for basic rights, according to Civil Rights Defenders.

Stauffer cites Sweden’s new stop-and-search zones as a case in point. From April 25th, police in Sweden can temporarily declare any area a “security zone” if there is deemed to be a risk of shootings or explosive attacks stemming from gang conflicts.

Once an area has received this designation, police will be able to search people and cars in the area without any concrete suspicion.

“This is definitely a piece of legislation where we see that it’s problematic from a human rights perspective,” says Stauffer, adding that it “will result in ethnic profiling and discrimination”.

Civil Rights Defenders sought to prevent the new law and will try to challenge it in the courts once it comes into force, Stauffer tells The Local in an interview for the Sweden in Focus Extra podcast. 

He also notes that victims of racial discrimination at the hands of the Swedish authorities had very little chance of getting a fair hearing as actions by the police or judiciary are “not even covered by the Discrimination Act”.

READ ALSO: ‘Civil rights groups in Sweden can fight this government’s repressive proposals’

Stauffer also expresses concerns that an ongoing migration clampdown risks splitting Sweden into a sort of A and B team, where “the government limits access to rights based on your legal basis for being in the country”.

The report says the government’s migration policies take a “divisive ‘us vs them’ approach, which threatens to increase rather than reduce existing social inequalities and exclude certain groups from becoming part of society”.

Proposals such as the introduction of a requirement for civil servants to report undocumented migrants to the authorities would increase societal mistrust and ultimately weaken the rule of law in Sweden, the report says.

The lack of opposition to the kind of surveillance measures that might previously have sparked an outcry is a major concern, says Stauffer.

Politicians’ consistent depiction of Sweden as a country in crisis “affects the public and creates support for these harsh measures”, says Stauffer. “And there is very little talk and debate about the negative consequences.”

Hear John Stauffer from Civil Rights Defender discuss the Liberties Rule of Law report in the The Local’s Sweden in Focus Extra podcast for Membership+ subscribers.

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